![]() ![]() ![]() In Idaho, missionaries and other settlers dug ditches to cultivate crops as early as the 1830s, according to the Historical Society. Hispanic and Native American communities had used similar techniques in the West. “That was a new thing for a lot of people,” Fiege told the Idaho Statesman by phone.īut irrigation wasn’t exactly novel, Fiege noted. ![]() lured eastern growers to Idaho in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Irrigation promoters - like the Idaho Mining and Irrigation Co. Foote, first surveyed the Boise Valley for a canal in 1883, according to the Idaho State Historical Society.įiege wrote about the development of Idaho irrigation in his 2000 book, “Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West.” Hailed as the “science of farming,” irrigation promised precision in farming and control over the elements on desert land that could easily be claimed. Tompkins, president of the New York-based Idaho Mining and Irrigation Co., and his engineer, A. “It’s an amazing thing in the desert,” said Mark Fiege, the Wallace Stegner chair in Western American studies at Montana State University, who has studied Idaho irrigation. ![]()
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