I rented the land on which this canal was located and did some work in extending it to get it upon our homestead. A small ditch constructed by Jim

Walters to water his timber claim, crossed this homestead making a little garden spot that we could irrigate. All told I had about twenty acres under ditch. Will C. (Pink) Reed and Jake McClune had a few acres under the same canal. The results here, made a profound impression upon anyone who looked it over. A patch of wheat grass hay went three tons to the acre, millet went two tons, and everything else that was watered grew wonderfully, while ten feet back from the lateral line, the millet and grass shrivelled and died in the hot winds that swept in from the south.

District Idea Born

About that time "Swede" Anderson was trying to interest the people on the Froid tableland in Deuel county, in extending the Belmont canal. This story is told in the History of Deuel county, in this volume. W. W. White and I had been associated in a number of affairs, and we discussed the Deuel county proposed experiment, and the methods sought to raise money to build ditches. That was the big question on the North river. There seemed some sort of an injustice in bonding a precinct to build a ditch that would water only a part of the precinct; and out of the consideration of the problem, the idea of district irrigation came.