Farmers Take On the Pend Oreille With a Dike — and No Bonds
A railroad contracting firm agrees to build Calispel Diking District No. 1 for warrants instead of cash, giving 6,500 acres of bottomland one season to prove it can beat the high water.
The railroad contracting firm of Jones & Onesrud, which last year made a considerable part of the grade for the I. W. N. extension, has taken the contract to build the dike for Calispel Diking District No. 1, and is now assembling an outfit preparatory to starting the work.
Diking District No. 1 comprises about 6,500 acres north of Cusick. The matter of diking has been in the courts for some time and only recently had all court matters been completed. This was accomplished too late to permit of advertising and selling bonds to raise money for the work and get the work done this spring. Messrs. Jones & Onesrud have simplified matters and done away with the necessity of issuing bonds by agreeing to do the work and take warrants of the district in payment therefor.
The I. W. N. has granted the district the right to use its railroad grade as a part of its dike, and the road is also putting in a concrete fill across Trimble creek, which the district will fit with gates to keep out the overflow waters of the Pend Oreille. The contract for the dike calls for its completion by June 15, the date at which the Pend Oreille high water usually reaches the crest. Farmers in the district are putting most of their land under plow this year and are confident of saving their crop.
“Messrs. Jones & Onesrud have simplified matters and done away with the necessity of issuing bonds by agreeing to do the work and take warrants of the district in payment therefor.”
Pend Oreille County's diking and drainage districts still exist, still levy assessments, and still argue over who pays for flood protection along the Pend Oreille. The 1910 workaround — a contractor fronting the cost for district warrants because the bonds could not be sold in time — is a familiar rural-infrastructure story dressed in different clothes: the water does not wait for the financing to close.
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