The wasteway constructed some distance down the ditch from the headgate, contains nineteen miles of re-enforcing steel rods, the body being of concrete. Massive iron gates that can be raised or lowered at will, govern the flow of the water into the main canal. Each day the ditch superintendent receives reports by telephone, the needs of the water users along the sixty-mile canal and that is the quantity

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

that goes through the gates. At the headgate the canal bottom is forty feet wide, and it will carry water a depth of eleven feet.

The Burlington railroad was vitally interested in this project, from the standpoint of tonnage and passenger traffic incident to its development. George W. Holdredge was one of the active promoters from that viewpoint. Holdredge and William Frank made a trip over the land before the ditch construction commenced, and Frank was given authority to purchase for the Tristate Land Company, as the Leavitt company was called, a large acreage of the lands. He acquired about thirty thousand acres, much of it at five to ten dollars per acre. While the company itself lost a large sum of money, the losses would have been far greater, had it not been for the advances of the value of the land.

Frank's activities were not alone confined to the buying of land. When emergencies arose regarding right-of-way, he invariably proved the man of the hour; sometimes by buying outright the property that caused the friction, and sometimes taking necessary court action to prevent obstruction of the work. He could if he wished, tell of the hot-summer conferences in Omaha, when others were away on vacations, and even the courts were not to be found except by journeys into the woods or mountains. In these duties Attorney James E.