History of Irrigation in Utah

HISTORY OF IRRIGATION IN UTAH

By George D. Clyde

Utahans take just pride in the fact that our desert literally has been made to bloom as the rose, and even our city-bred children who have no first-hand knowledge of farming can tell you that the miracle was performed by aid of irrigation, starting with the damming of City Creek on that hot July day in 1847.

We like to tell tourists that modern irrigation began on that day, and to a large extent that is true. The use of irrigation by the Mormon pioneers was the beginning of the first irrigation-based economy in the Western Hemisphere in modern times. In our pardonable pride, however, sometimes we tend to overlook some important elements in the irrigation picture: that irrigation had been practiced for countless centuries; that the irrigation principles applied in Utah in 1847 were those handed down from the east; and that those ideas were primitive in the extreme — they served to meet the exigencies of the moment, but they could not begin to serve us today.

We do not know when man first learned to apply water to the land in order to make crops grow. Irrigation is so ancient an art that it has no recorded beginning. We find references to it in the books of the Old Testament beginning with Genesis; i.e., "and a river came out of Eden to water the Garden." And there are paintings, sculptures, and records of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Iraq, and China which clearly prove that irrigation was known and practiced on an extensive scale. In fact, it is significant that our first great civilizations were founded on watercourses in arid lands where irrigation was a necessity. I think we may draw a logical conclusion that this was not mere coincidence, but that it was a determining factor in shaping the course of history. The need for intelligent supply and planning in the use of scarce water, and the fact that artificial irrigation guarantees a better and more stable food supply than does natural precipitation unaided — even in humid areas — were major factors in the development of the world powers in the dawn of history.

In this Western Hemisphere, irrigation was known and practiced centuries before the coming of Columbus, and modern archeologists have found many evidences of these ancient developments.

When the first white men began to explore the western — and arid — lands of the North American Continent, they found the Indians using a primitive form of irrigation, and they adopted irrigation practices themselves. The early Spanish-Catholic missions in Arizona, New Mexico, and California were all built around small irrigation systems. These were small individual ventures, however; there were no permanent community developments such as were later established by the Mormon pioneers in Utah. There was one organized effort to found an irrigation community made by the Spanish government about 1796 near the site of the present town of Santa Cruz, California, but it failed to survive for a variety of reasons, leaving the later Utahans clear title to the founding of Mormon community irrigation in this country.

The beginning of the Utah irrigation story virtually has become a legend in this western country, and I think every Utah school child knows at least something about it. The pioneers, arriving at their destination very late in the growing season and faced with the necessity of producing crops to see them through the coming winter, dammed the clear waters of what is now known as City Creek to soften and moisten the hard dry soil and made their first planting of potatoes.

This first community-irrigated garden was only the beginning. Brigham Young directed that ditches be dug to serve the first pioneer fort, and a more or less complete irrigation system within the fort was ready for operation in the spring of 1848. The system was steadily enlarged. Waters from City and Red Butte creeks were brought inside the fort, and in 1849 a system of irrigation ditches was dug by community effort around each of the ten-acre city blocks. Later, a delivery canal from the mouth of Big Cottonwood Creek to the city was dug, again by closely co-ordinated community effort. As a matter of practical convenience, supervision of the irrigation system was placed in the hands of the twelve ecclesiastical wards into which Salt Lake City had been divided; even after the establishment of a city government and the appointment (in 1853) of a general water master, it was found simplest to continue the supervisory administration of the bishops over the irrigation facilities in their wards.

As the early Utah pioneers spread out from their original settlement in the Salt Lake Valley to colonize the surrounding area, they took their irrigation practices with them. They had to, of sheer necessity, for the natural precipitation in this semiarid region was insufficient — and insufficient particularly in the growing season — to raise stable crops otherwise. The aim of the Utah pioneers, and they succeceded in achieving it, was to establish an enduring agricultural economy on the basis of irrigation. They were the first to do this in the modern western world.

By 1850 — just three years after the first permanent settlement was established — there were 926 improved farms in Utah, covering a total of 16,330 acres; by 1860 the number of farms had grown to 3,636 and the acreage to 77,219. By 1865 almost 150,000 acres were under cultivation, 1,000 miles of canals had been dug and there were approximately 65,000 people living in reasonable comfort on the reclaimed land.

The first phase or period of Utah irrigation development extended, roughly, from the 1847 beginning to the mid-1880's. This was the period of purely co-operative development, and it was remarkable for the degree of success it achieved. However, operations were necessarily confined to the comparatively easy projects, which involved the diversion of water from accessible streams to land reasonably close by. There was no major storage of water, and that meant that the capacity of any irrigation project was the capacity of the stream furnishing the water supply at the extreme low-flow period of the summer. The pioneers learned by hard experience that they could not expand their crop land to take advantage of the relatively abundant water supply in the spring and early summer. If they did so, there would not be enough irrigation water to go around in the critical hot summer period, and many crops would die.

