The Map of Water Beneath the Yakima Valley
A geological survey party returns from months across Yakima, Kittitas and Douglas counties with a precise verdict: Moxee is the one reliable artesian belt, and much of the rest of the region may have to depend on ditches.
Professor Kooaell, Samuel Storrow and John Golden have returned from the geological survey on which they have been engaged for the past several months. They have been over Yakima, Kittitas and Douglas counties and as far north as Lake Chelan. They find that the only well-defined artesian belt is the Moxee, extending about a mile beyond Barrel Springs. Small basins were also found on the reservation and the Wenas, but in both instances the land was low and susceptible of irrigation by ditches. No artesian basins were found in Kittitas or Douglas counties, and as to an artesian strata in the Wide Hollow section there is a difference of opinion. The Moxee basin breaks on the south from Snipes Mountain to the Selah.
“They find that the only well-defined artesian belt is the Moxee, extending about a mile beyond Barrel Springs.”
In 1892, artesian water helped decide which Yakima Valley land could be settled and irrigated; today the same questions of water rights and aquifer health still shape local agriculture. The survey’s confidence in a single reliable belt near Moxee shows how long the valley’s future has depended on knowing exactly where the water is.
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