First of a series -- When irrigation came to the Republican River valley

One of the great advantages of being a senior citizen is that one can personally remember changes in the way things are done and the consequences of the changes. In this case I want to look at the development of irrigation in the Republican River valley. In 1943 my father drilled an irrigation well about three miles south of McCook, one of the first in the area.

It wasn't really very deep, only 21 feet to water and 70 feet to the bottom of the hole, but it produced about 800 to 1,000 gallons per minute of crystal clean cold drinkable water. Having been a typical dryland farmer, Dad asked a neighbor to teach him how to irrigate. 

Irrigation wasn't new in 1943; a local group of farmers had filed for a water right out of the Republican in about 1880. They then constructed what they called the Meeker Ditch and irrigated from it to raise primarily corn, sugar beets and potatoes. Those crops were irrigated just as George Clark taught my dad to irrigate. That by digging a ditch; we called it a "lateral," along the upper end of a growing crop that had been ditched between each row. Then knowing how much water would come down the ditch, 1 ½ CFS (cubic feet per second) or about 1,000 gallons per minute, the farmer would spade openings through the ditch bank into each row. Experience would tell him how many rows he could run at a time, maybe 35 rows, at the end of which he would spade in a dam in the lateral. In about 12 hours he would repeat the process, spading out the old dam and having already spaded in a new dam and openings through the ditch bank. It was labor-intensive but it enabled growing crops requiring more moisture than average rain fall.

The next innovation was the "lathe box" a little tube about two feet long constructed by nailing four lathes like those used to plaster a wall in a house to make a tube for the water to run through. Those required a lot of work to spade into the ditch bank to run water into each row but they had the advantage of running a constant amount of water into the row where as sometimes the dirt would wash away in the cuts through the ditch bank and all the water would go down one row after a few hours of run time. After the water had run down the individual rows to the far end of the field one had to dig out the lathe box and spade the opening closed.

The next innovation was siphon tubes, the first were clear plastic and dad bought the first batch from Vap's Seed and Hardware, while World War II was still going on. As a kid, I thought it great fun to wade in the ditch and be able to "set" the tubes by filling them with water, holding the end closed with my hand and laying it over the ditch bank where it hopefully would continue to run. About this time someone discovered that you could nail about seven foot of canvas to 2X2 board, lay the canvas in the bottom of the ditch with the board across the ditch from bank to bank and it made an effective dam easy to put in and easy to remove.

Eventually the plastic tubes were made from aluminum and then in the early '60s along came gated aluminum pipe with a simple gate to open to run water down each row.

Now one could irrigate without even carrying a spade or wearing boots. A latter-day improvement for more even distribution of water involved surge valves and gated pipe.

Then came the big innovation, the center pivot. I have displayed in my hangar a picture taken by a buddy flying over McCook in a U-2 spy plane. The picture shows McCook as well as about half of the rest of Red Willow County. Taken in 1973 one can only find one "circle," Chuck Barber's pivot, located on the river bottom south across the river from the narrows.

Today I fly over South-west Nebraska and find center pivot circles about everywhere one can drill a well good enough to produce at least 600 gallons per minute irrigation water. Pivots are expensive to buy, and expensive to run but obviously they are worth the investment judging by the number operating today in this area. 

The well dad drilled in 1943 has pumped water and irrigated crops on the 80 acres we owned every summer since. Dad also rented other nearby farm ground that was supplied water from the Meeker Ditch and then from the large irrigation ditch constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation to replace the Meeker. The dams and the irrigation ditch complex were paid for by the way by levies on  the farmland that benefited from their construction. For the past at least five years that irrigation canal hasn't run a drop of water so all the present irrigation today is by well water.

The future is the big question. Will the canal ever run again or will we forever have to send all that water to Kansas?

Will we have to shut off our irrigation wells to send water to Kansas, even the one that I have seen pump water to thirsty crops for at least sixty four summers?

And why is there no more water in the river, at least enough to divert to irrigate crops? Is it because of all the wells supplying water to center pivots -- and, yes, to the City of McCook -- have lowered the ground water level too far to allow the river to run year around?

The answers, my opinion at least, next week!

That is the way I see it.