The celebration had been during the day, but the water had proceeded more slowly along the canal than anticipated, and it was nightfall before it reached the waiting people. In the classic language of the old surveyor ''the silvery moon was high overhead when the water rounded the bend above the crowd, and on it came, like a silver ribbon unrolling itself upon the prairie."

The Farmers canal contemplated far more extensive development. At first it was completed but a few miles and the undertaking farther seemed so great that progress rested for some time.

First Irrigation in Scotts Bluff County

When the summer heat began to tell upon the crops in 1881, and 'there was a shortage in the rainfall, Will Ripley and Ben Gentry were farming near the Winters creek springs, northeast of the present site of Scottsbluff city about five miles. They noticed that next to the spring bed, the oats were remaining green and growing, while a little distance away, they were suffering from want of moisture. They took a team, and without leveling apparatus, plowed furrows from the running water into the field. The water followed behind the plow, and soon there was a demonstration of what resulted from the artificial application of water to growing crops.

The following year, there was considerable activity in the subject of irrigation, and but little building of ditches. Nebraska had no irrigation law. The corporation statute gave "Irrigation companies" "the right of eminent domain." That was all. In the legislature of the winter of 1889, Henrv St. Raynor, of Sid-