The Bismarck Tribune

Irrigated Acreage

Take a map of the United States and clip out the state of Connecticut. Then place that patch over the Western states where agriculture is chiefly by irrigation and you will have a graphic illustration of what a relatively small area supports much of the business in the arid and semi-arid West.

Roughly, the irrigated acreage is equal to the area of Connecticut but from it comes food for a large part of the Western population and roughage to back up the range.

Of the 19 projects operating under government supervision, all but two will have adequate water supplies this year.

These, curiously enough, are on the eastern edge of the irrigated area, being the Belle Fourche project in South Dakota and the North Platte project in Wyoming and Nebraska.

On May 1 only 50,600 acre feet of water were in storage behind the Belle Fourche dam with its capacity of 198,100 acre feet and 375,190 acre feet were stored on the North Platte in a lake capable of holding 1,202,460.

These figures indicate how fortunate is North Dakota if it wishes to irrigate. It has running through it the Missouri river with an annual flow of 21,000,000 cubic feet, only a small part of which would be needed to produce crops equal to those in the unirrigated portions of the state, including the Red river valley.