The Lamar Register

NEW PROPOSITION.
A. E. Bent Makes Proposal to
Construct South Side Ditch that
Looks Good.
A public meeting of the directors,
voters and others interested in the
Bent and
Prowers Irrigation
District was held at the Commercial
Club room on Monday afternoon to
hear the proposition of A. E. Bent
on behalf of the Purgatoire Develop-
ment company, looking to the con-
struction of the canal and reservoir
system.
This company owns the Mammoth
reservoir, the largest in the state,
and one of the largest in the coun-
try, which has a capacity of 400,000
acre feet of water. It is located in
the upper Purgatoire valley in Las
Animas county, and is pronounced by
skilled engineers the most practi-
cal and safest reservoir site in the
eastern slope of the Rocky Mountain
The company also owns T. C. Henry
rights in the Chaquaqua reservoir,
and altogether they control practi-
cally the available storage waters of
the river. They also have a ditch
survey covering most of the land un-
der the Bent and Prowers survey
and extending farther east.
Mr. Bent made the district a pro-
position to extend its limits to in-
clude all the land possible. about 120
000 acres, and he would turn his res-
ervoirs complete over to the dis-
strict with a canal constructed in the
most approved manner and including
a canal from the Arkansas river
giving runs of flood waters, all to
be completed and in running order
by April 1, 1911. His company will
take pay in bonds of the district at
the rate of $30 per acre. These bonds
bear 6 per cent interest and
are
payable in 20 years.
As there are no longer any good
water rights for sale in Colorado
even on a cash basis for as cheap
a price as $30 per acre, this proposition
certainly looks very good to every.
one having the good of the district
at heart, and especially to the land
owners who have struggled so hard
to gain homes there.
Mr. Bent also agreed to have the
surveys about to be completed by
the district submitted to an eminent
engineer to be agreed upon mutually.
and if he reported the present survey
as preferable and the construction
cost not out of proportion to land
to be watered to accept their survey
and construct the canal on that
line. He showed by the reports of
the company's engineers that this
is one of the most practical irrigation
enterprises east of the Rockies
and that now is the best time to
float such an enterprise.
The meeting rapidly developed en-
thusiasm over their great project
which has hung fire so long
and
strong resolutions advocating the ac-
cepting of the proposition with the
provision of engineer's report as to
the most acceptable survey were
adopted. The
prospects for the
development of this great farming
region look brighter today than they
ever have in the past. The water
supply will be the best in the valley
and serve every season and more reg-
ularly maintained than in any other
large system of the state.