USA > California > Merced County > History of Merced County, California with biographical sketches of prominent citizens > Part 35
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In no part of the United States can a settler secure for him- self as pleasant a home in so short a time. Fruit trees grown from the cutting will produce fruit in less than one half the time required in the Eastern States. The growth of ornamental trees and shrubbery is equally rapid, and where there are facil- ities for irrigation, it is possible for the settler to surround his home with a growth of choice trees and shrubbery in a very few years.
The prices of land are lower in this valley than in any other portion of the State within the same distance of a market and possessed of similar facilities for transportation.
That portion of the great interior basin of California, which has received the designation of the San Joaquin valley- | hundred and sixty-five feet.
including Tulare and Kern valleys-lies between the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range mountains, which, coming together as the Tejon and 'T'ehatchape mountains, about the thirty- fifth degree of north latitude, form its southernmost limit. The general direction of this valley is nearly parallel with the trend of the coast, north-west and south-east-from which its central axis is from seventy-five to one hundred miles distant. Its greatest length is two hundred and sixty miles, and in width it varies from thirty to seventy miles. Its total area is eleven thousand two hundred and ninety square miles.
THE PLAINS AND BASINS.
Tbe valley consists of two plains of unequal width, extend- ing from the foot-hills of the mountains, and meeting in a trough, not midway, but considerably west of the center line of the great depression. This trough, running from one end of the valley to the other, has a general iuclination in a north-westerly direction towards the outlet for all drainage waters of the great basin, Suisun Bay. Its slope is not uniform, but flattens out at intervals where lakes and marshes exist, as the streams flowing in on either side have banked up the silt and detritus, washed from the mountains, at special points for ages past. In this manner, Kern river, sweeping down enormous volumes of decomposed granite, has spread out a broad barrier across the valley, inclosing a basin above it for the reception of the waters forming Kern and Buena Vista lakes, at the southern extremity of the trough; and Kings river, carrying its load of sand and silt to the lowest part of the valley, has raised a dam across the depression, and completed tbe shallow basin, where now exists Tulare lake, one of the greatest sheets of fresh water in California.
THE TROUGH OF THE VALLEY.
It is probable that this trough once held the bed of a contin- uous stream from Kern river, extending throughout the length of the valley, and receiving the tributaries flowing in on either hand. As it is, the depression serves as the drainage-way for all the valley, bowever impeded may be its course. From Kern and Buena Vista lakes, which occupy the same level in the lowest depression of the southern end, and are at an elevation of about two hundred and ninety-three feet above low tide, it slopes at the rate of about two feet per mile for forty-two miles, to Tulare lake, whose elevation is one hundred and ninety-eight to two hundred and ten feet, according to the stage of its waters. Thence to the mouth of Fresno slough, at the great bend of the San Joaquin, fifty-five miles from the lake, the slope is eighty- six hundredths feet per mile.
The total fall from this point to the month of the San Joa- quin river, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, is oue
167
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY.
ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF SAN JOAQUIN.
From the report of Gen. M. G. Vallejo to the State Sen- ate, in 1852, on the "Origin of the Names of Counties in this State," we find the following :-
"SAN JOAQUIN .- The meaning of this name has a very ancient origin in reference to the parentage of Mary, the mother of Christ. According to divine revelations, Joachim signifies " preparation of the Lord," and hence the belief that Joaquin, who in the course of time was achinitted into the pale of sanc- tity, was the father of Mary. In 1813, commanding an explor- ing expedition to the valley of the rushes (valle de los tulares), Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga gave the appellation of San Joa- quin to a rivulet which springs from the Sierra Nevada, and empties into Lake Buena Vista. The river San Joaquin derives its name from the rivulet, and baptizes the county with the same. Stockton (named in honor of Commodore Stock- ton) is a highly flourishing town, and the seat of justice in the county. It contains about two thousand five hundred inhab- itants. Pleasantly situated on a slough of the San Joaquin river, on a plain, thinly overspread with oak and shrubbery, and within a day or two from some of the rich " placers," it is destined to become the city of San Joaquin, notwithstanding the absolute lack of poetry in its name."
PRINCIPAL STREAMS OF EAST SIDE.
The following are the principal streams entering the San Joaquin valley as above described, on the east side, named in their order from north to south, with the area of watershed drained by each.
