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PO Box 128
305 Third St.
Pavillion, WY 82523
Phone: 307.856.6359
Fax: 307.856.1824
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Adapted from Bureau of Reclamation files
Edited by Midvale Irrigation District, 2002
Introduction
In the late summer of 1928, George C. Kreutzer, the Bureau of Reclamation's director of economics left the confines of his office in the Department of Interior building in Washington, D.C. for the wilds of Wyoming. In his four years as economics director, Kreutzer visited most of the irrigated west, and like most of his assignments, this one came directly from his friend and boss, Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead. This time, Kreutzer would canvass the scattering of settlers eking out a living producing alfalfa and forage on the Riverton Project, for many years one of Reclamation's most perplexing ventures. Making his way through the cutting wind and over the hard ground of west-central Wyoming, Kreutzer found and spoke with all 16 settlers of the Riverton Project. Back in Washington that November, in a memo to Secretary Mead, Kreutzer reported none of the structures on the project were "suitable to house a family," and apologized he could not further illustrate the hardship he found with photographs of barns as "there weren't any to take."
An irrigation project without any farm buildings is one of many incongruous situations littered throughout the history of the Riverton Project. Engineers working for the state of Wyoming, and later Reclamation, were convinced they could irrigate anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 acres along the banks of the Wind River. But, after decades of bad luck and wrong choices, by the 1990s, only a little more than 70,000 acres received water on the project. Reclamation's involvement began when the Federal government assigned the United States Reclamation Service (USRS) the task of supplying water to a handful of irrigators in the early 1920s. The start of a fallow time for the USRS, the twenties were a decade of inertia sandwiched between the classic ages of dam building in the twentieth century's early years and the New Deal-post World War II construction bonanza of the 1930s to 1970s.
Project Location
If words could aptly describe what conditions have done to a physical landmark over millennium, it would be the Wind River. Over countless years, wind gusts cut patches of rough sandstone and shale escarpments out of the gently sloping alluvial valleys formed by the river's tributaries. The Wind River Basin is a crescent-shaped valley about 130 miles long and 70 miles wide, bounded on the west and southwest by the Wind River Mountains, (forming part of the Continental Divide), and on the north by Owl Creek and Copper Mountains. The surrounding ranges vary from 4,700 to 5,400 in height. The headwaters of the Wind River rise on the northeastern slope of the Wind River Mountains, flowing southeast to south of the town of Riverton, where the stream unites with the Popo Agie (pronounced Poposia) River before forming the Big Horn River. Previous to a drought cycle in the mid-1970s, Wind River's estimated average annual runoff was 897,900 acre-feet. Spread along the banks of the river are jutting rocks of various sizes, clumps of sagebrush, and a few sturdy trees clustered around any available source of water. Much of the irrigable lands are sandy, but a considerable part of the Unit's soil is heavy clay underlain by sandstone and shallow decomposed shale. That soil is easily waterlogged with poor surface drainage in some areas, containing high amounts of alkali preventing the growth of many crops.
Western Wyoming is best known for what is taken from underground, rather than what is grown above its surface. This is oil and uranium country, and conditions favor only selected, sturdy crops. A few weeks of bright warmth in the summer are bookended by months of inhospitable weather. Summers feature a high number of cloud-free days encouraging rapid plant growth. Farmers along the Wind River have an average of 140 days to work with between the last killing frosts in May and the earliest frost in September. The average annual temperature is 44.5 F, but the thermometer has plummeted as low as -42 F in the winter, and shot up as high as 101F in the summer. Precipitation is a little more than 9 inches annually.
The Unit derives its water supply from the Wind River and its tributaries. Bull Lake Dam can hold up to 152,000 acre-feet in Bull Lake Reservoir. Despite its role as the project's most indispensable storage facility, Bull Lake Dam was the last major structure completed on the Riverton Unit. Water released from Bull Lake Reservoir flows through Bull Lake Creek on to the Wind River, augmenting the flow of that stream. Supplemental storage is held by Pilot Butte Dam, and provided by Pilot Butte Reservoir, a 31,600 acre-feet capacity off-stream reservoir supplied with water diverted by the Wind River Diversion Dam. Water for Unit lands is delivered through the 62.4-mile Wyoming Canal, which leads from Wind River Diversion Dam to the Pilot Butte Reservoir and then on to the Unit's distribution systems. The 38-mile long Pilot Canal flows easterly from Pilot Butte Reservoir to service acreage in the southern and eastern portion of the Unit. One of the Unit's original structures, Pilot Butte Power Plant, is situated at the drop from the Wyoming Canal to Pilot Butte Reservoir.
