USA > California > Glenn County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 12
USA > California > Colusa County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 12
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"Unlike many of the Wright districts, Central Irrigation Dis- triet started with a relatively complete engineering outline. The estimated cost was $638,900; and to meet this cost a bond issue of $750,000 was authorized by a vote of 189 to 36. In 1891 the esti- mated cost was raised by the consulting engineer to $940,364, and an additional bond issue of $250,000 recommended. The justifica- tion for this increase was said to lie in the omission of allowances for organization, rights of way, and litigation in connection with construction, the three items amounting to $181,000; in an increase in the cost of excavation from 8.5 and 8.75 cents per cubic yard un- der the first contracts to 13.5 and 15.5 cents in 1891; and in unex- pected and excessive costs of rights of way, in one case reaching as high as $212 per acre, with the usual rates $50 to $70 per acre. Bonds to the amount of $150,000 are said to have been sold for cash, and for a time the district had ample funds with which to meet contract installments. The market for bonds, however, soon became sluggish, and there were no buyers. Therefore, outside of
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small blocks given for engineering and legal services, rights of way, and preliminary purposes, the balance of the issue was mainly turned over to the superintendent of construction by nom- inal sale, and by him disposed of to contractors on the best terms he could get. In these various ways a total of about $570,000 of the bonds were put out. While the method of financing construc- tion that was adopted carried the work forward for a few years, the time came when contractors would no longer accept the bonds, and in order to bolster up the market a special report on the pro- ject was made in 1891 by a consulting engineer of wide reputation, who was then largely engaged in reporting favorably on Cali- fornia irrigation districts. The district still remained, however, in financial distress, the opposition continuing their fight against it. In October, 1893, in order to clear up legal uncertainties and thus to stimulate bond sales, the district board brought confirma- tion proceedings under the then recently enacted statute permit- ting such proceedings. The superior court granted the confirma- tion sought by the directors; but the old opposition, now ninety- one strong, appealed to the supreme court and finally succeeded in obtaining a decision that the organization proceedings of the district were illegal and null and void. In a previous case, Central Irrigation District had been upheld, but on other grounds, the correctness of which was not questioned in the later case. The main points of the later decision were that the organization peti- tion of 1887 was not properly signed, and that the signers of an organization petition must be bona fide owners of agricultural lands desiring to improve their lands by irrigation, and not merely the owners of town property and lots, as was the case with many of the signers of the Central Irrigation District petition. While holding that bond sales made subsequent to this decision would be null and void, the validity of bonds already issued was not consid- ered. In conformity with the decision, the matter went back to the lower court; and the new decree of the lower court, rendered March 1, 1902, was never appealed.
"The adverse decision of the supreme court above cited put an end for all time to any thought of continuing the old undertak- ing; and outside of a brief formal activity in 1902 and 1903, for the purpose of leasing Central Canal, no effort has been made to revive the old organization. Work on the system had practically ceased by 1891. At that time, while about forty miles out of a total of sixty-one and thirty-five hundredths miles of main canal planned had been built, the system was not continuous, and so could not be utilized; nor had any headworks been constructed, thus preventing the running of water in the portion of the canal that was ready to receive it. The leasing of Central Canal, Jan-
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mary 6, 1903, had for its purpose the placing of the old district system in the hands of interests that proposed to utilize a portion of it for conveying water to lands along Sacramento River wholly or largely lying outside of the old district. This lease was made to W. M. Sheldon, and was for a term of fifty years. Some years previously, but after the failure of the district, B. D. Beckwith had made filings on Sacramento River, and had planned to utilize a portion of Central Canal in connection with his appropriation. Lacking capital, he interested Sheldon; and these two, after the execution of the lease of the canal, formed the Sacramento Canal Company, which later was taken over by the Central Canal and Irrigation Company, and finally by the Sacramento Valley Irri- gation Company. From this point forward the history of Central Irrigation District becomes merged with the history of the Sacra- mento Valley Irrigation Company and of its subsidiary, the