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If not for the Project, what would there be?   and Dams, Canals and Water
by Ty Beaver, Herald and News 2/15/08

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< H&N file photos by Todd E. Swenson A truck drives along a tractor pulling a field bulker during the potato harvest at Woodman Farms in Tulelake in October 2007.

   No potatoes, no onions, no mint, no sugar beets — just a few of the crops that would not grow in the Klamath Basin were it not for the Bureau of Reclamation irrigation project. 

   Most people connected to agriculture would not have come. Instead of miles of fields, the region would be covered in range and dry-land pasture. 

   “The agricultural community would never have become like this,” said Ron Hathaway, former director of the Klamath Basin Research and Extension Center. 

   Irrigated agriculture was the primary contributor to the growth of the region after the Project was authorized in 1905. The Czech Colonization Club of Omaha, Neb., moved to the area in 1908, establishing the town of Malin and farming the lands around it. 

   Luther Horsley, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, said his family moved to Project lands because of the organization and efficiency of the system. It was innovative for its time. 

   “We were envied,” he said. 

   The towns of Merrill and Tulelake also boomed after homesteaders moved into the area. Along with Malin, each developed specific industries derived from the local agriculture, such as Malin’s cheese factory and Merrill’s flour mill. 

   Leonard Will, a World War II veteran who arrived as a homesteader in 1949, farmed “one step south” of the Oregon border near Tulelake. He was one of more than 200 veterans to arrive in a three-year period to farm in the region. 

   He started out with potatoes, but soon moved to raising livestock, pasture, alfalfa and grain. Irrigation allowed him to provide forage for his cattle nearly year round. 

   If it weren’t for the distance of markets, Will said, farmers would have considered raising water-dependent crops such as carrots and cabbage. Irrigation also allowed sugar beets and onions to be grown in the Basin. “That’s what built up the Basin,” Will said.
 
Jim Chapman connects irrigation pipe on a newly seeded alfalfa field at Chapman Ranch in Poe Valley in May 2007.

Dams, canals and water

   The Klamath Project has seven dams. 

   Three storage dams: Clear Lake, Gerber and Link River are used to store water that might otherwise go downstream. Four are diversion dams: Lost River, Anderson-Rose and Malone, all on Lost River, and Miller on Miller Creek. Diversion dams control or route water, such as through irrigation canals, without storing water for a later release. 

   The Project supplies irrigation water for about 220,000 acres on about 1,500 farms. Of those irrigable acres, 182,000 acres were actually irrigated in 2003, with 156,000 acres relying on water from Upper Klamath Lake and the Klamath River. The remaining acreage receives water from east side sources, such as Clear Lake. Farms on the project grow a wide variety of crops, including alfalfa hay, barley, other hay, oats, potatoes, mint and wheat. The Project further supports a large livestock business, including cattle and lesser volumes of sheep and hogs. 

   The Project has more than 717 miles of canals, laterals and diversion channels that move irrigation water from Upper Klamath Lake, the Klamath River, Clear Lake, Lost River and Tule Lake. 

   There are two tunnels, the A Canal, which has an underground section through Klamath Falls, and the Tule Lake Tunnel. In addition, there are almost 728 miles of drainage canals.

 

 
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