John Wesley Powell, the Irrigation Survey, and the Inaugaration of the Second Phase of Irrigation Development in Utah

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 37, 1969, No. 2

John Wesley Powell,the Irrigation Survey,and the Inauguration of the Second Phase of Irrigation Developmentin Utah

BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

DURING THE SUMMER of 1888, the people of Utah experienced what many observers thought was the worst water shortage up to that time. Unfortunately, the summer of 1889 brought even more difficulty and greater adversity. By early May the small snowfall and lack of rain forecast the driest season within memory. By mid-September the people of the territory had suffered greatly. Crops of hay and lucern had fallen off an average of forty per cent, grain yields were very poor, and owners of primary water rights on Cottonwood Creek had to haul water to keep trees alive. None of the Jordan River canals had sufficient water to run the whole length.

During the summer, the Salt Lake City Council was unable to deliver water to those who had appropriated it. The city was constructing a new reservoir at the head of First South Street, but this gave the citizens little hope for that year or for the future, if the city could not find another source of water to place in storage. Groups of people in various hard-hit districts held meetings, passed resolutions, and took their grievances to the council.

C. H. Wilcken, the city water master, thought Utah Lake provided the best potential source of water and that flowing wells promised some hope. The city commission appointed a committee to study the water problem, and its recommendation closely paralleled those of Wilcken. Still, in spite of the abundance of 1890, the northeastern part of Salt Lake City had insufficient water.

In February 1890, after the two years of extreme water shortage, elections for the city council brought George M. Scott and a majority of members of the anti-Mormon Liberal party to power. It has been generally assumed that the election of the Liberals was wholly related to the disfranchisement of Mormon voters and voting frauds committed by Liberal party registrars. It seems probable, however, that more was involved. In February 1888, when the People's party won the last election, the total vote for mayor was 2,691. The People's party received 1,778 votes and the Liberal party, 913. In 1890 the total vote was 6,312, and the Liberals received 3,560 to the People's party's 2,752. This was an increase of 134 per cent in the total vote, which was far beyond the two year increase in Salt Lake City's population and reflects increased public interest. In addition to the Mormon issue, the problem of the water supply for Salt Lake City and the inability of the People's party to meet that difficulty seem likely reasons for Liberal success.

By early February 1892, shortly before new elections were held, the Liberal city council had succeeded in supplying water from Parley's Canyon, sufficient to meet the needs of a city population of 100,000. In February 1892, after the Mormons and conservative Gentiles had already divided into national political parties, the Liberals were again successful in securing for their candidate Mayor Robert N. Baskin a vote greater than the combined total of the two national parties. It seems likely that the success of the Liberal party in securing needed water for Salt Lake City contributed to its success at the polls.

The problems which the people of Utah endured in 1888 and 1889 grew from the type of irrigation systems they had developed since the first settlers turned City Creek onto land in Salt Lake Valley in July 1847. The Mormon irrigators seldom built reservoirs to store water, but rather constructed canals from existing streams and allowed the fluctuations of the streams to run their natural course during the year. In many cases this failure to regulate the water caused ditches and fields to be ruined during the flood stage of the rivers and forced the expenditure of extra labor and capital in an effort to meet the problem/ This happened in the settlement of St. George and Deseret, and in San Pete County it was a perennial problem even in times of drought.

Many people in Utah recognized, long before 1888, the need for the construction of storage reservoirs, but the lack of capital retarded their development. Between 1869 and 1872 Delegate William H. Hooper tried with no success to secure land grants for those who would help in the reclamation of arid lands. In 1877 Delegate George Q. Cannon tried unsuccessfully to secure assistance for some citizens of Anabella in the construction of irrigation works. Some towns such as Gunnison, Deseret, and Newton had built reservoirs, but they were exceptions.

While the people of Utah were suffering difficulties caused by an inadequate irrigation system, events were transpiring in Washington which were to lead to a change in the situation. Senators William M. Stewart of Nevada and Henry M. Teller of Colorado secured the passage in February 1888, of a resolution asking the Secretary of the Interior to report on the need for a survey to segregate irrigable lands and reservoir and canal sites in the arid region. The story of the resolution and its results have been told elsewhere, and it is enough to say that in response to the resolution, Director John Wesley Powell of the Geological Survey submitted a plan for an irrigation survey which would determine the water resources of the Far West, select sites for reservoirs, and assess the potential use of water. Congress appropriated money to undertake the work, though never as much as was needed, and the survey was carried on under the auspices of the Geological Survey.