Nevertheless, the results obtained during this period of co-operative effort, with a minimum of tools and equipment, command our respect and admiration today. I shall have more to say in a moment of the development of tools and equipment and the effect this had on our irrigation enterprises.

Top: An artist's sketch, which appeared in an early magazine, showing how a network of ditches was dug for the fencing and watering of farms.

Bottom: Logan-Hyde Park-Smithfield canal, carved out of solid limestone by Mormon pioneers in 1861-62 and still in use. Each farmer contributed labor equivalent to enough water shares to irrigate ten acres. Photo, Carroll F. Wilcomb.

Top: The wide but shallow Virgin River two miles below Atkinville, in Southern Utah's "Dixie," late in the spring, May 25, 1907.

Bottom: Dry bed of the Virgin River five miles below Atkinville on the same day. The precious water had sunk into the dry bed of the lower narrows and the entire flow was lost. Such were the early water conservation problems.

The second period in Utah irrigation development came in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and was, comparatively, far less successful than had been the initial co-operative effort. Seeing the impressive results obtained by irrigation, private capital became interested in the construction of irrigation projects as an investment. Many private companies were formed to construct and operate irrigation projects, but most of them failed for a number of reasons. I have not the time to analyze the reasons in detail, but these factors are obvious: an irrigation project is basically unsuited to development by private capital because of the necessarily long time that must elapse between the making of the original investment and the realization of a substantial return. This is especially true in the construction of complicated and costly projects, and I have already noted that the obvious and easy projects had been constructed during the first period of co-operative enterprise. Perhaps the primary reason for the failure of the commercial enterprises of the 1880's and 1890's — not only in Utah but throughout the West — was the fact that their direction was in the hands of other than the actual water users. We have learned over the years that the success of any irrigation undertaking depends on the intelligent efforts of the people who apply the water to the land and who stand directly to benefit — or to lose — from the operation.

In 1894 Congress passed the Carey Act in an effort to assist in irrigation development. Without going into technical detail, the theory behind the Carey Act was that the federal government would give title to the state to tracts of desert or otherwise valueless public domain on condition that the states would reclaim them and make them productive. The results were, in the main, very disappointing. Major reclamation projects were required, and this meant large investments of capital. The states themselves were unable to supply the large capital outlays that were needed, and private capital, as I have already noted, was not suited to the task. Here in Utah, nearly 142,000 acres of public domain were segregated under the Carey Act, but only a little more than 37,000 acres were finally patented to the state — the remaining acreages in excess of 104,000 were left in the hands of the federal government. The acreage actually irrigated was somewhat less than the land patented under the act.

The era of modern irrigation opened with the passage of the Federal Reclamation Act on June 17, 1902. This act provided a logical and workable plan for financing major reclamation projects and was the salvation of the West. The federal government supplies the capital for construction, and the costs are paid back, without interest, over an extended period of time. The federal government derives tremendous benefits in the form of direct tax returns on the new wealth created and in many less obvious ways, far in excess of the interest charges, which it waives. In recent times, when huge, complicated, multipleuse reclamation projects have been and are being constructed, it has been found necessary to allocate revenues derived from the production of hydroelectric power at the storage dams to the repayment of the over-all cost of the project, which would be far too great for the water users alone to repay. Total costs of a modern project are allocated to a number of uses — including flood control, fish and wildlife benefits, and municipal and industrial water uses in addition to irrigation and power production; and the repayment demanded of irrigators is limited to their ability to pay. Some people, particularly in the East where the principles of reclamation are not well understood, object to what they mislabel a subsidy to irrigation farmers. Full analysis proves that the government receives an unusually high return on its investment and that the water users pay for what they receive.

Some of the early projects constructed in Utah under the reclamation act, notably the Strawberry Valley Project, have been in operation long enough to demonstrate the full value of such undertakings. It has been shown that at the present time, the direct return to the government in taxes on new wealth created by the Strawberry project — and which could not have been brought into being without the development of an adequate stable water supply — is each year more than the total original cost of the construction.

The Strawberry, and other reasonably large projects built under the reclamation act, went far beyond the original pioneer irrigation projects which merely diverted flowing water from the streams. The larger projects were based on large dams, creating reservoirs to store the year-round flow of rivers and preserving the spring floodwaters, which formerly ran to waste, for use in the dry late summer when water is at a premium. Most recent and still larger projects, of which the Colorado River Storage Project now under construction is an excellent example, go still further. They not only store the year-round runoff, they store water in such quantity that they can regulate several years' supply and hold the water from long-term cycles of relatively abundant moisture for use in extended drought periods. Such projects are costly in terms of dollar investment, but economical in the long run, for they represent the only feasible method of making maximum use of the water which flows through dry regions.

The development of tools and equipment has had a great influence on the shape of irrigation development. As I mentioned earlier, in pioneer days there were few tools and these were of the simplest. As a result, the pioneer irrigation structures were also of the simplest.