Before incorporation into the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin program in 1970, the Unit was comprised of three segments: The First Division, (reaching from Wind River Diversion Dam to Pilot Butte Reservoir), the Second Division, (extending eastward seven miles from Pilot Butte Reservoir), and the Third Division, (heading north and east for 46 miles). The First and Second Divisions were settled between 1926 and 1939, while much of the acreage on the Third Division had to purchased back by the Federal government in the early 1960s, then sold at public auction in 1970. The Riverton Unit is currently operated and maintained by the Midvale Irrigation District under contract with the United States.
Historic Setting
Bands of Eastern Shoshone Indians roamed western Wyoming since approximately 1500 A.D., hunting buffalo and mountain sheep, and gathering berries and pine nuts, according to anthropologists. The period between 1500 and 1700 was the Eastern Shoshone's golden era, as they developed a reputation among other tribes, as a "militaristic, buffalo-hunting people." The Shoshone adapted quickly from their later contacts with the Spanish, the mixture of French and native peoples known as Métis, and Anglo Americans, built on their abilities as horse raiders.
A pair of French fur-trapping siblings was the first Europeans to venture near the Wind River Basin. In 1743, the Verendrye brothers got as far as the present location of Sheridan, Wyoming. However, the region remained untamed until the establishment of a United States military post at Lander in the 1860s. American authority came quickly with the signing of a treaty with Shoshones, which instituted the Wind River Indian Reservation in July 1868.
Irrigation followed separate paths once the Shoshone went on the reservation. A few settlers commenced the earliest irrigation development in the 1860s as ranching was established along the Little Wind and Popo Agie Rivers. Indian irrigation began with the digging of the Crooked Creek ditch in 1871, and continued through the 1890s. Development was sporadic until 1905 when five irrigation units were built under the supervision of the United States Indian Service, and Wind River garnered a reputation as one the better-organized reservations.
The Shoshone quickly adapted to their reservation. They fished and gathered and hunted buffalo until the animal disappeared on the reservation in the late 1880s. The Shoshone's authority over the Wind River Reservation was brief, due to a dispute some 500 miles away in Oklahoma. The Northern Arapahoe tribe refused to settle with the Southern Arapahoe on an Oklahoma reservation, and the Northern Arapahoe moved to Wyoming and Montana, asking the Federal government to find them a familiar place to live. The Indian Service bowed to their wishes, transferring the Northern Arapahos by military escort to the Wind River Reservation in 1878. The Shoshone were told the arrangement would be temporary, but the Arapahoe never moved, and they were later awarded an undivided half of the reservation lands.
In 1896, both tribes agreed to sell 64,000 acres to the United States from the reservation's northeast corner for $60,000. The final slice out of the reservation came March 3, 1905, when Congress ratified the McLaughlin Agreement. Named for Indian Inspector Major James McLaughlin, the Agreement determined the reservation held "excess" lands, and the Federal government would make them available through sale to settlers. Any proceeds would be applied to a per capita payment of $50 to each tribal member, plus development and extension of an irrigation system, and creation of a school district and a welfare and improvement fund. The government offered 1,480,000 acres for sale from the north fork of the Big Wind River in the west to the Big Horn in the east, and from the Wind River to the south to Owl Creek on the north.
Investigating the value of the reservation for settlement was in the works for nine months before ratification of the McLaughlin Agreement. A "reconnaissance" of the ceded lands in 1904, conducted by Goyne Drummond, a civil engineer and deputy U.S. mineral surveyor, found "The land is rolling and has a good drainage, very little of it will be injured by seepage water." Drummond surveyed a strip of land from the Big Wind River to Muddy Creek, and offered only an approximation of the total irrigable land on the reservation. Two years later, Drummond was among the 1,600 people granted a homestead in Riverton, where he continued to live into the 1920s. As events later proved, Drummond over-estimated the quality of irrigable lands. He was not the only optimistic planner as in 1906, the Wyoming State Engineers Office believed 265,000 acres along the Wind River could be watered by a substantial project.