In addition the act of October 2, 1888, which appropriated the first money for the survey, closed all land in the arid region to entry until it should be opened by the President of the United States "to settlement under the homestead laws." This latter provision was not generally known at first; in fact, the people of Utah apparently were unaware of it until August 1890 — ten months later — when reports of settlers who had tried unsuccessfully to secure title to lands appeared in the newspaper.

The man who was to direct the irrigation survey was already well known to the people of Utah. John Wesley Powell had first come to Utah in 1869 during his famed exploration of the Colorado River. During the early 1870's Powell spent considerable time in Utah, especially southern Utah, and in working with the Indian tribes of the territory.

He published some of the results of his observations in Utah in his Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah, which was largely based upon conditions in Utah Territory and upon which subsequent work on the reclamation of arid lands had been founded. As a scientific work, Powell's study was cursory and incomplete. The research of his subordinates — Grove Karl Gilbert, Clarence E. Dutton, and Almon Harris Thompson — upon which the book was based was so hasty that the statistical generalizations given in the study are inaccurate. Powell estimated, for instance, that only 2.8 per cent of Utah Territory could be cultivated with available water supplies. He failed to note that this figure was based upon an assumption in the work of his three subordinates that only the existing water supply systems would remain. They failed to take into consideration the possible storage of water during seasons of abundance for times of shortage. By 1920, as a result, existing water storage facilities were capable of watering 3.5 per cent of Utah land, an increase of 21 per cent over Powell's estimate. Since 1920, owing to depressed agricultural conditions, the amount of irrigated land under cultivation in Utah has declined, though the amount of available water has been increased through Federal Reclamation Projects throughout the state which store water and which have made previously unusable Colorado River water available to the Great Basin.

Powell's principal contribution in the study was, however, intellectual. This maimed genius saw that the haphazard individualism which had characterized previous settlement outside Utah would bring only failure in the arid region and pointed out that:

To a great extent, the redemption of these lands will require extensive and comprehensive plans, for the execution of which aggregated capital or cooperative labor will be necessary. Here, individual farmers, being poor men, cannot undertake the task.

Powell was a careful and intelligent observer, and he had noted the cooperative methods which had brought success to the Mormon settlers of the Great Basin. He projected his thoughts beyond their efforts, however, and called for land classification to provide the most efficient utilization of irrigable forest and pasture land.

Powell's earlier experience and reflections made him admirably suited to direct the technical work of the irrigation survey. He divided the survey into three parts — topographic which was to determine the drainage area of various streams, locate lands which could best be utilized for irrigated agriculture, and locate and map reservoir sites; hydrographic which was to determine the available water supplies principally through stream gauging; and the engineering division which was to plan irrigation works. Hydrographic activities were new in the United States and Frederick Haynes Newell (later to become director of the Reclamation Service), who had charge of the hydrographic division, found it necessary to train a crew of fourteen men on the Rio Grande about fifty miles north of Santa Fe during the winter of 1888-89. 1

In April 1889 Newell himself and T. M. Bannon came to Utah to begin operations in the Mormon territory. The Interior Department opened the Salt Lake Land Office to them so they could determine which land around possible reservoir sites was unclaimed.

The work of fiscal year 1889 in Utah consisted of two phases, segregation of reservoir sites and stream gauging. Ten reservoir sites were selected, all of which were in the Great Basin drainage area. The sites included Utah Lake and Bear Lake, a site on Cottonwood Creek in Big Cottonwood Canyon, and seven sites on the Sevier River and its tributaries. As Newell selected the sites, the Interior Department officially closed the land to private occupation and informed the Salt Lake Land Office of the fact. Shortly thereafter, in some cases, the land office published information that the site had been closed to private occupation.

Newell carried on his work entirely within the Great Basin. As a matter of fact, it appears that no work was done in the Colorado River drainage area in Utah until after Powell had completed his tenure as director of the Geological Survey. Newell and Bannon established gauging stations on the Bear River near Collinston; in Idaho at Battle Creek near the Utah-Idaho border; on the Provo, the American Fork, and the Spanish Fork rivers in Utah Valley; and on the Sevier River at Joseph City and Leamington. They also set up an evaporation station at Fort Douglas. In addition Newell worked on the collection of statistical information concerning the water supply, canals, and other irrigation problems and on the segregation of irrigable lands in the Bear River Valley.

