The Desert Blooms in Mozee Valley
A bold irrigation syndicate strikes an artesian well, promising to transform 200,000 acres of arid Washington land into a fertile paradise.
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The great enterprise of the people of this state is daily leading to new developments. One of the most recent noteworthy instances is the success of the syndicate formed a few months ago to reclaim arid lands in Yakima county. The company bought large tracts of land in the Mozee valley and set to work to bore an artesian well. Despite a layer of basaltic rock that discouraged many geologists, they found an apparently inexhaustible volume of water at a depth of 400 feet. It overflows through a six-inch pipe, forming a new river that flows twelve miles to the Yakima. This discovery will lead to the speedy reclamation of 200,000 acres of now-desert land.
“The desert, under patient toil and skill, has been transformed into a garden.”
The quest for water in the high desert of the Yakima Valley remains a foundational, if contentious, narrative in Washington history. While the era's 'syndicates' viewed this as a triumph of progress, modern observers recognize the immense ecological shifts these irrigation projects initiated, turning vast shrub-steppe ecosystems into the agricultural hub we see today.
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