Tulare Township Essay -- Artificial Irrigation, Northern California

C-IrrigationThe familiar rural embellish of todays Tulare Township is the artificial creation of irrigation. The modern eyeaccustomed to the regularity of shaded orchards and the linear furrowed fields of row cropsfinds it difficult to imagine the countryside before irrigation, much less the arid, barren grassland that existed until the 1860s. One has a tendency to see this landscape as eternal. But the current rural scene is non yet a century old.Although Tulare Township residents had long recognized the need for irrigation, irrigation on a mass scale came late to the district. The reasons for the delaypolitics, geography, technology, and economicstell, in microcosm, the San Joaqun Valley irrigation story.It did not take long for Californias small farmers to picture that dry farming, which depended on winter and spring rains, was not trustworthy. The first two decades of Californias Wheat Bonanza erathe 1860s and 1870ssaw wide adaptation in crop yields as the state alternated b etween drought and normal rainfall years. While the large bonanza ranchers could survive the droughts of 18631865, 18701871, and 18731875, the small ranchers often failed. The Diablo throw ups rain shadow worsened the challenges for West nerve grangers even below normal rainfall elsewhere could seriously jeopardize the West situation harvest.By 1870, the need for extensive irrigation in the San Joaqun Valley was clear, but how should Californians carry out the task?The earliest Northern California tries at large irrigation were entrepreneurial ventures. Investors fashioned commercial irrigation companies that owned the canal system but not the irrigated lands. In the 1870s, land speculators regularly used this arrangement to st... ... to approve the stupefy sale. Although some accused Crittenden of defecting to the cattle interests, his reluctance may have reflected the general loss of enthusiasm by West Side farmers for irrigation in the late-1870s.The drought of the 1870s ha d ended, and the awry(p) years brought good West Side harvests. It no longer felt urgent to spend money to avert crop failures. Besides, some farmers believed the district could not sell its bonds without state backing. The second Westside authorization act had not included such a provision after Bay Area interests had objected. As later experience would prove, the lack of state backing often placed a serious handicap on marketing irrigation securities.By 1880, the West Side Irrigation District, authorized but never implemented, had collapsed. Tulare Township would wait another thirty-five years for large-scale irrigation.