The work of the year 1890 was basically a continuation of the hydrographic activities begun the previous year, and through the work, Newell was able to comment on the use of the streams of the Great Basin drainage. Until 1889 there had been no attempt to utilize Bear River itself, except on a few acres near the stream, anywhere below Bear Lake. Owing to the depth of the channel and the problems of dealing with such a large river, the irrigators had relied upon the more easily diverted tributaries.

Utah Lake presented a particularly difficult problem. Even with the use of storage reservoirs, Newell concluded that present projections made it appear that because of the water shortage, Goshen Valley south of the lake could not be irrigated to any great extent. The haphazardly constructed canal system of Provo was, in addition,

typical of that at every large settlement where old and small ditches have been enlarged and new ones built at higher and higher grades, finally resulting in long lines of parallel canals each covering a narrow strip of country and perhaps crossing each other and conducting the water with little economy and great expense to the others. The lower canals, being in general built first, have the better rights, while the higher canals, last built, have rights only to surplus waters; but from their position up the stream, they have the best facilities for getting what they wish.

Similar problems of unplanned use existed in the Jordan River Valley where irrigable land was in excess of water supply. Water developers had generally used two systems — first, the Jordan itself, and second, water from streams flowing from canyons to the east. As in Utah Valley the system had been constructed with no general plan and the

two systems cross and reeross and are intermingled apparently in the greatest confusion; and, as in other systems which have grown up without any comprehensive plan, the waters of the one are used on lands which could be covered to better advantage by the waters of others, and there is a very general lack of economy both in canal construction and in the use of the water.

The greatest need, Newell said, was a comprehensive general study of the water supply of the whole region, both to protect vested rights and to obtain the most economical use of the proposed storage facilities.

In the valley of the Sevier River, the problems varied somewhat owing principally to its more recent occupation. The best water rights were held by settlers lower on the stream, but as settlers had pushed into the higher valleys, they had taken water and in many cases used this, to them, abundant resource quite profligately.

The matter left to itself is thus becoming a striking instance of the survival of the man highest up the stream, irrespective of his rights or of the best use of the water.

During the summer the water was completely removed from the river in three different points, but below each point the fluid returned in a sufficient quantity to allow some irrigation further down the stream.

The work of the years 1891 through 1894 involved the completion of segregation of reservoir sites already selected and the continuation of the hydrographic work. In 1891 and 1892 thirteen sites were mapped and segregated as reservoir sites by A. H. Thompson, who was in charge of topographical surveys. They included basically the sites which had been designated in a general way in 1889. In 1893 and 1894 the work of the survey consisted of a continuation of hydrographic studies. Powell retired in 1894 and relinquished control of the Geological Survey to Charles D. Walcott under whose direction investigations continued.

One important function which the irrigation survey performed was to define some of the possible and impossible in irrigation development. It had been assumed that the salvation of the people of Salt Lake County lay in the development of Utah Lake as a reservoir. After careful investigation, however, Newell determined that the rate of evaporation from the lake was too great for economical use in its present state. The level of the lake might have been raised as many in Salt Lake County suggested, but this appeared impracticable because "around Utah Lake, are enormous tracts of land whose value depends upon keeping the level of the lake to a minimum."

The work of the survey did not continue without controversy over its activities. The problems have been chronicled elsewhere, but they dealt at first essentially with securing sufficient funds for the survey's work. A number of easterners, midwesterners, and southerners opposed the appropriation of sufficient funds on a number of grounds. Some believed the work to be unimportant, others opposed the use of federal funds for such projects, and many feared competition from rejuvenated western agriculture. These opponents succeeded in constricting the funds for the survey.

With insufficient funds a controversy arose among supporters of the survey, among Powell's functionaries, and between Powell and congressional supporters like Stewart over the way in which the funds were being used. The argument centered on the comprehensiveness of Powell's plans, especially the use of funds for topographical surveys, and the closing of all lands in the arid region to occupation during the survey. The latter feature would have closed all land to legal occupation for a period of about thirty years at the current rate of appropriation. As a result on August 30, 1890, Congress repealed the provision, and thenceforth only land actually needed for reservoir sites could be closed. At the same time opponents of the survey succeeded in further crippling its work by severely reducing the amount available for surveys.