Diversion dams were generally made of whatever materials were available on the site: rocks, brush and any odds and ends that were handy. Where a small diversion dam was put in to serve a single farm, it was not unusual for the farmer to haul wagonloads of barnyard manure to dump in the stream, replenishing with more of the same when the original dam began to erode away. Ditches were dug with the pick and shovel, the crowbar and occasional use of a little black powder for blasting large rocks. Water was turned over the land in the simplest and most obvious way, without regard to scientific practices.

The more modern and far more complicated dams and distribution systems of later times were made possible only by the tremendous advance in equipment and tools. The early rock-and-brush diversion structures and laboriously constructed masonry dams gave way to concrete structures, carefully designed and engineered. Some of our modern dams are earth fill structures more economical to build, under certain conditions, than dams of solid concrete, but practical only because of the fabulous power shovels and other modern earth-moving equipment that can handle twenty to thirty tons of eartii in a single operation.

The primitive, hand-hewn canals have been replaced by carefully engineered watercourses that are fully lined with concrete, asphalt, glass fabric, or other twentieth-century materials. The water savings represented by the improvements in canal lining are immense. Where the old ditches sometimes lost as much as thirty-three per cent of their flowage in a single mile, loss by seepage through the walls of properly lined canals is negligible.

Modern farmers have made similar advancements over pioneer methods in the application of water to the land. The first Utah irrigators knew virtually nothing of the science of irrigation beyond the fact that it was necessary to have water in the soil to raise crops. They often operated on the fallacious theory that if a little water was good for crops a lot of water must be that much better, and much good land was ruined through the application of far too much water. This practice can ruin good soil through accumulation of excess of salinity or alkalinity if the subsoil does not provide proper drainage; or it can result in tremendous wastage of water and considerable erosion if porous gravel beds are directly under the surface.

A review of the history of irrigation in Utah would logically end at the present day, but I feel that it would be incomplete without at least a quick look into the future.

As of the 1950 census, Utah had 3,165 irrigation enterprises of all types serving a total of more than a million and a quarter acres. We are still proceeding with a number of major reclamation developments and quite a few smaller developments that are financed through the revolving fund administered by the Utah Water and Power Board. However, when the Colorado River Storage Project, including the vast and fascinating central Utah project, is completed in another twenty years or so, the potential major developments on the old pattern will be virtually complete.

Does this mean irrigation expansion in the state will be at an end ? I sincerely hope and believe it does not.

We regard Utah as a semiarid area, which indeed it is. Yet accurate measurements indicate that fifty million acre-feet of water — twice the total capacity of Lake Mead — falls on this state each year as rain or snow. But our total reservoir storage capacity holds only 5 per cent of this amount, and something less than 4 per cent is actually used each year in irrigation. I believe our future lies in better conservation practices that will enable us to use quantities of the water that is now going to waste. Let me outline just a few of the possibilities.

Some of our large water losses are due to evaporation. Evaporation is particularly heavy from large storage reservoirs and is one of the prices we have had to pay for water storage; and, in terms of the saving which the storage makes possible, the price is reasonable. However, experiments are continuing on the use of chemicals that spread a film only a single molecule tiiick over the surface of a lake or reservoir. This film retards evaporation to an amazing extent and may someday save the world millions of acre-feet of usable water each year. I think the day is not far off when the use of such a check on evaporation losses will be practical.

Losses in transportation through seepage and evaporation from canals have already been considerably checked, and still further progress can be expected in this line.

I have already touched on losses in the application of water to land.

Further developments must be energetically pushed, for the loss of water through improper application practices is not only serious in itself but also usually involves serious loss of fertile farmland — something we can ill afford as our population grows.

There is yet another source of future development that may be even more important to Utah's future than any of these already mentioned. That is the full scientific use of our "underground reservoirs" — the natural underground storage of water that is the basis of our springs and wells.

In some areas of the state, underground water sources are extensively used. But in many areas these underground reservoirs are neglected, and the water that drains into them each year is wasted through useless vegetation which develops over such a source of supply. In other places strategically located underground reservoirs may be ignored and the water allowed to follow underground channels and emerge at such low levels as to be virtually useless to agriculture.

Developing the full use of our underground water supplies will require careful study and intelligent development to preserve existing rights and still make use of the maximum amount of water that is surplus to them, but it can and must be done. It represents one of our greatest untapped sources of water for the future.

Irrigation and reclamation have played a large part in the development of Utah over the past 110 years. Some people say these factors will be less important in the future because we will be turning more and more from an agricultural to an industrial economy.

Let me point out that an industrial economy requires even more water than does an agricultural economy. Whatever form our future development takes, its final limiting factor will be our available water supply. Water developed now or in the past for irrigation may someday in the future be turned to municipal or industrial uses as conditions may demand. Indeed, such changes have already been made and have been an important part of our modern industrial development. The establishment of the Geneva steel plant in Utah, for example, would have been impossible without the water rights, originally developed for irrigation, that were attached to the land acquired for the steel plant.

Water developed for irrigation purposes is "water in the bank" — often far more valuable than money in the bank in this dry country. Irrigation has been a key factor in shaping Utah's history in the past, and I am sure it will play an equally vital role in our future.

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