Sac- ramento Valley West Side Canal Company. When these com- panies were organized, it was supposed that Central Irrigation District was finally entirely eliminated, in so far as its legal exist- ence was concerned. The Sacramento Valley Irrigation Company gathered up most of the widely scattered bonds at a cost to it of thirty-five cents on the dollar, including accrued interest; and as one of the conditions of options secured on a large acreage of land in the old district, it agreed to guarantee lands not purchased un- der such options against any lien for these bonds. Later, a com- promise was sought to be entered into with the landowners by which certain concessions should be made to the company in rights of way and certain other matters, in return for the destruction by the company of all of the old bonds held by it. Litigation brought on by those opposing this compromise, however, has en- tirely upset previous theories as to the existence of the old district and as to obligations incurred by the new company in taking over the old Sheldon lease from the district and a Congressional grant of a right to divert nine hundred cubic feet of water per second from the Sacramento River, obtained by the Central Canal and Irrigation Company, April 16, 1906. The final decision in this litigation, rendered by the supreme court, April 29, 1915, held among other things that lands within the old Central Irrigation District constitute the primary territory to which the original pub- lic use contemplated by the district and by the grant of Congress extends and continnes, and that when demanded such lands must be served with water from the new system before it can lawfully be taken for use on outside lands. Through the agency of these two companies, Central Canal has been reconstructed and ex- tended, water has been made available to approximately one hun- dred thousand acres of land, and a considerable irrigation devel-
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opment, including irrigation by pumping from wells, has taken place. Thus, at this Jate date the old district comes in to compli- cate operations of the new companies that were organized on the theory that the old district was no longer of moment, and could not in any way limit the delivery of water to the lands outside of it, purchased, and later largely sold, by the various companies suc- ceeding Sheldon and Beckwith. An even later decision of the California Railroad Commission, rendered June 14, 1915, that holds the Sacramento Valley West Side Canal Company to be en- gaged in public service, while not in any way affecting the old dis- trict, so changes the basis of water distribution by the new com- panies that ultimate entire reorganization, probably under one or more new districts, now seems altogether probable."
From the above history of Central District, it will be seen that this perfectly justifiable and praiseworthy attempt to better the condition of the farmers of the plains resulted chiefly in litigation, bitterness and strife that lasted for twenty-five years. It may be said that no one was to blame. Some of the men who had to do with the project may have been mistaken, but the chief difficulty was in getting all who were interested to cooperate. Another dis- advantage was the newness of the law under which the district was formed. The Wright Act was approved on March 7, 1887; and on March 26, 1887, a meeting was held at Maxwell to discuss the formation of a district under it. George M. Sutton was chair- man of that meeting and H. P. Eakle, J. P. Rathbun and R. De- Lappe were appointed a committee to get the sentiment of the people affected. The sentiment seemed to be favorable; and on April 22 a second meeting was held at Maxwell to take further steps in the formation of a district. G. M. Sutton, H. P. Eakle, P. R. Garnett, G. F. Packer, G. B. Harden, and W. P. Harrington were appointed a committee to make arrangements for a survey and the necessary petition to the supervisors. The vote, both on the district and on the bonds, was decisive enough on the face of it to warrant the further prosecution of the matter; but it was a mistake to accept on the petition the names of those who did not own agricultural lands, and probably also a mistake to allow them to vote at the election. Moreover, a mistake in the mechanical part of the work was made when the ditch itself was commenced on some of its lower reaches instead of at the intake. Of course, it is easy to point out mistakes in some other man's work; and one of the troubles with Central District was that it had too many people doing that.
One beneficent result of the Central District affair was the bringing of water to Princeton. When the Central Canal and
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Irrigation Company took over the system in 1903, it extended the river branch to a point three miles south of Princeton, with the result that one of the very finest communities of small farmers in the county gathered there. Incidentally, a great injustice was done these people, for they bought their lands with a water right included, and then, by the decision of the supreme court in 1915, were deprived of the water right. They are now forming a dis- triet of their own, and will pump water from the river.