The advent of the Powell Irrigation Survey marks the transfer of interest in the reclamation of arid lands from the local level to the national level. Though the Desert Land Act of 1877 was touted as a reclamation measure, it was really a way of giving responsibility for reclamation to individual settlers. Part of the awakened national interest is demonstrated by the activities of the Senate Special Committee on the Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands, or the Stewart Committee as it was generally called, after its chairman William M. Stewart of Nevada.

During 1889, while the Irrigation Survey performed its work, the committee toured the arid region and took testimony and collected information both in the West and in Washington on existing irrigation and reclamation practices. For Utah the activities associated with the Stewart Committee and the Powell Irrigation Survey produced the first comprehensive report on irrigation in the territory's history.

Close cooperation was in evidence between the committee, the survey personnel, and local officials. In May 1889 both Newell and Richard Hinton, irrigating engineer of the Geological Survey, wrote Governor Arthur L. Thomas of Utah asking him to collect, for the committee and the Geological Survey, all of the information he could on irrigation in the territory. They asked for maps showing the location of the principal canals with information about them including the date of their construction, the streams from which they flowed, the land they irrigated, and the land which might be irrigated from them if the supply of water should be increased through storage. In response to this request, territorial Secretary Elijah Sells sent a circular letter to county officials who might supply the information. After the information had been used by the committee, Governor Thomas forwarded it to Newell for use by the Irrigation Survey. Interest in the coming of the committee was so high in the summer of 1889 that the Deseret News published some of the correspondence of those connected with the gathering of information.

The committee arrived in Salt Lake City on August 18 and on August 19 and 20, 1889, took testimony from Utah citizens. Powell came as a guest of the committee and to his, the Deseret News said, "familiarity with the topography of the country the party will doubtless be indebted for much of their information." The party also included Senators J. R. Reagan of Texas, P. B. Plumb of Kansas, and James K. Jones of Arkansas; Hinton; Newell; Clarence E. Dutton, chief engineer of the Irrigation Survey, and A. D. Foote, civil engineer in charge of the Snake River Basin work of the survey.

The Deseret Weekly published five and one-half pages reporting the committee's activities. The newspaper account included the report of Professor Marcus E. Jones of Utah on water conditions prepared at the request of Governor Thomas and a synopsis of the testimony of the various witnesses. At the end of the hearings, the News reported that

The committee paid the witnesses brought before them a compliment by saying they were not only more intelligent than those heard elsewhere, but the testimony given by them was vastly more valuable.

The paper also gave credit to Governor Thomas for making the arrangements and securing the testimony and written exhibits.

The main theme which emerged from the hearings, beyond the information on irrigation practices, was the need for greater efforts to deal with Utah water problems. Newell said that the

only hope of those lower down [on the streams to secure water] is in a reservoir system high in the mountains, and [owing to a lack of capital] they cannot make these reservoirs without some help from the Territory or from the General Government.

Other testimony such as that of F. A. Hammond of San Juan County, later to be a member of the Utah Constitutional Convention; Jesse W. Fox, former surveyor general of Utah; and Joseph D. Jones, probate judge of Utah County, indicated the need of government assistance in the building of storage facilities.

Given Governor Thomas's involvement in the collection of data for the Stewart Committee in Utah, it is not at all surprising that he became the leading light in the calling of an interstate irrigation congress in Salt Lake City in 1891. The idea for the Congress apparently originated in the State Irrigation Convention at Lincoln, Nebraska, in February 1891, at which William E. Smythe was the main figure. Later, on May 21 and 22, 1891, at the Trans-Mississippi Congress at Denver a similar suggestion was also made.

On June 4, 1891, the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce adopted a resolution calling upon Governor Thomas to organize a congress. The governor issued a call for the convention to be held at Salt Lake City on September 15, 16, and 17, to which he invited the states and territories of the arid region to send thirty delegates each. He said that the time was ripe for the Congress, that Salt Lake City was the proper place to hold it owing to the pioneering efforts of Utah citizens in irrigation, and that the principal question to be discussed was how to save water in the off season in order to increase the flow during the irrigating period. The latter problem was, of course, the main question to which the Irrigation Survey had addressed itself.

