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Show n.sn HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Theodore Roosevelt Dam and Reservoir, Salt River Project, Arizona Bureau of Reclamation first the land along streams or near springs where water was available. It took no great imagination on their part to use the water to irrigate the land by tapping a stream a little above a cultivated plot. Indians had done just this in the Southwest, Spanish missionaries had built on their experience, and the Mormons had early succeeded through cooperative action in storing water to irrigate valley land that was dry. By 1875 Utah had invested $2,421,494 in building diversion dams and 2,095 miles of principal canals and 4,883 miles of tributary canals and ditches to irrigate the des- ert. Most of the 9,452 farms and the grain, vegetable crops, and better pastures of the territory were dependent on irrigation. In other states and territories similar irrigation projects utilizing the water of mountain streams were under way. Not all these ventures were successful but a good deal of experience had been acquired in developing them.2 2 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom. An Economic History of the Latter Day Saints 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.), pp. 51-53, 224; George D. Clyde, "History of Irrigation in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly, XXVII (January 1959), 27-36, in- |