OregonScape

Abstract

OREGONSCAPE From the earliest days of settlement, irrigation has been a vital part ofMalheur County farming. Waterwheels, such as this latemodel near Ontario, Oregon, were once common on the canals and streams of eastern Oregon. In this image, probably taken during the 1950s,water pours from thewheel into a chute (under the girl's outstretched arm) that sends itonto crops in the field. The firsteffortsat irrigating lands in Malheur County were made in the last decades of thenineteenth century, as settlers created small diversion dams to channel water from theOwyhee and Malheur riversonto their lands. AfterWorld War I, theU.S. Bureau of Reclamation and local irrigation districts cooperated tobegin large-scale irrigation projects. Canals such as this one were part of that system. In September 1937,President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Ontario on theirway to thededication of Bonneville Dam. At a timewhen much of the nation was suffering through theDust Bowl years, theRoosevelts received peaches, apples, potatoes, and onions, all grown using the area's irrigation canals. According to the September 29,1937, Eastern Oregon Observer, thepresident "expressed amazement at the picture of prosperity brought out by irrigation,... [and] he had never had its true value so forcibly impressed on hismind." ? Mikki Tint, Special Collections Librarian, OHS Research Library ...