One of the last big land-rushes of the dying days of the Wild West was set for August 15, 1906. A Denver newspaper opined, "Not since the Oklahoma rush has there been so much interest manifested in the opening of a reservation." Arriving by wagons, buckboards, horseback, and on foot, nearly ten thousand people gathered at the reservation's border in a collection of tents and shacks waiting to claim every last plot as fast as it was measured off. Under the Homestead Laws, land sold at $1.50 an acre in the first two years after the Riverton opening, and for $1.25 per acre over the next three years. Lands remaining unsold five years after the date of the opening were to be sold at public auction for not less than $1 per acre. After eight years, the Secretary of the Interior could sell any remaining lands to the highest bidder. The plots most desired by settlers were closest to where the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad planned to extend their line once the reservation was opened. An "entry man" by the name of Arwed Holmberg, remembered in 1966 that he selected a certain plot, "because the railroad ran through it, and if I couldn't make a living off it, I could catch a freight out."
In a place somewhere between civilization and anarchy during the first few weeks of its life, Riverton's pioneers realized if the town was going to draw more newcomers, it would need water. On September 24, the state agreed to a permit giving the Wyoming Central Irrigation Company, (WCIC), the opportunity to build a canal system in the ceded area. The company, (led by president and Chicago table salt magnate Joy Morton, and general manager, Wyoming's Secretary of State, Fenimore Chatterton), planned to dig two large canals, 35 and 40 miles long, from the Wind River, and sell perpetual water rights at $20 to $38 an acre, the price varying with the terms of payment. However, by early autumn, Riverton's land-rush slowed to a trot. In the first two weeks after the August 15 opening, 300 additional people filed homestead papers, joined by almost 200 more before winter sent in. Since those latecomers had a piece of land without promising to take water from the WCIC, the company postponed plans to build the two canals. Another private firm took the initiative, and started excavation on a canal in October 1906. Luckily, Riverton's first winter, 1906-07,was a mild one, and most settlers lived in shacks and tents covered by a fine wind-blown dust. The canal opened in time for the first spring planting the following year, serving 12,000 in proximity of the town. Other improvements were added two years later, and the cost of building Riverton's first aqueduct came to $75,000.
Unable to convince enough settlers to sign repayment contracts, the WCIC gradually lost interest in building the two canals. In 1910, the state intended the WCIC to continue to conduct business under a new name, but company engineers reported back that much of the land was not irrigable. The state then cancelled all rights held by the WCIC. Two years later, the WCIC rights returned to the state, and by 1918, Reclamation was assigned all rights and permits.
A small force of Federal surveyors and construction men assembled in Riverton in August 1918, to begin surveys and preliminary construction. Early activity included classification of soils by the U.S. Bureau of Soils, completion of a large warehouse at Riverton, establishment of a Project office on the second floor of the town's Masonic Temple, and hooking up 42 miles of telephone line from Riverton to the site of the Wind River Diversion Dam via the town of Pavillion. Work also started on the Pavillion laborers camp, some 30 miles from Riverton, as the base for those digging the canal. The Pavillion camp grew to include residences, office, warehouse, and a maintenance shop by the time it was completed in 1925.
Settlement of the Project
At the turn of the century, the Office of the State Engineer of Wyoming predicted 265,000 acres of land could be irrigated. After further study, Reclamation Field Commissioner, Morris Cannon, offered in 1923 a more realistic view: "To open up 120,000 acres at one time or even in two units probably would result in . . .problems being encountered by water users who financially and from a standpoint of experience would be unable to cope with the situation."
Irrigators from the First and Second Divisions formed Midvale Irrigation District in January 1921. The District was born in an atmosphere of little promise for expansion. Water was first made available in 1925 for 1,600 acres west of Pilot Butte Reservoir. Tribal members or landholders living elsewhere held most of these 1,600 acres. Only one owner near the Morton town site used the water to irrigate his 80 acres of oats. On March 3, 1926, twenty units of public lands, ranging from 35 to 108 acres, were the first units opened under Reclamation's authority. In 1926, about 60 per cent of the project's irrigable land was possessed by the original entry men or their relatives. Thirty-seven percent of the remaining irrigable acreage was vacant public land.