Designation.
589 square miles.
Cosumnes river.
208 square miles.
Dry creek
573 square miles.
Mokelumne river
Calaveras river 300 square miles.
971 square miles.
Stanislaus river
.1,514 square miles.
Tuolumne river
1,072 square miles,
Merced river
Bear creek 153 square miles.
96 square miles.
Mariposa creek
303 square miles.
Chowchilla creek
Fresno creek 258 square miles.
1,630 square miles.
San Joaquin river
1,853 square miles.
Kings river
608 square miles.
Kaweah river
446 square miles.
Tule river
130 square miles.
Deer creek .
96 square miles.
White river
278 square miles.
Posa creek
Kern river. 2,382 square miles.
461 square miles.
Caliente creek
2,138 square miles.
Sundry small streams.
Total arra of mountain and hill drainage 16,149 square miles.
The names of streams designated in italics are perennial in their flow. The lofty mountains in which they rise store away the precipitation of the annual rainy season in the form of snow, which melts slowly throughout the summer and never wholly disappears, giving down a steady and unfailing supply, its greatest volumes gnaged to that season when most required for watering the thirsty plains below, namely in the late spring and early summer months. The others are intermittent in flow, and do not furnish a continuous supply for purposes of irrigation.
TRIBUTARY STREAMS OF THE WEST SIDE.
The streams on the western side of the basin, discharging from the Coast Range, are all of the most intermittent charac- ter. The mountain sides are steep and almost devoid of forests, which might hold back the waters of precipitation. The land is consequently rapidly drained, and the streams are in flood for but a short period after each rain. They descend npon the plains in channels, which iu most instances are lost before reaching the central trough, the waters of many of them spread- ing at will over the high, sloping valley lands adjacent to the inountains, and seldom reach the river. As sources of supply for irrigation they are therefore unreliable, and at best availa- ble for but a limited area in the vicinity of their several points of entrance upon the valley.
Following this, the principal creeks on the west side of the valley are named in their order going south ward :-
Drainage area.
Designation.
82 square miles.
Marsh's creek
69 square miles.
Corral Hollow creek
Hospital creek . 46 square miles.
15 square miles
Arroyo de los Piedras
78 square miles.
Arroyo del Puerta.
124 square miles.
Orestimba creek
39 square miles.
Las Garzas creck
+1 square miles.
Quinto creek.
31 square miles.
Romero creek .
74 square miles.
San Luis creek
115 square miles.
Los Baños creek .
78 square miles.
Saucelito creek
147 square miles.
Little Panoche creek
285 square miles.
Big Panoche creek . .
130 square miles.
Cantua Cañon creek
Los Gatos creek. 480 square miles.
Sundry small streams.
1,628 square miles.
Total area of mountain and hill
3,462 square miles.
drainage from the west.
SOURCE OF THE SAN JOAQUIN.
The San Joaquin river comes from the Sierra Nevada mount- ains in a cañon, and flows into the valley within a bed much depressed below the rolling lands by which it is flanked. In this respects it differs from the Kings and other rivers south of
Drainage Area.
168
IRRIGATION AND NAVIGATION.
it; and although those to the north emulate it in its retire- ment below the general level of the plains, yet it surpasses them all, and is probably the most difficult of the irriga- tion streams to draw from for the watering of the high plains which must depend upon its floods. For sixtcen to eighteen miles below its canon proper, the waters of this river are sev- enty-five to two hundred fcet below the level of the rolling lands which border it; and bluffs standing almost perpendic- ular at points along its course, guard the approaches. Thus, until quite lately, there has been no effort made to construct canals out from it in this upper portion of its course-for the undertaking is an expensive one-and the high plains have remained dry and uncultivated.
The San Joaquin, drains a larger extent of country, wherein the traffic is of a character which demands cheap water trans- portation, yet the river itself is of small volume (as compared to the Sacramento), and its channel presents many serious obstructions and inconveniences to the movement of boats. While this deficiency in navigation facilities is an cver present inconvenience, and a serious drawback to the welfare of the valley, inundations occur but seldom.
The following table shows the mean monthly discharge in cubic feet per second of the San Joaquin river and the streams which are directly tributary to it in its upper course, for each month of the year ending with October, 1879 :-
AVERAGE MONTHLY DISCHARGE IN CUBIC FEET OF SAN JOA- QUIN AND MERCED RIVERS.
