the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 12
Chapter 12
Nevada Farms
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To the farmer who comes to this thirsty land from beneath rainy skies,
Nevada seems one vast desert, all sage and sand, hopelessly
irredeemable now and forever. And this, under present conditions, is
severely true. For notwithstanding it has gardens, grainfields, and
hayfields generously productive, these compared with the arid
stretches of valley and plain, as beheld in general views from the
mountain tops, are mere specks lying inconspicuously here and there,
in out-of-the-way places, often thirty or forty miles apart.
In leafy regions, blessed with copious rains, we learn to measure the
productive capacity of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this
rule is almost wholly inapplicable here, for, notwithstanding its
savage nakedness, scarce at all veiled by a sparse growth of sage and
linosyris
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, the desert soil of the Great Basin is as rich in the
elements that in rainy regions rise and ripen into food as that of any
other State in the Union. The rocks of its numerous mountain ranges
have been thoroughly crushed and ground by glaciers, thrashed and
vitalized by the sun, and sifted and outspread in lake basins by
powerful torrents that attended the breaking-up of the glacial period,
as if in every way Nature had been making haste to prepare the land
for the husbandman. Soil, climate, topographical conditions, all that
the most exacting could demand, are present, but one thing, water, is
wanting. The present rainfall would be wholly inadequate for
agriculture, even if it were advantageously distributed over the
lowlands, while in fact the greater portion is poured out on the
heights in sudden and violent thundershowers called "cloud-bursts,"
the waters of which are fruitlessly swallowed up in sandy gulches and
deltas a few minutes after their first boisterous appearance. The
principal mountain chains, trending nearly north and south, parallel
with the Sierra and the Wahsatch, receive a good deal of snow during
winter, but no great masses are stored up as fountains for large
perennial streams capable of irrigating considerable areas. Most of
it is melted before the end of May and absorbed by moraines and
gravelly taluses, which send forth small rills that slip quietly down
the upper canyons through narrow strips of flowery verdure, most of
them sinking and vanishing before they reach the base of their
fountain ranges. Perhaps not one in ten of the whole number flow out
into the open plains, not a single drop reaches the sea, and only a
few are large enough to irrigate more than one farm of moderate size.
It is upon these small outflowing rills that most of the Nevada
ranches are located, lying countersunk beneath the general level, just
where the mountains meet the plains, at an average elevation of five
thousand feet above sea level. All the cereals and garden vegetables
thrive here, and yield bountiful crops. Fruit, however, has been, as
yet, grown successfully in only a few specially favored spots.
Another distinct class of ranches are found sparsely distributed along
the lowest portions of the plains, where the ground is kept moist by
springs, or by narrow threads of moving water called rivers, fed by
some one or more of the most vigorous of the mountain rills that have
succeeded in making their escape from the mountains. These are mostly
devoted to the growth of wild hay, though in some the natural meadow
grasses and sedges have been supplemented by timothy and alfalfa; and
where the soil is not too strongly impregnated with salts, some grain
is raised. Reese River Valley, Big Smoky Valley, and White River
Valley offer fair illustrations of this class. As compared with the
foothill ranches, they are larger and less inconspicuous, as they lie
in the wide, unshadowed levels of the plains -- wavy-edged flecks of
green in a wilderness of gray.
Still another class equally well defined, both as to distribution and
as to products, is restricted to that portion of western Nevada and
the eastern border of California which lies within the redeeming
influences of California waters. Three of the Sierra rivers descend
from their icy fountains into the desert like angels of mercy to bless
Nevada. These are the Walker, Carson, and Truckee; and in the valleys
through which they flow are found by far the most extensive hay and
grain fields within the bounds of the State. Irrigating streams are
led off right and left through innumerable channels, and the sleeping
ground, starting at once into action, pours forth its wealth without
stint.
But notwithstanding the many porous fields thus fertilized,
considerable portions of the waters of all these rivers continue to
reach their old deathbeds in the desert, indicating that in these salt
valleys there still is room for coming farmers. In middle and eastern
Nevada, however, every rill that I have seen in a ride of three
thousand miles, at all available for irrigation, has been claimed and
put to use.
It appears, therefore, that under present conditions the limit of
agricultural development in the dry basin between the Sierra and the
Wahsatch has been already approached, a result caused not alone by
natural restrictions as to the area capable of development, but by the
extraordinary stimulus furnished by the mines to agricultural effort.
The gathering of gold and silver, hay and barley, have gone on
together. Most of the mid-valley bogs and meadows, and foothill rills
capable of irrigating from ten to fifty acres, were claimed more than
twenty years ago.