Before July 1, 1926, farms were open only to World War I veterans, provided they qualified under the Homestead Laws. After that date, any qualified person could file on the remaining units. Tested by its experience on other projects, Reclamation required passing a review board examination, two years experience in farming, and $2,000 in cash, or its equivalent in livestock and farm machinery of a Riverton Project applicant. Rates for water and land were set at $1 per acre for two acre-feet of water, with additional water costing 50 cents an acre foot. Land went for $1.50 an acre, 50 cents at the time of entry and 25 cents per acre per year for the succeeding four years to the Indian tribes. In the 1920s, there were few takers, but as late as 1928, the Fremont County Independent took optimism into uncharted waters of dementia, as they predicted a Riverton when, "If time lasts, the day is not so far distant when the Pavillion Valley will be raising feed for vast flocks of turkeys and other poultry with the golden stream of butter-fat flowing from a herd of dairy cows kept on every unit."
True reality could be found in the title of a March 1930 article in the New Reclamation Era, "Riverton Project Needs Settlers, a Railroad, and a Sugar Factory." The previous year, out of an irrigable area of 20,000 acres, only 1,075 acres received water, and just 19 farmers put it to use. Lack of railways running through project land, the project's "forbidding appearance" and minimal capital on the part of settlers to develop new land were preventing possibility for success. Ironically, the effects of the Great Depression stirred the first interest in the Riverton Project, as the dust and drought of South Dakota, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado brought settlers to the Wind River. From their first harvest, many of the relocated hoarded their entire crop for "home consumption and had little to sell." Farm families developed outside sources of income until their land began to produce. Those breaking the rough soil for the first time found little help at the town bank, as the institution "consistently declined to loan money on the class of security possessed by farmers." The loan situation improved by the later half of the 1930s, with the creation of the Federal lending agencies, like the Farm Home Administration.
From 1926 to 1930, 18 people qualified for units. Once the Depression struck, interest grew quickly. Twenty-four newcomers were accepted in 1931, with 1934 the peak year of settlement, as 71 farmers were accepted. Irrigable lands grew from only 3,723 acres in 1933 to 25,905 acres five years later. Crop values also followed, as they ballooned from $10,308 in 1930 to $1.4 million by 1945. It took thirteen years -- from 1926 to 1939 -- to fill all of the 260 units opened on the First and Second Divisions. The growth shown on the first two divisions meant the government was ready to authorize a Third Division under the Flood Control Act (58 Stat. 887) of 1944.
Another event that could have had a profound effect on the future of the Project was an under-publicized visit by members of the War Reclamation Authority and the War Department in May 1942. Teams from both agencies reviewed Riverton's chances as a government internment camp for Japanese-Americans. Euphemistically referred to as a "reception center," both agencies sought the use of 8,000 acres of project land where evacuees would build laterals, and clear and level the land. Comstock guided officials of both groups, explaining to them that most of the local population would not support the plan, if word got out about it. He explained in a letter to Commissioner John C. Page: "My faith in the Riverton Project is such that I am confident that it can take this misfortune as it has others and still survive and prosper." In a short time however, the War Department found Riverton too forbidding and dropped their plans to build a camp.
Prosperity rewarded the persistent during World War II, as most who had hung on during the hard times were able to liquidate their debts and build their bank balances from profitable war-time harvests. The legacy of these homesteaders is found in the structures they called home in the 1930s and 1940s. Since traditional building material was in short supply, homesteaders fashioned their residences out of tarpaper, or second-hand logs, or they hired Mexican laborers to fabricate and lay adobe bricks.
After V-J Day, Reclamation, the Midvale Irrigation District, and residents of the Wind River Basin were all sure the momentum of the war years would multiply with the arrival of new settlers. Letters of inquiry poured in from veterans from across the nation, and hundreds came out to look at the project farms for themselves. A mood of anticipation was felt in Riverton for the first time since the first two weeks after the land rush. Seven thousand acres were opened in the Lost Wells and Pilot Extension areas in the Second Division in 1947. The following year, 6,000 acres were made available to settlers in the North Pavillion area, and in 1950, an additional 7,000 acres were opened in North Portal. Before any units were awarded, prospective settlers would be put through a qualification process, and those lucky enough to draw a low number in a lottery system were entitled to own a piece of land.