MONTUS' AND YEARS.
San Joaquin River.
Merced River.
San Joaquin below the Merced -- Estimated.
November, 1878
275
249
524
December, 1878.
· 272
240
512
January, 1879.
543
245
788
February, 1879
1,62G
604
2,230
March, 1879
2,300
2,858
5,158
April, 1879.
4,031
6,252
10,283
May, 1879.
5,753
5,115
10,868
June, 1879.
5,729
5,082
10,811
July, 1879.
1,226
1,160
2,386
August, 1879.
542
450
992
September, 1879
375
225
600
October, 1879.
295
150
445
Total for a year
22,967
22,621
45,597
IRRIGATION AND NAVIGATION.
A large accession of waters must be received from the sands of the river bed and banks, to preserve a navigable depth to this river, if the plains dependent upon it are ever to be irri- gated, cven upon the basis of the largest duty of water to be expected; for at its best in 1879 the stream was only navigable a short distance above the Merced, and then for only a short time.
No doubt if the wbole channel were improved, a very good
navigable depth could be maintained with five thousand cubic feet of water per second, but in its present condition it will take twice that volume.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE SAN JOAQUIN.
When the stranger travels over the hot and dusty plains of the great San Joaquin valley, he is very apt to put the ques- tion to himself: What is this country good for ? The valley is seen to better advantage when a wheat harvest has matured. Yet there are probably a million acres on which no crops are matured. There are great spaces wind-swept and barren, yet capable of producing crops if sufficient water can be had, Now and then one comes upon a homestead, a little oasis in the des- ert. Everything is fresh and bright. The owner has eitber constructed an artesian well, or bas secured water from some irrigating ditch. All the days are sunny. The solar heat is great, but in the shade it is cool enough. The long sunny days evaporate an. immense amount of moisture, and the norther greatly hastens the evaporation. But with sufficient water, nearly every acre of the San Joaquin valley can be made fruitful.
THE LACK OF IRRIGATION.
The problem of irrigation in this great valley is not yet clearly solved. . There are irrigated farms which are wonder- fully productive. There arc twenty-acre homesteads covered with vineyards and orchards. But these are exceptional places. The great plains are not irrigated. The systems of irrigation which prevail are local. They belong to neighborhoods. No broad and comprehensive system has been established -- an immense cropof lawsuits is sure to spring up. In one instauce a land-owner has brought sixty suits against persons who have infringed upon his rights, and this is probably not a solitary instance. Water rights have been sold to go with land which convey more than four times the entire quantity running in the streams. The Merced, Fresno and Kings rivers are sending down immense volumes of water into the thirsty plains. A great deal of this water is wasted, and a great deal sinks before it reaches the San Joaquin river. Enough water comes down from the western slope of the Sierra to irrigate the entire valley. Yet, under the haphazard methods of using water, it is doubtful if one-fourth of this area will ever be artificially watered. The snow belt which is tributary to the San Joa- quin river and its affluents, is more than three hundred miles long by about seventy-five miles wide. ' In some places in win- ter the snow in cañons is fifty feet deep, in others from five to ten feet. There are patches of open ground where the sun has full play. If there were no trees on the western slope of the Sierra, this great body of snow would go down to the plains early in the season, creating destructive floods, followed by the most desolating aridity.
RESIDENCE OF A.W. CHAMBERLAIN 12 MILES SOUTHWEST OF MERCED, MERCED CO. CAL.
169
WASTE OF WATER AND TIMBER.
WASTE IN USE OF WATER.
If the Sierra were not clothed with immense forests, nearly the whole valley of the San Joaquin would be wortbless. The forests hold back the melting snow. It dissolves gradually. The San Joaquin in many places overflows its banks ; some of the tributaries are in the same condition, especially the Merced and the Kings River. By means of the great firs and pines, the suow lasts all summer. The western slope of the Sierra is the great reservoir of California. Not only does it supply all the mines' on this slope, but it makes the cultivation of all the dry places possible, if ever a system of irrigation can be devised which is not too costly. It is evident that the present method of using water is attended with great waste. Thus, the Fresno River, which heads far back in the Sierra, is carry- ing an immense body of water down towards the plains. Twenty miles this side of Fresno City, that stream is nearly dry. There is first a V flume with its initial about fifty-two miles back in the mountains. It brings down from fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand feet of lumber daily to Madera, a station on the railroad. But the water which floats this lum- ber does not appear to be utilized to any extent after it is dis- charged at the end of the flume.
