Looking Back: Advocating for Deschutes Irrigation Project in 1924

100 YEARS AGO

July 17, 1924

In creating the plains of Jefferson County, nature must have foreseen the future needs of man for the North Unit of the Deschutes Irrigation project has been provided with natural drainage, with a rich sandy loam soil, with a favorable climate and a feasible water supply.

Pioneers have settled this country, have cleared the land, tilled the soil, built fences, homes, schoolhouses and trading points. 80,000 acres out of 106,250 irrigable acres in the project is or has been in crop and is ready for the water.

Anticipating the development of this coming empire, railroads have been built into this country, highways run through it and from it to all parts of the state, including Portland, the big market center and shipping terminal.

An occasional “wet” year produces bountiful crops and wonderful gardens, but experience has proven that farming is not practical year in and year out without a more dependable water supply than falls from the sunshiny skies.

Fortunately, along the west boundary of this project flows the great Deschutes River and a few miles up from this stream at Benham Falls where the water cataracts over the bared rock of mother earths solid rock foundation is an ideal dam site for the storage of the surplus waters to be diverted to the parched and thirsty acres on the plains.

A great engineer said, “This project is like a picture in a frame.” He saw into the future. Today it is a truly wonderful frame formed by the snow-capped peaks among the Cascade mountains in the west, by the yellow pine covering the Blue Mountain slopes to the east, and by the higher uplands of Central Oregon and the Columbia benches to the south and north.

Nestled there with a gorgeous outlet in the Deschutes Canyon, these open plains of Jefferson County surely make an ideal canvas stretched in a frame of radiant splendor as the faithful sun illuminates the horizon in its daily path from mountain range to mountain range. In this frame are the streams, the lakes, the forests, the fish, the wildlife, the reserve moisture and the inspiration to higher ideals. Superb surroundings, a frame of enchantment, but on the canvas, what is the picture today?

Take a trip with me from Madras over the project. See the thousands of acres of fall grain burned to the ground, great fields of spring grain so scant you can see through them, more and larger farms abandoned to the weeds, and a few patiently cultivated, well cared for fields, the best of all scarcely yielding enough to pay the reaping.

Scattered over these plains and in the valleys are here and there an empty schoolhouse where once a score or more of happy, hopeful children were being taught their lessons. Abandoned farmhouses are monuments of disappointment indescribable, where now only a family of owls hold forth in the withered grass and a flock of raven’s rule in the barn lot. What were for a time growing, healthy orchards have become dwarfed, gnarled, twisted and almost barren. Gardens have withered and disappeared. The little and almost deserted villages are despondent, with no incentive for community pride or progress.

All this solely for the want of sufficient moisture, and yet, come here, stand on the brink of the cleft at Vanora and look down into the basin where you see the great Deschutes raging in useless turmoil.

When the settlers came, they set about industriously to build a great new American Empire, but without water their efforts were of little use except to prepare the land for some future time when irrigation would come.

Many seeing the futility of their labors bade farewell to their hopes and left to build homes in other states and other nations. Others with taunt belts, shriveled skins and tear-stained eyes, starved to the point of all endurance and left as paupers. A few have stayed, but for how much longer they can survive they do not know. One thing is sure, the end is approaching unless the North Unit project is built. They have been advised by some to leave. Why do they hang on? Why do they stay?

It would seem even as the Lord gave unto the children of Israel the Rainbow, He gave unto the plains of Jefferson County a promise of water and to make sure that man would be guided to do his part in fulfilling the purpose of this country. He left a mirage so that whoever might travel in this dry and dusty region would see visions of water covering the plains and filling the valleys. And seeing this mirage no man can help thinking, “what would it mean, if the water were really there?” Why do they say?

Since the days when the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates led the world to the beginnings of civilization, wherever water has been taken to the desert regions, there the crops have blossomed, and humanity has prospered. Wherever the settler catches a glimpse of those mythical lakes of the mirage, and glances around at the majestic horizon of mountains and uplands, on the canvas of the plains he sees a vision.

Oh! If words could paint the picture these settlers can see in the future; yet not language but only water can bring to life the hopes and dreams of these people who stay.

But let us dream their dream a moment. Climb up to the top of yonder butte with me and sit down in the shade of the juniper trees. Now you can see a crew of engineers go up the road and there at Benham Falls they build a great dam, while other crews dig ditches, bore tunnels, construct flumes and syphons. The waters are raised in the reservoir, poured out of the great dam and are diverted into the big canal. There they enter the tunnel only to rush forth from the hillside and begin to spread out over the land.

Ah! The juniper trees turn into orchards, the dry hillsides become blue-grass pastures, [arched, dusty plains transform into fields of waving grain, green alfalfa, yellow corn with patches of garden truck, berry bushes, potatoes and sugar beets. The ravens and the owls make way for ten thousand dairy cows and a hundred thousand chickens. The farms become alive with ducks, geese, turkeys, hogs, sheep, goats, horses. The chirp of the cricket is toned by the honeybee. Here come again the happy children from school and after the evening chores the new farm homes lighted up with electricity become the new stronghold of American family life and national independence. The very atmosphere has changed, and a new empire lay before you, a new promised and of milk and honey, of prosperity and contentment. Progressive cities thrive where villages of Madras, Metolius, Culver and Opal City now decay. You have seen 10,000 happy human beings added to the roll of Oregon citizenry. You see, if you choose to call it that, a factory producing a consumable wealth of ten million dollars annually and an everlasting increment of value scarcely to be measured by a hundred million dollars as the years go by.

The Deschutes project must be built. Despite the greed and jealousy of financiers, contractors and promoters, despite the blindness, the weakness of our state officials, this dream is the key to a greater Oregon, and it must come true.