At the moment Riverton's reputation was gaining in stature, a 1951 soil survey determined that large areas of shallow soil in the Third Division previously classified as irrigable should be reclassified as Class 6 lands - non-irrigable. These lands were mostly shale with poor drainage, easily waterlogged, with enough alkali to prevent crop cultivation. The Third Division, a foundation of hope for returning servicemen to build a life upon had a false bottom. In 1953, Congress passed Public Law 258 allowing homesteaders on inadequate farm units to amend their existing properties with vacant lands on the same project, or exchange their units for land on other reclamation projects. This offer was made to every landowner in the west, but the Law was created principally to assist farmers on the Riverton Project who held acreage too small, or unproductive.
Under the Act, many farmers left the area, settling on the Columbia Basin Project in Washington, the Minidoka Project in Idaho, and the Gila Project in Arizona. Those lands left behind were added to units of those farmers who stayed. Public Law 258 actually stabilized the Riverton Project, as the remaining homesteaders increased the size of their units and subsequently improved themselves financially. Those determined to stick it out on the Third Division formed their own Irrigation District in August 1957. However, by the start of the sixties, a Bureau Project History lamented their decision: "The ratio of operating expenses to prices received for crops and livestock continued unfavorable."
With the decade's turn, the situation on the Third Division had gotten so bad, that Reclamation proposed to buy out the homesteaders and write off most of the $20.5 million spent up until that time. A congressional delegation came to Riverton in October, 1961 to hear local grievances, as the majority of their testimonials "were adverse and favored abolishing the project." Reclamation responded by threatening to shut off water to the Third Division if growers refused to sign a repayment contract. One farmer, Marvin H. West, stated to a Denver newspaper in 1962, "10 to 12 years should prove the feasibility of these places. We have not made a living or showed any repayment ability in that time."
The growers' anger was enough to persuade the government in 1964, to pass Public Law 88-278 authorizing Federal purchase of Third Division lands. The Bureau bought back 78 units totaling about 22,000 acres. The land was leased to Midvale Irrigation District farmers for a period of six years. In September 1970, Public Law 91-409 consolidated the three divisions of the Riverton Project. In addition to employing power sales to pay rehabilitation costs on Project works, the bill restored 8,900 irrigable acres of the Third Division to private ownership. In 1971, the Third Division Irrigation District was dissolved. The units were realigned and combined into 43 units, auctioned off to farmers of the Midvale Irrigation District, and eventually this land was petitioned into the District.
Uses of Project Water
During the first decade of agricultural production on the Riverton Unit, forage and cereal grains were grown by most farmers. It was not until 1935 that growers begin to increase their acreage of row crops, such as dry beans and sugar beets. As lands of the First and Second Divisions were settled in the 1940s and 1950s, the majority of the dry bean crop was shipped to Cuba, while feed grains were locally marketed. The town of Riverton aspired for many years to acquire a sugar beet plant. These plans were never realized, as the crop is now processed at a sugar plant in Worland, 90 miles to the north. Cattle and fat lambs were marketed through Omaha and Sioux City, and wool was shipped to Boston.
The ingenuity of one farmer in the late 1930s illustrates how some played the cards Riverton dealt them. Ocean Lake, a 6,428acre body of water, 15 miles northwest of Riverton born of drainage and irrigation wastes, inundated the land of a Dust Bowl escapee. The man put up a few cabins, offered meals, and let it be known his waters were running with minnows. A decade later, the farmer sold his property for a profit, not because of its value as farmland, but for its recreational attraction. One of the successes resulting from The Riverton Unit has been recreational facilities. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, under contract with the Bureau, administers 28,000 acres along Muddy and Five Mile Creeks, Ocean Lake, Cottonwood Drain, and Cottonwood Bench.
Forage production continues to take up most of the Project's acreage. In the drought year of 2001, all crops produced on the Unit grossed $17.03 million, 88.2% of normal compared to a previous 5-year average of $19.30 million. In 2001, alfalfa hay occupied the greatest number of irrigable acres (35,404), followed by irrigated pasture (11,288 acres), other hay crops (6,896 acres), silage (3,447 acres), and sugar beets (2,650 acres). By 2001, the total irrigable area grew to 72,197 acres.
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