The Central Canal itself is sixty feet wide on the bottom, and is made to carry six feet of water. The original contractor was the San Francisco Bridge Company, which had a special excavat- ing machine built to dig the canal. The machine weighed two hun- dred seventy-five tons and cost fifty thousand dollars. It worked night and day, employing a crew of thirty men during the day and twelve at night, and doing the work of four hundred men. In twenty-two hours it excavated about four thousand cubic yards of earth.
On September 26, 1906, the Central Canal and Irrigation Company, having completed the canal to its intake, began to in- stall a pump to put water into it. The capacity decided upon was one hundred cubic feet a second, capable of irrigating twenty thou- sand acres. The original district contained one hundred fifty-six thousand five hundred acres.
For several years the Sacramento Valley Irrigation Company has been in financial straits, and has been selling off its lands. Thus the lands are passing back into the hands of individual own- ers, where they should be, and the strife and turmoil caused by the old Central Irrigation District are almost at an end.
In the year 1888, the year after the passage of the Wright Act, two efforts were made to form districts under that act, in the vicinity of Arbuckle and College City. Both attempts failed, and Arbuckle and College City are yet without irrigation.
For over ten years after Central District was launched, the question of irrigation lay dormant in this county; but in 1902 a number of farmers living just northwest of Colusa united and formed the Amos Roberts Ditch Company. They put in a pump and a system of ditches capable of irrigating the fifteen hundred acres in the district. This district was not organized under the Wright Act, but was a cooperative corporation, all profits being absorbed in the shape of lower water rates. The moving spirit in this enterprise, which has been eminently successful from the be- ginning, was L. L. Hicok, who has been the president of the com- pany since its organization. The first directors, besides Mr. Hicok, were W. C. Roberts, A. E. Potter, W. R. Merrill, and J.
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Grover. The present directors are L. L. Hicok, A. E. Potter, J. C. Mogk, George Stafford, and J. S. O'Rourke. Some of the finest fruit and alfalfa in the state are grown under irrigation from this ditch, and the Roberts Ditch Company deserves great credit for the improvement it has made in the appearance of the country about Colnsa.
On September 23, 1907, work was begun on the Colusa Irri- gation Company's ditch, which is located on the east and south of Colusa, just across the town from the Roberts ditch; and when it was finished, Colusa was entirely surrounded by irrigated lands, except on the north, where it fronts on the river. This system covered at first one thousand acres ; but it has since been enlarged to nearly twice that size, furnishing water last year for about five hundred acres of rice southwest of the town. The company first installed a twenty-inch pump, and claimed that it could put a foot of water on an acre of land for thirty-two cents. The first direc- tors were M. J. Boggs, J. W. Goad, J. C. Mogk, C. J. Wescott, and J. R. Tennant. The present directors are C. J. Wescott, Phil B. Arnold, U. W. Brown, George Ahlf, and J. C. Mogk.
Two or three small systems for using the waters of Stony Creek for irrigation were installed about the year 1890; and they make the region about Stonyford look like a paradise in summer, with its beautiful green fields of alfalfa and its thrifty, wide- spreading shade trees.
In 1890, Colonel Moulton put in a pumping plant ; and that year the barge Merritt went up and down the river pumping water for the farmers who wanted it. The charge was one hundred sixty dollars for twenty-four hours, the farmer to furnish the fuel. The outfit pumped twenty-three thousand gallons a minute, which would cover eighty-eight acres a foot deep in twenty-four hours.
A number of private pumps had been installed along the river by John Boggs, George F. Packer, J. B. DeJarnatt, J. W. Brown- ing, and others; but no other irrigation districts were formed till the introduction of rice-growing, about the year 1912. That year the Moulton Irrigated Lands Company put seventy-five acres under water, and the next year they increased it to eight hundred acres. Their ditches, or rather the ditches of their successors, the Colusa Delta Lands Company, now cover twelve thousand acres, with about seventy-five users, or tenants.
In 1914, James F. Mallon and R. E. Blevins formed a part- nership under the name of Mallon & Blevins, leased forty-four hundred acres of the Compton and Wohlfrom ranches near Princeton, and put in a ditch system for the growing of rice. They sublet the land to the actual rice-growers, and the enterprise proved to be eminently successful. They sold out this project, and
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the next year leased fourteen hundred acres of the Clara Packer ranch and installed another ditch system for rice-growing. In 1916 they added twenty-one hundred acres to this system; and they are now contemplating raising it to ten thousand acres.
