Lettuce

You would not think at first hand that the Arizona farmer has much in common with the skilled tool maker in Milwaukee, the mechanic in Detroit, the steel worker in Pittsburgh. It is true, though. This photo essay by Joey Starr of a lettuce-packing shed in Yuma reveals the vast amount of modern equipment and machinery that is needed to process and market the endless stream of products coming from the fertile acres of Arizona. Arizona's agriculture is an intimate part of the Nation's economy. Millions of dollars in goods are purchased in the markets of America to equip, clothe and maintain the people on the farms of Arizona. Arizona farm products find their way to dinner tables all over the country. and in this interchange of the produce of our farms forArizona's agriculture is more than seed, soil, sun, water. It is a big business of machinery and transportation, an intimate part of the Nation's economy.

the products of the assembly lines and manufacturing establishments elsewhere is mutual prosperity, the very essence of a great, growing progressive America. What is good for the Arizona farmer is good for the brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad in some distant eastern state. When an Arizona merchant in a local farm community sells a dollar's worth of merchandise, the sale is rung up as well by another merchant as far away as New Jersey. When the man on a tractor on an Arizona farm realizes that his whole future and way of life depends on the Colorado River to secure that future and way of life, artisans in eastern cities far away who made that tractor must look, too, to the Colorado.

"The fields are green, the products of the soil rich and varied, and the song of fertility is in the land

The fields are green and rich is the harvest. There is an abundance in the land, where but a few years ago there was nothing. Wherever you find the mesquite, the oldtimers said, you would find good soil and there was mesquite a'plenty. All this land needs, the oldtimers said, is water and you could grow fence posts. Anyone with the slightest savvy about farming and farm ways could have told you that long before anyone ever had such a crazy idea as to dam a river and bring the water in. The rugged boys who trudged across trackless western United States with the Mormon Battalion a hundred years ago dug their hands into the soil and knew the soil was good. They weren't soldiers, but farmers who had started west with the Mormons under Brigham Young and who had volunteered to man a military party to secure this part of the country in the war with Mexico. As soon as they got shed of their military duties they carried word to their families in Utah about the good land in Arizona territory, or really New Mexico territory as it was called in those days, and it was not so long afterwards that the Mormon pioneers started drifting south into the Arizona desert. Corn green Iowa boys, riding with General Crook's cavalry all over hell's half acres chasing that wild Apache, Geronimo, knew good farm land when they saw it. All that was needed, everyone said, was water.

But long before that the Conquistadores and the Padres of Old Spain said the same thing only in a different language. They brought farm tools and domestic animals to the Indians and started planting and growing things. But it was always the same old story. For a couple of years there would be rain, good farmer's rain you could depend on, and then again it would be so dry you couldn't spit. Even in the dryest times, though, there would be a little water in the rivers and you could make little dams and ditch the water. But about that time all hell would break loose. The Salt or the Verde or the Gila or the Hassayamp, or whatever stream you happened to farm on, would rear up like a mad bronc, go tearing and plunging and chomping out of the hills, bent on mischief, and end up by washing half of the desert into the Colorado. You could have a right smart farm one day and a couple of days later the farm would be high and dry on a delta down in the gulf. Oneriest rivers in the world, folks said.

But now all that is past and forgotten. You live and learn, folks said, and they who farmed here in the old days learned plenty. Wasn't any sense beating your head against a stump. So they built dams. An easterner who was a westerner at heart, Teddy Roosevelt, dedicated the first dam to be built on the Salt and they named it Roosevelt Dam after him. Old Teddy had a lot of respect for Arizona and a warm spot in his heart for Arizonans. Didn't the wildest bunch of buckaroos ever to ride out of any hills become the roughest and the cussingest of his Rough Riders in the War against Spain in '98? A lot has happened here in Arizona since Old Teddy squinted in the sun giving

Water and hard work, vision and the will to succeed -and the desert is reclaimed. Go to Yuma county and you will see what was once idle, useless land turned into green, abundantly rich fields. Canals carry water from the river for the thirsty land and the land is grateful. The rich and broad acres of Yuma countyand the counties of Maricopa and Pinal-are milestones in the progress of this western civilization. Water is scarce. It must be used wisely and well-every drop of it-and because of this judicious use of water, the acres are green and the crops are lush. All that has been accomplished has been in a few short years, with little water. What miracles will take place when the years to come bring more water flowing to the desert land, when the generous Colorado will be brought in to stabilize the acreage that has once been farmed!

Roosevelt Dam a good sendoff. It was not too many years after that that Cal Coolidge, he being president of the country, dedicated Coolidge Dam on the Gila. Dams and more dams is what we need, folks said, and more and more dams were built. On the Salt, the Verde, the Agua Fria, and a few years back on the Colorado. Mighty lucky they built Boulder Dam when they did, what with the need for power during the war and the need for river control so they could build Parker further down the river and start water going for folks in Southern California to drink and sprinkle their geraniums with, and to wash their dishes with and bathe in on Saturday nights. Right smart, that was.

And that brings us back where we started from, to the folks farming the land where the mesquite once grew in the middle of the Arizona desert and where the soil proved to be, like folks said, good enough to grow fence posts once you got water to it. There's water, all right, but not enough. Folks say you can't depend too much on the Salt, the Verde and the Gila, the main streams coming out of the hills into the desert. We've been pretty lucky, folks hereabouts say. Why in the late 30's there was hardly enough water behind Roosevelt to go wading in. Folks who had spent their whole lives building their little farms and homes on the reclaimed desert were mighty worried. Then the good Lord provided and the wettest spell of all set in and the dams were filled practically to overflowing. That was some years back. Been mighty dry in these parts of late years and the water is getting mighty low again. San Carlos Lake behind Coolidge Dam is low enough to make you weep. Ain't no joke, either.

Ain't no joke, either, for those folks up on the Gila in Graham and Greenlee Counties, who perhaps have suffered more from the dry spell than anyone else in the state. This valley was one of the first settled and farmed and it is the fourth biggest farming area in the state. There just ain't enough water in the Gila to serve them, let alone having a proper share of the Gila go down to Pinal and Yuma Counties. Been mighty dry in the hills. A farmer up Safford-way who needs four acre feet of water a year, has had to get along with less than one acre. If more water can be brought into Maricopa, Pinal and Yuma Counties then the Gila Valley folks up Graham and Greenlee Counties can take more water out of the Gila; then land that three generations fought and worked for won't go back to desert.

The good Lord will provide, some folks say. One of these days it'll rain again. But other folks say it is not wise to take advantage of the good Lord's generosity but to get busy and do something. There's a lot of water flowing down the Colorado that ain't doing much good for anybody. Some of this water ought to be brought in as insurance during some long dry spell against our little streams going dry and the farms blowing away. You have to be alert and far-seeing, folks say; else the desert will come and take back her lost acres .... R. C.