CHAPTER
10
AGRICULTURE
Agricultural Development Farming in Tooele County was practiced by most early white settlers. They planted vegetables including corn and grains from seed brought across the plains. Streams were captured for irrigation water for land near the m o u n t a i n fronts, but problems arose getting the water to the farms. Ditches often would break, and it could be days of hard labor before the water could be turned back into its course again. Seed was also carefully kept for another planting, each person reportedly trying to save enough garden seeds for himself and a few for someone else.1 Water was not the only problem related to farming. Insects also periodically threatened the crops, as was reported in the earlier chapter on county settlement. The agricultural census for the Territory of Utah reported in 1860 that in Tooele County thirty bushels of wheat was an average crop; the oat crop average was thirty bushels; corn, twenty-five bushels; potatoes, 200 bushels; beets and carrots, 500 bushels. The Benson mill was reported as milling 6,000 bushels of wheat and 1,000 226