In 1915, Phil B. Arnold promoted the Cheney Slough Irriga- tion Company, and a ditch system was built to cover ten thousand acres of rice land with water. The company installed one thirty- six-inch and two twenty-six-inch pumps on the river at the north line of the Mitchell ranch, and the first erop under this ditch was raised in 1916. It was not entirely successful, because the ditch was not ready in time for early planting; but this season (1917) an immense crop was raised. The directors of the company are W. H. Ash, president; Phil B. Arnold, secretary; R. M. Hardin, J. P. O'Sullivan, and W. F. Klewe.
Numerous small projects have been established for rice-grow- ing, and the industry is growing at such a rate that it is safe to predict that all the Trongh land and much of the other low land in the county will be under irrigation within the next five years.
On October 15, 1881, a meeting was held at Maxwell to take the preliminary steps in having the county tested for artesian water. Canvassers were appointed to solicit funds, but little suc- cess attended the venture. About 1914, however, a couple of artesian wells were developed on the Melone, formerly the Knut- zen, ranch on the Colusa-Williams road; pumps were placed in sumps dug at the mouths of the wells; and about fifty acres of rice was irrigated from them. The experiment was not wholly successful, and has not been repeated. Well water is too cold for rice.
CHAPTER X
AGRICULTURE
Grain-raising in Colusa County
Agriculture has meant in Colnsa County, during most of its existence, the raising of grain, or, more specifically, the raising of wheat and barley; and the county has no reason to be ashamed to base its claims for fame on its achievements along this line. This is essentially an agricultural county. In fact, it is one of the great "cow counties" of the state. (For the benefit of future generations, let me here explain that "cow counties" was the name applied by the San Francisco delegation in the state legis- lature a few years ago to the agricultural or rural counties, when
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said counties failed to line up with said delegation to put over some particularly raw piece of pilfering. Those who knew the San Francisco delegation in those days will understand that "cow counties" is distinctly an appellation of honor.) This county once held the honor of being the greatest wheat-raising county of the world. It held a similar record for barley.
Wheat
In 1880 this county produced, with the help of what is now Glenn County, two per cent. of all the wheat raised in the United States. This county also had the honor of having the greatest wheat ranch in the world, Dr. H. J. Glenn's fifty-eight-thousand- acre ranch, which the vagaries of fate later gave to Glenn County. Dr. Glenn made one sale of eighteen thousand tons of wheat in 1876 that brought him $594,000, and which, at present prices, would have brought him $1,400,000. This county has one farmer who raised fifty-seven thousand sacks of barley this year. This county has been, and is, the scene of so many stupendous farming operations that they excite no comment here. For this is essen- tially an agricultural county.
The cultivation of wheat and barley began in 1851, the year after the county was started, though in a small way. A year or two later, however, as I have said before, the need of grain for the freight teams that were hauling supplies to the mines gave a great stimulus to agriculture, and the acreage sown to grain increased very rapidly. But a number of dry years in the decade ending in 1864 held farming back and discouraged many of the settlers, so that they left the country. On November 25, 1864, however, after two years of exceedingly dry weather, a two- weeks rain began to fall, and the farmers went to work with great energy. Only seventy-five hundred acres of wheat and twenty thousand acres of barley had been sown the year before, and it had been mostly lost; but that year the acreage was quadrupled, and the farmers were well repaid, for it turned out to be a wonderful year. Many new warehouses had to be built, and times were prosperous. In 1866 one Sacramento firm sold twenty thousand dollars' worth of farming implements in the county. Wheat was especially profitable, and for many years it was the leading crop.
