New Hope for North Dakota

Endlessly westward from the 97th meridian stretch the Great Plains of the state of North Dakota, fertile in places, arid in others, baked by the summer sun and blown by the winter wind. Here wheat is grown, hard red and durum, and herds of beef cattle meander across far-ranging pastures, silhouetted against low horizons; here more than 40,000 shining combines work 63,000 well-kept farms. The farmers are apt to feel sensitive when casual visitors from lusher and more verdant places refer to their hard-worked land as a desert.

Yet here it was, during the drought and depression years of the '30s, that dry winds seared hopes and dreams while piling the topsoil into dunes of dust. This was the Great Dust Bowl of the north, where thin-coated sheep could be bought for just $2 apiece and craggy-ribbed cows for only $12. "We couldn't raise a thing, not even weeds--not a thing," recalled North Dakota's U.S. Representative Otto Krueger, a dry-land farmer from Fessenden. "I remember it got so bad, with so many people moving out, that one year I counted 675 quarter-sections of land acquired by the county because they had been abandoned with the taxes left unpaid."

Although the big farms are now mechanized and comparatively prosperous, they are still so dependent upon a decent rainfall that farming in North Dakota is rated by its governor to be a boom-and-bust proposition: between 1919 and 1952 the state's wheat production fluctuated between the extraordinary extremes of 19 and 160 million bushels a year. Since 1930, the population of the state has declined from 680,000 to 620,000--the biggest percentage drop in all the 48 states.

Pyramid on the Prairie. Sturdy and industrious, mostly of Scandinavian and German stock, North Dakotans are working during this time of no immediate crisis on a promising plan to prevent future dust bowls. Last week beneath the prairie sun, tractors and dump trucks, concrete mixers and elevation loaders, electric and power shovels and bulldozers bumped and clunked on the project that is the heart of North Dakota's new hope--the second biggest rolled-fill earth dam in the world, across the unpredictable Missouri River at Garrison, N.D. Garrison Dam, a project of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Engineers and the state of North Dakota, already stands 200 feet high and 2 1/2 miles long; its 70 million cubic yards of earth and stone exceed by 20 times the bulk of Egypt's Great Pyramid. It is scheduled for completion next year.

Next, the men on the job intend to draw out 525 miles of deep canals from the Missouri into the flatlands, to irrigate no fewer than 960,000 marginal acres and improve no fewer than 18 million acres. North Dakota hopes the new water will bring it: 1) 3,600 new farms, 2) 1,700 new businesses, 3) 20,000 new jobs, 4) 93,000 more people. 5) $250 million a year in new farm and business incomes. The Garrison project will triple the power capacity of the state with its 400,000 kw., and its flood controls will impound floodwater from 180,000 square miles. Eventually, the Missouri will be backed up into a new lake 200 miles long and 6 to 15 miles wide.

Security Before 65. Cost of Garrison Dam and the 525 miles of irrigation canals will amount to more than $400 million. Through a special tax assessment, the people of the 22 counties directly benefited--businessmen as well as farmers--will help pay the big bill. Farmers will pay additional direct charges when the water of the new canals reaches their land, a share of operation and maintenance costs that will probably amount to $3.50 to $6 per acre per year. A fortnight ago representatives of the 22 counties, known as the Garrison Conservancy District, met for the first time to organize their sharing of the development's costs and benefits.

Instead of complaining about the cost, most North Dakotans are looking forward to specific benefits from the irrigation project, e.g., expanded production, diversification into new crops like alfalfa, sugar beets and potatoes. North Dakota authorities talk eagerly in theoretical terms of increasing the annual wheat crop in the irrigated region by 185% and the average farm income from the present $6,388 to $9,000, $11,000, and maybe more. Summing it up, North Dakotans hope that the clattering work along the Missouri will bring them a new security against boom and the bust of drought--or, as one farmer put it, "Social security before 65."

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