Contrary to the impression which William E. Smythe gives in his Conquest of Arid America, the principal work of organizing the convention fell to Fred Simon, president of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. Simon induced the railroads to allow delegates to travel to Salt Lake City at half fare and corresponded with many in other states to see that they sent representatives. The Utahns elected Governor Thomas as chairman of their delegation; Elias A. Smith, former probate judge of Salt Lake County, as secretary; C. C. Goodwin, editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, as a member of the committee on resolutions; W. S. McCornick, a prominent Utah banker and mining magnate, was selected as a vice president of the Congress; and William H. King, prominent Utah lawyer and later senator and congressman, was made a member of the committee on the presentation of the memorial to the U.S. Congress. In addition such knowledgeable western irrigation supporters as Francis G. Newlands of Nevada and Elwood Meade of Wyoming were members of the resolutions committee and A. D. Foote of the Irrigation Survey was secretary of the memorial committee.

The tone for the whole convention was set by Governor Thomas's opening speech in which he effectively and realistically argued the case for reclamation. He pointed out that easterners were generally quite poorly informed on the needs of the West and he saw educating the nation as one important function of the convention. He pointed to the need for reservoirs to hold the water, and said that large canals could not be used unless water was available, and he argued that, at present, development of agriculture had reached a point at which it could not grow very rapidly. Quite realistically, he pointed out that the total amount of land which could be brought under cultivation in Utah was only about four per cent of the land area.

The convention adopted a resolution calling upon Congress to grant lands which needed irrigation to the states in trust for their reclamation. The grant was to be contingent upon the use of the money from the sale of public lands for irrigation and education.

A memorial committee was chosen to submit the resolution to Congress through Senator Sanders of Montana. The arguments of the memorial, given the conditions in 1891, seem quite sound. The delegates said that the question of whether Congress should construct the irrigation works had been considered. It pointed out, however, that though Congress had appropriated some money for the Powell Irrigation Survey, the funds had been insufficient to present "the hope of any substantial results within a reasonable period." The federal government seemed, at that point, unwilling to do enough in a sufficiently short time. For this reason the memorial argued, the lands should be granted to the states for use as capital for the construction of irrigation works and to support education. Large areas of the West, it was pointed out, could never be used for anything but grazing or timber land. The memorial repeated the suggestion which Powell had made thirteen years before that grazing tracts be attached to land capable of irrigation. The memorial also echoed Powell's argument for the need to protect the forest lands. 33 Indeed, the whole memorial repeated, in a well-reasoned manner, many suggestions which Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Region had made.

After the convention ended the Deseret News raised the issue which was to plague the irrigation movement until the eventual passage of the Newlands Act in 1902. The newspaper wondered what Utah would do if the arid lands were ceded to her. Then it editorially raised the question:

Would it not be better for the Government to retain possession of the lands, devise means and provide funds for the production of the water and then sell the land to settlers?

We do not pretend to answer these questions in the affirmative or to say that the scheme advised by the Congress is not a good one. We simply put these querries forward for the general public to ponder upon.

The News wondered whether Utah would have sufficient capital to reclaim the lands.

Opposition to the suggestions of the Congress came from the East. The Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican of September 18, 1891, commented editorially on the Irrigation Congress's work by arguing that an increase in acreage which the plan proposed would increase available agricultural commodities and further depress prices. It opposed both the possibility of federal finance for the program and the cession of lands to the states because it said that the land belonged to all the people. The Deseret News commented that if this theory were followed to its logical conclusion, farming as a whole should be restricted by government action and it considered the arguments "puerile and senseless,"

Irrigation leaders expected that the Congress would meet again, perhaps annually, and, in addition to the committee on the memorial, an executive committee was chosen to continue the work of the Congress. Governor Thomas was made chairman and William E. Smythe, who had recently moved to Utah from Nebraska, was made secretary. Members of the committee were William A. Clark of Montana, Elwood Meade of Wyoming, and Francis G. Newlands of Nevada. Newlands was particularly interested in seeing that the Congress do more than simply pass resolutions and suggested that the West secure support for presidential candidates in both political parties who would support the needs of the West. He believed the silver question and the issue of irrigation were paramount.

In addition to occurring at the time of the beginnings of interstate action on reclamation, the Irrigation Survey also coincided with the inauguration of large capitalistic irrigation enterprises in Utah. Heretofore, development had been on a community scale, but in 1889 the Bear Lake and River Water Works and Irrigation Company or the Bothwell Irrigation Company, as it was generally called, began to develop the waters of the Bear River for the diversion of water into 200,000 acres of land stretching into Box Elder County west of Corinne and running as far south as Ogden. The project was named after John R. Bothwell, a New York financier who was the chief promoter and president of the company. The board of directors consisted of a number of prominent Utah figures, including territorial Delegate John T. Caine; Louis B. Adams of the Utah National Bank of Ogden; Francis E. Roache, a land owner in Weber and Box Elder counties; James C. Armstrong, president of the Commercial National Bank of Ogden; Charles C. Richards, prominent Utah politician and president of the Utah Trust and Loan Company of Ogden; and James H. Bacon, president of the Salt Lake Bank of Salt Lake City, who also served as treasurer of the company.