WATER SUPPLIED TO COLONIES.
The remainder of the water in the Fresno River is taken out in an irrigating diteb, and conducted to one or two colony set- tlements, and to a few farms in the vicinity of the county seat. With these two appropriations, there is no water left in the Fresno River, or not enough to make any figure for agricultural purposes. Yet nothing like half the arable land of Fresno County is irrigated. Moreover, the Kings River probably supplies to Fresno County as much water for irrigation as the Fresno River. Yet with both these supplies, nothing like one-half of tbe tillable land is watered, and there is not a miner's inch in eitber stream which has not been covered by appropriations recited in deeds and contracts.
GREAT WASTE OF WATER.
Now, if waste and appropriation are to proceed in this way, it is evident that not one-fourth of the great valley can ever be irrigated, and it is further evident that a very large crop of law- suits will spring out of these riparian disputes. Aside from the question of the cost of irrigating farms under the most favora- ble circumstances, the greater question still remains unsettled. Here are the great reservoirs of the Sierra holding water enough to irrigate all the plains. Yet the system of appropri-
ating water is so wasteful that they never can be irrigated, save in patches here and there.
WASTE OF TIMBER.
It will be many years before the western slope of the Sierra is stripped of its trees, bceause these resources are so vast, and the cost of getting the timber to market is too great at present. The few saw-mills do not make much impression as yet upon the forests. Probably the sheep-herders destroy more timber every year than the saw-mills. After the pastures dry up in the lower foot-hills, the sheep are driven into the mountains, where there is fresh herbage all summer. Besides the natural grass in many small meadows, the sheep browse upon the young leaves of many shrubs and so are kept in excellent condition.
The forest is of no consequenee to the sheep-herder, except as it affords sustenance for his floeks. At night he has no cor- ral. Wolves, panthers and bears abound, every one of them ready to pounce upon a stray sheep or lamb. In the place of the corral, a number of fires are set, in fallen timber or living trees, at points which will hem in his floeks for the night to such an extent that wild beasts are kept off. These fires are left burn- ing after the sheep-herder departs. They burn for days, some- times covering large areas. One can hear the great pines fall in the night, which may have been burning at the base for days. The timber waste is immense. . All along the western slope of the Sierra for seventy-five miles into the mountains, the marks of former fires ean be noted at the base of the great sugar and yellow pines. And there is not a large sequoia in the Mariposa group which does not show the marks of fire, which at sometime bas been raging there, although the guar- dianship is now so careful, that there is no present danger that this famous group will again be overtaken by fire. The waste of water and the waste of timber go on, and, as yet, no legisla- tion has furnished any adequate remedy.
EXTENT OF TIMBER BELT.
This timber belt is from twenty to forty miles in width, and many of the pine trees would be considered of enormous size were it not that the " Big Trees," so ealled, were so much larger. Pine trees from six to ten feet in diameter, and from two to three hundred feet in beigbt, are not uneommon. The climate of these mountain regions is in the summer season most deligbt- ful, and particularly favorable to persons subject to pulmonary complaints. The atmosphere is always elear and braeing, and never uncomfortably warm. With improved means of commu- nication, this region of country would become a popular sum- mer resort, not only for the inhabitants of the valleys and seaport towns, but for invalids from all parts of the United States.
This leads us naturally to consider the various plans in oper- ation, for irrigation of the lands in Merced County.
170
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY.
IRRIGATION IN MERCED COUNTY.
First Irrigating Canal; King's River Canal: Farmers' Canal Company: Cost of Construction, Mode of Irrigation; Re- sults, etc.
IRRIGATION FROM THE MERCED RIVER.
