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Show Valley of the Bear River 213 the northern wheat belts south into irrigated Utah. 4 5 In time, the growth of dry-farm districts, like the irrigated farming communities that preceded them, extended across the borders of the two states, linking them as to landscape and culture as w7ell as population. Evidence suggests that Idaho farmers of the Bear River valleys have also been more responsive than their U t a h counterparts to other innovations in irrigation. Somewhat more inclined to depart from the revered principles and practices of early irrigation, they have apparently influenced U t a h farmers to follow suit. Among other things, Idahoans have been less inclined to regard water resources as adequate than Utahns. Perhaps as a result, nearly twice as many have developed wells to take advantage of underground supplies. In modifying irrigation systems in the last twenty years they have also been quicker to change to sprinkling systems, while until very recently, Utahns have been more apt to refine conventional irrigation systems by improving canals and distribution systems. Abstracted from data gathered by U t a h State University's Institute for Social Science Research on Natural Resources, this information would support a visual impression that sprinkling is an irrigration development that caught on more quickly in Idaho and is now migrating south with its greatest impact areas located in the north of U t a h rather than the south. 46 As a final note on the cultural relationships of the U t a h and Idaho portions of Bear River's three valleys, one should refer to Preston. By 1940 it was county seat of Franklin County and a Saturday marketplace for people from the farming districts throughout the county and to some degree from the scattered communities in neighboring U t a h as well. Although Logan had long been a center for Utah's Cache Valley, its domination of retail outlets and services was by no means as great as was Preston's. In a fashion consistent with supply centers throughout farming America, Preston was a social as w7ell as a business and political center. In it, the entire county met. Although U t a h towns and cities such as Logan, Brigham City, Nephi, and Richfield served as market and social centers, the Preston experience fixed it more firmly in the broader national tradition. It is a topic worthy of continuing study. 47 15 See J o h n A. Widtsoe, Dry-Farming, a System of Agriculture for Countries Under Low Rainfall (New York: MacMillan Co., 1911), and John Edwin Lamborn, "A History of the Development of Dry-Farming in U t a h and Southern I d a h o " (Master's thesis, U t a h State University, 1978), especially chaps. 4 and 5. ""' Wade H. Andrews and Dennis G. Geerstan, The Function of Social Behavior in Water Resource Development (Logan: U t a h State University, Institute for Social Science Research on Natural Resources, 1970). 47 Philip A. Langdon, "Social and Economic Change in a Small Town Undergoing Long- |