When Bothwell began to file water appropriation claims on the Bear River, Bear Lake, and their tributaries, his action caused such consternation in Idaho that both Governor George L. Shoup and the members of the Idaho Constitutional Convention telegraphed John Noble, the Secretary of the Interior, calling upon the federal government to do something about the scheme. Noble assured Governor Shoup that action would be taken to prevent monopolization of the land and he ordered Powell to investigate the matter through the Irrigation Survey.

In spite of the benefit which was to come to Utah through the irrigation scheme, both the Deseret News and the people of the Bear River Valley were concerned about the possible effect of such a large operation. The News praised the exclusion provision of the act of October 2, 1888, with the comment that that

statute is intended to protect the people from the designs of land and water sharks, who have created as much class trouble in the country as any other section of the population, having contributed largely, by the grasping and exclusive character of their schemes, to the manufacture of anarchists. The people are willing to trust to the laws and the government combined, in the distribution of the natural resources of the country, but they cannot safely confide in greedy monopolists who have but one end in view — their own enrichment.

Newell and the engineers of the Irrigation Survey found the citizens of Cache and Box Elder counties apprehensive because they feared that a large combine such as Bothwell's would be able to take their water from them.

Still, not all citizens of Utah and Idaho took the view represented by the Deseret News, northern Utah citizens, and the members of the Idaho State Constitutional Convention. Ovando J. Hollister, secretary of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce, in testimony before the Stewart Committee, praised the operation and said that he believed that Bothwell's enterprise had been thwarted by the land reservation feature of the act of October 2, 1888. He said that he was sorry because of the advantages which would come to Utah from the activities of the financier.

The controversy over the Bothwell water scheme was, in large part, a battle between an older Utah which had been built upon cooperation and a newer Utah which was to emerge in the twentieth century built upon a capitalistic base. As Elias A. Smith testified to the Stewart Committee, both land and w r ater holdings among Utah citizens had been limited to relatively small amounts. The average size farm in Salt Lake County was fifteen acres. Clarence Dutton pointed out in his contribution to Powell's Report that the L.D.S. church had handled the water development and settled disputes.

Whatever the church deems best for the general welfare of its dependencies none have yet been found to resist. This communal arrangement has been attended with great success so far as the development of the water resources are concerned, and the system of management has ordinarily been so conducted that the general welfare has been immensely benefited; . . .

Under these conditions it was possible even for a primary appropriator, in times of distress, to have his water supply curtailed for the general welfare. Now with such schemes as the Bothwell Company, the people of Utah faced the prospect of extended litigation with a powerful combination which was interested in its own, not the general welfare; and the majority seems to have disliked the prospect.

In summary it must be concluded that the period from 1888 to 1894 was a time of consequence for the people of Utah, and the issues raised then were to affect Utah's development to the present time. The Irrigation Survey inaugurated the long-standing activities of the federal government in the field of reclamation which have been so important to Utah. The Survey was symptomatic of the transferral of irrigation questions from the local to the national level where they were, thenceforth, to remain. The issue of federal versus state control of reclamation was raised and it was not settled until after the turn of the twentieth century. At the same time the question of reclamation took its place with silver as one of the most important issues for the people of the Mountain West.

In addition to this the events of those six years brought to the fore the problem of the community versus the individual. Should problems such as reclamation be settled in such a way as to promote the general welfare or should primary consideration be given to the welfare of individual promoters such as Bothwell. The Powell Irrigation Survey was the initial phase of a shift in irrigation development which would eventually answer this question for the people of the United States in the way in which the majority of Utah citizens had already answered it. Following the Irrigation Survey the people of the United States considered this question until it was answered in part through the Newlands Act of 1902 and the Water Power Act of 1920. Thereafter, the federal government would play the primary role in water development for the arid region which the L.D.S. church had previously played for the Mormon settlers of Utah — protector of the general welfare. For the citizens of Utah, however, it was a change of leadership and the inauguration of the second phase of irrigation development.

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