ONE of the great fountain heads of irrigation to bring fertility to the San Joaquin plains, is the Merced River. This stream like the San Joaquin, Kings and Kern Rivers, and others to the north, also peaks amoug the high, snow- capped peaks of the mountains, behind the outstanding spurs and ridges, such as are drained by the creeks last inentioued. Its waters from the higbest sources, find a pas- sage through the Yo Semite Valley, and thence to the plains along deep and rocky cañons. In its course down the plain towards the trough of the valley, a distance of thirty-six miles in a straight line, the Merced River is a very tortuous and at points contracted stream, evidently deficient in capaeity. It is flanked throughout by a low bottom-land formation, depressed forty to cighty feet below tbe general level of the adjacent plains, and at times of flood it naturally spreads from its main channels, making short passages through side channels of more direct alignment and greater grade.
THE MERCED BOTTOM-LANDS.
These bottom-lands are naturally well watered ; but to pre- vent uncontrolled flooding, they have been protected by small embankments at particularly low points along the river's course, and thus it has been found necessary to irrigate them. Eight miles below the canons the Merced bottoms reach their greatest width-about three miles-thence tbey narrow down, within tbe next eight miles, to about one mile from bluff to bluff, and con- tinue to become still more contracted and less sharply defined as they approach the level of the plains, on nearing the trough of the great valley of the San Joaquin River.
The irrigation along these bottoms is all conducted by small farm ditches. The acreage thus watered, according to infor- mation, is about 1,500 to 2,000 acres, cultivated chiefly in alfalfa, corn, field vegetables, garden produce, and fruits.
From the Merced River one large eanal and a number of small farm ditches have been constructed, irrigating, thus far, 1,500 to 2,000 acres.
IRRIGATION FROM CHOWCHILLA RIVER,
This stream enters upon the east side plain of the San Joaquin Valley, between the Merced and the Fresno Rivers. It drains only the lower mountains and foot-hills, and consequently has but an intermittent supply. The San Joaquin River on the south, and the Merced River on the north flank, bead behind the drainage basins of these smaller streams, and secure the snow waters from the higher ranges of mountains; but for a few days, immediately after the licavy storms in winter, the Chow- chilla, Mariposa, and Bear Crecks, present large volumes of water, which course aeross the plains in numerous small chan- nels, becoming absorbed into the dry soil, or lost in the swamps along the Sau Joaquin River, in the trough of the valley below.
As yet there has been but little irrigation from these sources. The uncertainty as to time and volume of presentation of the water is such, that the investment of capital or labor in works for its diversious and use, becomes extra hazardous, and the liability to conflicts of interests between appropriators is in- creased.
FIRST IRRIGATION IN CALIFORNIA,
Artificial irrigation has been practiced in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties ever since the earliest settlement of the country, more than one hundred years ago, by the Jesuit Fathers. These pioneers of Californian civilization selected the sites for their missions with sagacity and good judgment, locat- ing them in places where water was most abundant and where irrigation could be most readily carried on. There are evidences to show that they carried out an extensive and well- planned system of irrigation works. The traces of their ditebes, stone aqueducts, and dams, whose masonry, wbere undisturbed, remains as perfect as when it was laid, are frequently met with, but they are now generally superseded by more recent works.
It is natural that, where irrigation has been so long in use, where the water supply, as compared with the large area of cultivable land, is so limited, and wbere the character of tbe products raised by irrigation are generally so valuable, one should expect to find the art of irrigation brought to a high degree of perfection, and the economical use and conservation of waters carried to its furthest extent, This is, however. only true in a measure.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE WATER.
The distribution of the water supply in many comparatively small bodies, frequently having its source upon lands owned in large tracts under Spanish grants, or attached thereto by old riparian rights, and the monopolizing of the waters by individ- uals through these means, and by prior appropriations of con- siderably greater supplies of water than were absolutely needed
171
CHARACTER OF SOILS IRRIGATED.
by them, and, in short, the complicated system of water rights, involving absolute ownership of water, which have arisen in an absence of adequate laws providing for the equable distri- bution of that precious element, has tended to a careless prodi- gality in its use by those who happen to be possessed of an abundant supply, and the entire deprivation of water privileges by those less fortunately situated. It is chiefly in those local- ities and communities where the supply is least, and where every means must be taken to eke out the little that is avail- able, that the highest duty of water is attained and the utmost economy and skill is to be observed. Nevertheless, there is much that is instructive and interesting in the methods of irri- gation practiced in this section, and, generally speaking, it is doubtless true that irrigation is here further advanced and more thoroughly developed than in other parts of the State.
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