Good and bad years followed along for ten years, till in 1874 another exceptionally big crop was harvested, and the ware- houses had to be increased in size and number. The year 1878 was the best crop season the county had ever had up to that time, and in 1879 the wheat crop was sold for $3,000,000. In 1880 the north wind whipped out $1,000,000 worth of wheat ; yet the yield
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was 2,900,000 sacks. In 1884 there were ninety threshing machines at work in the county, turning out an average of eight hundred sacks per day each; and they continued to work from the begin- ning of harvest in June till the end of August. The yield of wheat and barley that year was 11,000,000 bushels. The next four years were also good for the grain farmer, but it was in 1889 that he reached the high-water mark of prosperity. In that year the first harvester pulled by a tractor came to the county, 403,008 acres were sown, and the yield of wheat was 10,000,- 000 bushels, the largest the county had ever seen. The next year was also a fine one. Good rains, good crops and good prices, owing to a scarcity in Europe, enabled many a farmer to lift the mortgage on his ranch.
Barley
But the climax of wheat-growing had been reached. For forty years the lands had been sown to this crop, and now the yield began to fall off. As a consequence more and more barley was sown, and less and less wheat, till it finally came to a time when there was hardly a thousand acres of wheat in the whole county. The war has stimulated the raising of wheat the past two years, but barley is still the leading crop.
Barley, although not so high-priced a erop as wheat, is more profitable in this county, because it produces more sacks per acre, and is not so liable to damage by the north wind. There is never a perfect erop, and, on the other hand, there is never an absolute failure. There cannot be a perfect season for all parts of the county; for a dry season is bad for the plains lands, and a wet season is bad for the tule lands. Every season starts out either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold, or too something, accord- ing to the prophets, and winds up "much better than expected"; and that will probably continue to be the program. In 1896 the barley crop was good; but on May 12, 1898, ten car loads of corn arrived at Williams from Kansas "to distribute among needy farmers," which shows that crops were not good that year. Most years have been fairly good, however, and this year of 1917 capped the climax for good crops and high prices at the same time. This has undoubtedly been the best year Colusa County farmers have ever had. It started out too dry; but the weather remained cool till the grain was matured, and then, as if ordered by the farmers themselves, turned hot to make the barley harvest well, mature the rice, and sweeten the prunes. War prices were received for all products, and many farmers made a fortune this single year. Barley, which has been sold here as low as eighty cents a hundredweight, went up to two dollars and fifty-five cents
SCENE AT COLUSA. SHIPPING RICE BY BOAT
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this year, or possibly a little higher for small lots. I don't mean to say that all the farmers got two dollars and fifty-five cents or more for their barley. Many of them were holding for three cents, and held till they had to sell at about two cents. But they all made money.
Orchards, vineyards, alfalfa, rice and other erops are making great inroads upon the barley acreage; and it is safe to say that this erop, too, has reached its maximum limit in this county, although it will be many years before it will cease to be an im- portant factor in the prosperity of the people.
Rice
The sudden rise and marvelous growth of the rice industry in this county reads like an Arabian Nights tale. Prior to 1911 there wasn't an acre of rice in the county. Years ago, Colonel Moulton made some experiments with rice; and just prior to 1911 some experiments had been made at the government experiment station at Chico, with the result that those in charge were con- vinced that rice could be profitably raised in this climate. W. K. Brown, of the Moulton Irrigated Lands Company, which had bought the Moulton ranch from the Central California Investment Company in 1907, was watching the experiments carefully, for the Moulton ranch contained a great deal of land that was appar- ently well adapted to rice, but hadn't been of much use for any- thing else up to that time. In 1911 Mr. Brown planted seventy- five acres to rice, and to him and that seventy-five-acre patch belongs the credit for bringing rice to Colusa County. It would have come later, of course, if there had been no Brown; but it wouldn't have come when it did, and might not have. come for many years. In 1912 Mr. Brown increased the acreage on the Moulton lands to eight hundred acres, and this crop was so suc- cessful as to leave no doubt as to the future of the industry. The year 1913 saw an increased acreage on the Moulton ranch, and an average erop of seventy-three and one-half sacks per acre, a yield unheard of in the older rice-growing communities. In 1914 there were twenty-nine hundred forty acres in rice on the Moulton ranch, and some of it yielded eighty sacks per acre. The average yield was sixty-five sacks, and the price that year was from one dollar and eighty cents to two dollars per hundredweight. The total yield on the ranch that year was 150,000 sacks.
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