A majority of these pioneer settlers are plodding Dutchmen, living
content in the back lanes and valleys of Nature; but the high price of
all kinds of farm products tempted many of even the keen Yankee
prospectors, made wise in California, to bind themselves down to this
sure kind of mining. The wildest of wild hay, made chiefly of carices
and rushes, was sold at from two to three hundred dollars per ton on
ranches. The same kind of hay is still worth from fifteen to forty
dollars per ton, according to the distance from mines and comparative
security from competition. Barley and oats are from forty to one
hundred dollars a ton, while all sorts of garden products find ready
sale at high prices.
With rich mine markets and salubrious climate, the Nevada farmer can
make more money by loose, ragged methods than the same class of
farmers in any other State I have yet seen, while the almost savage
isolation in which they live seems grateful to them. Even in those
cases where the advent of neighbors brings no disputes concerning
water rights and ranges, they seem to prefer solitude, most of them
having been elected from adventurers from California -- the pioneers of
pioneers. The passing stranger, however, is always welcomed and
supplied with the best the home affords, and around the fireside,
while he smokes his pipe, very little encouragement is required to
bring forth the story of the farmer's life -- hunting, mining, fighting,
in the early Indian times, et. Only the few who are married hope to
return to California to educate their children, and the ease with
which money is made renders the fulfillment of these hopes
comparatively sure.
After dwelling thus long on the farms of this dry wonderland, my
readers may be led to fancy them of more importance as compared with
the unbroken fields of Nature than they really are. Making your way
along any of the wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south,
seldom will your eye be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation.
The smooth lake-like ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and
more dim in the glowing sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to
ten thousand feet high bounds the view on either hand. No singing
water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in -- mountain and valley
alike naked and shadowless in the sun-glare; and though, perhaps,
traveling a well-worn road to a gold or silver mine, and supplied with
repeated instructions, you can scarce hope to find any human
habitation from day to day, so vast and impressive is the hot, dusty,
alkaline wildness.
But after riding some thirty or forty miles, and while the sun may be
sinking behind the mountains, you come suddenly upon signs of
cultivation. Clumps of willows indicate water, and water indicates a
farm. Approaching more nearly, you discover what may be a patch of
barley spread out unevenly along the bottom of a flood bed, broken
perhaps, and rendered less distinct by boulder piles and the fringing
willows of a stream. Speedily you can confidently say that the grain
patch is surely such; its ragged bounds become clear; a sand-roofed
cabin comes to view littered with sun-cracked implements and with an
outer girdle of potato, cabbage, and alfalfa patches.
The immense expanse of mountain-girt valleys, on the edges of which
these hidden ranches lie, make even the largest fields seem comic in
size. The smallest, however, are by no means insignificant in a
pecuniary view. On the east side of the Toyabe Range I discovered a
jolly Irishman who informed me that his income from fifty acres,
reinforced by a sheep range on the adjacent hills, was from seven to
nine thousand dollars per annum. His irrigating brook is about four
feet wide and eight inches deep, flowing about two miles per hour.
On Duckwater Creek, Nye County, Mr. Irwin has reclaimed a tule swamp
several hundred acres in extent, which is now chiefly devoted to
alfalfa. On twenty-five acres he claims to have raised this year
thirty-seven tons of barley. Indeed, I have not yet noticed a meager
crop of any kind in the State. Fruit alone is conspicuously absent.
On the California side of the Sierra grain will not ripen at much
greater elevation than four thousand feet above sea level. The
valleys of Nevada lie at a height of from four to six thousand feet,
and both wheat and barley ripen, wherever water may be had, up to
seven thousand feet. The harvest, of course, is later as the
elevation increases. In the valleys of the Carson and Walker Rivers,
four thousand feet above the sea, the grain harvest is about a month
later than in California. In Reese River Valley, six thousand feet,
it begins near the end of August. Winter grain ripens somewhat
earlier, while occasionally one meets a patch of barley in some cool,
high-lying canyon that will not mature before the middle of September.
Unlike California, Nevada will probably be always richer in gold and
silver than in grain. Utah farmers hope to change the climate of the
east side of the basin by prayer, and point to the recent rise in the
waters of the Great Salt Lake as a beginning of moister times. But
Nevada's only hope, in the way of any considerable increase in
agriculture, is from artesian wells. The experiment has been tried on
a small scale with encouraging success. But what is now wanted seems
to be the boring of a few specimen wells of a large size out in the
main valleys. The encouragement that successful experiments of this
kind would give to emigration seeking farms forms an object well
worthy the attention of the Government. But all that California
farmers in the grand central valley require is the preservation of the
forests and the wise distribution of the glorious abundance of water
from the snow stored on the west flank of the Sierra.
Whether any considerable area of these sage plains well ever thus be
made to blossom in grass and wheat, experience will show. But in the
mean time Nevada is beautiful in her wildness, and if tillers of the
soil can thus be brought to see that possibly Nature may have other
uses even for RICH soils besides the feeding of human beings, then
will these foodless "deserts" have taught a fine lesson.
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