The big farms of the valley have been gradually cut into smaller acreage for it is found that one does not need a large acreage. As Arnold Martin said : "Twenty acres is enough for any man, forty acres is a calamity and eighty acres a catastrophe." The brain has the better chance to expand on a smaller acreage according to intensive farming methods.

The work of enriching the irrigated lands goes on with the years. Baron Munchausen

once said of the waters of a river similar to the North Platte that in every gallon of water there was a peck of sediment. Other notable characters have said that "Platte river waters were too thick for batter and too thin for dough." During the high water period some tests were made and about twenty-five per cent of the fluid dipped from currents of the river proved to be sediment -- largely silt. This spread out by the network of irrigation ditches over the farms year after year is of immense value, said to be two dollars and upwards per acre each year. Few rivers in the world carry as much solid matter as does this "America's Valley of the Nile."

Oil and Gas

Scotts Bluff county has probably the first discovery of natural gas and oil in Nebraska. A number of years ago Wm. Sturgis made some test drillings in the county along Horse creek. The well at the mouth of the creek nearly a thousand feet deep disclosed evidence of the ancient waterfall heretofore mentioned. Near the Mihan farm in the northeast quarter of section 34-23-58 the discovery of oil sands and gas was made. The quantity is small, the depth thereto is shallow, less than one thousand feet, but through all the years there has been a steady flow of gas from the four inch pipe in the well.