Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
When Francois and Louis Joseph Verendrye first wandered into the Wind River Country in 1743, they were looking for water. A different type of water, but water, nonetheless. The French explorers were seeking a water route across America, something fanciful Europeans were still doing after two-and-a-half centuries of fruitless searching.
The water they sought hopefully connected the Atlantic with the Pacific, a process that still dominates the thinking of most Americans as the East and West Coasts dominate the social, political, and economic thought.
We live in the “Flyover Zone” a region best seen from 35,000 feet at 600 miles per hour to most of our fellow citizens.
We don’t think that way.
Living in the vast wasteland that Hollywood elites and even our own elected representatives in Washington feel about our region, is a privilege to those hearty enough to not only survive but prosper.
On cold, sub-zero winter mornings, and even in the blistering heat of a 100+ August afternoon I think of how the indigenous people thrived in this hostile environment. The Shoshone, Crow, Arapaho, Blackfeet, Kiowa, and Oglala knew how to use the land and the animals and plants living on it to the fullest extent.
Part of their secret to living on what seems to be a vast expanse of nothingness was to live with rather than off the land. It’s a lesson we could learn much from today.
Those intrepid Frenchmen, now almost three centuries separated from us quickly realized that water is life, especially in the high desert we call home. Three-quarters of a century later, Lewis and Clark discovered the same thing.
Water is life in the American West.
They can take it for granted in New England, the Great Lakes Region, and the American South, but out here, if you don’t have water, you don’t live.
These thoughts came as I set water again early Saturday morning. Watching the gates on my pipeline begin to gurgle, then sputter, and finally shoot columns of water into the air reminded me how complex simply getting water to pasture and cropland can be.
I finally abandoned a field I had leased for 25 years this summer. It was always a little tricky to water with short rows, low spots, and a few high angles to negotiate, but after the LeClair Irrigation District lined their main canal east of the cemetery it became a nightmare.
The sand and silt the liner piled up had us digging laterals for water once or twice every summer. The marginal production of the 35-acre field, combined with the time and expense of constantly pulling ditches to free them of sand, and digging that lateral were too much.
It’s sad to see the once productive ground turning brown in the late June sun, but that’s an unexpected consequence of someone’s solution to get more water to people at the end of the ditch.
Another field I cut and bale for a friend is suffering the same fate. I baled it a month earlier while the grass was still green this summer. It produced just a fraction of its usual tonnage, but he can’t get water either. The line connecting with his ditch is plugged with that same sand and silt.
Oh well, it’s not his or my livelihood at stake, it’s just a little bit of ground we used to raise hay and graze livestock.
Early photographs of the Wind River Country don’t reveal the rich checkerboard of corn, alfalfa, beets, barley, and oats, dotting with thousands of head of grazing cattle. The area around Riverton, Hudson, Pavillion, Crowheart, and Ethete are covered with heavy, thick sagebrush.
If you find a black-and-white photograph of Moneta, Lysite, or Lost Cabin from 1895 you’ll see tens of thousands of sheep dotting the dry hillsides. You’ll see the same thing at Dubois.
We like to think of this as cattle country, but the sheep industry dominated the region until the Pavillion Reclamation Project brought us Diversion Dam, Pilot Butte Reservoir, and Bull Lake.
Canals along the Big Wind River eventually led to the Midvale, LeClair, and Riverton Irrigation Districts, and the rest, as they say, is history. We now produce the best alfalfa in the world, feed tens of thousands of head of cattle, and produce substantial amounts of corn, oats, barley, and even a few sugar beets, though the numbers are dropping.
All of this is because of water. Without it, nothing would happen.
Native Americans knew the location of springs, small rivers, and shallow wells from tribal memory. Scouts learned from the Native Americans and shared that information with settlers, the U.S. Army, railroad surveyors, and businessmen.
If a lone rider or a small group didn’t know the territory, they looked for cottonwood trees. These monarchs of the desert always grow where there is water. Sometimes it’s surface water as you can see from the air if you follow the tributaries of the Wind and Platte Rivers.
Sometimes it’s seasonal. Those gnarled cottonwoods growing along the highway near Sand Draw survive on spring runoff filling the shallow aquifer underneath the dry, sandy channel winding its way down from Beaver Rim.
If you spot cottonwoods growing in isolated clusters miles from any river or even a wadi, you’ll find shallow water near those trees.
Chief Washakie knew this, so did Sharp Nose and Jim Bridger, it was knowledge that allowed the people they cared for to survive.
After abundant snow and rain a year ago, we’re back to desert conditions. When we do get water on the fields, those hot, dry 25-mile-per-hour winds we’ve been having much too often wick the moisture out of the ground almost as soon as it arrives.
In The Wizard of Oz, author Frank Baum wrote of two wicked witches, the Wicked Witch of the East and the Wicked Witch of the West. The Wizard of Oz is filled with symbolism describing life in late 19th century America.
The Witch of the East is wind, that same dry, desiccating wind we’re experiencing now. You destroy wind with technology. Windbreaks, windmills, contour farming, shallow plowing, and alternating fallow and production ground. In the book, and the film, a house (technology) defeats the wind.
The Witch of the West is drought. How did Dorothy kill the Wicked Witch of the West? You already know. With a bucket of water. Water ends drought, bringing salvation. To us it’s a healthy crop, to Dorothy, getting back to Kansas. (some prize there)
Water to Oz and back again. It’s the story of the west and it can be heard in your lawn sprinklers each morning, in the rumble of the late Spring runoff in the Wind and Popo Agie, or in the ditch running by your house.
Water is life.