Historic Hood River
Irrigation Ditch
8-9-2018
Notes
With the hot and dry weather this summer it’s a good thing we have irrigation for our orchards. This Benjamin Gifford photogravure shows a ditch from the first decade of the twentieth century. The 1911 Hood River County map prominently displayed irrigation in both text and drawing, as this was a major selling point to attract orchardists.
An HHR reader brought to my attention this biography of Frank Davenport, who started the ditch which became the Farmers Irrigation Company system.
Alert HHR readers may note we saw this Gifford image before, though a mirror image. Both of these images were printed by Gifford’s studio, so you can’t blame the flipped negative on me. Maybe Dan can track down that tree and tell us which version is correct?
Arlen Sheldrake
digging that canal by hand around all those tree roots must have been quite the challenge…..our place on Belmont was the last of some line of irrigation water from something like this….I have less than fond memories of cleaning the sprinkler heads from the silt. I have no memories of ever running out of irrigation water. As I have posted before our pump house (still on the property) was the former WW II bond sales building from the side of the Butler bank building.
L.E.
I suspect there is no way this irrigation system could be dug today. Environmentally there would be too much against it, starting with salmon.
Kenn
Reminds me of the 15′ wide Clear Cr ditch from Clear Lake to Maupin flats, miles of floating or canoeing on hillsides.
Charlott
Oh yes, on a day like today that old irrigation ditch in Pine Grove was most refreshing……….
Dan Kleinsmith
L.E., stills lots of irrigation ditches in use and new ones pop up here and there. As long as there’s a fish screen at the intake to get fish out of the conveyance anything goes. Not everyone can afford to spend the money it takes to pipe a conveyance.
Cheers.
PS. I think that tree does kind of look familiar 🙂