As a modern activity of the Caucasian race, irrigation in the United States on any considerable scale seems to have had its beginning in Utah in the settlement of the Salt Lake Valley. The early settlements of California, New Mexico, and other arid States extended the practice of the early Spaniards and the Indians, and irrigation developed along with the slow settlement of these then remote regions.

During the early history of irrigation farmers and groups of farmers naturally confined their efforts mainly to diverting small streams upon adjacent valleys where the slope of the country and the topography were such as to make the work easy and cheap. With the values of land then existing no expensive enter prise was practicable. Such development proceeding for nearly half a century, widely distributed over the arid region, irrigated in the aggregate a very large area of land. The farmers em ployed the cheapest class of construction and seldom counted their own time in computing costs, which are hence reported very low.

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