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Show Record for a time. I am a school- teacher. 4366 As a boy there at Bluff I remember seeing boats made for miners and seeing them go down the lane there to the river. I have made a study of the San Juan country. I have been very much interested in its resources. I am familiar with the Elk Ridge country on the forest reserve. It is a part of the Lasal Forest. I am not so familiar with the Lasal. I know about the Blue 4367 Mountains, but I know more about the Elk Ridge. I have been there many, many times. There is some very fine timber there. None of it has over been cut. There has never been a saw in there. On the Elk Ridge there is land that is fertile, quite a bit of it could be farmed. The land south of the Elk Ridge is 4368 exactly the same as the country where Blanding is built. The coun-try around Blanding is farming land. They raise fruits, garden stuff and anything without water. It is dry farming. The soil is a rich, red sandy loam. It has an average depth of from 10 to 16 feet The climatic conditions in that section are very favorable. Frost is not too late or too early generally to interfere with farming. It is a south slope. As to the number acres of this type of land lying south of Elk Ridge, it is conservative to say there are 100,000 acres; taking the country as a whole there is a good deal more land than that, but there are gulches that cut into it. My archaeological investigations through that country show indications of a prehistoric people that lived there, both 4369 where white Mesa in and south of Elk Ridge. They lived all over there. Their ruins are there. Their houses are grown up with cedar and pine. The country has at one time been cultivated. I found traces of their dams. They did not seem to have made so many ditches, but they did make dams. They probably aimed to hold up the rain fall. I have seen their farming implements. In a great many cases I have seen corn and other materials that have been brought from their houses. Corn cobs are very common in sheltered places there, and corn has been found. 626 |
