Farmers Offered Little Encouragement
(From: Prescott, Edgar. Nisqually Valley News, 1989)
Still there were those who claimed that irrigation had retarded the town’s growth and would eventually lead to its ruination.
They told of waiting helplessly, watching crops dry up, while broken flumes were being repaired. They told of makeshift flumes and rocky ditches in which water drained [...]
Coda: Final Words on Irrigation
The old timers though were pooh-poohing any mention of Yelm’s soil being unproductive and recalling the years before the depression when blackcap berries covered the prairie, and beans grew like mad out of the rocky ground; and Jack Conner, the director of the irrigation company, was looking forward to restoring all [...]
Irrigation
Introduction: Edgar Prescott, a teacher at Yelm High School and a resident of the town, summarized the impact of the irrigation saga in the following section of his memoir on file at the Washington State Historical Society.
But we were thinking more in terms of a house that was sitting up on a solid foundation, one [...]
At American Lake they are preparing for 6000 men on 70,000 acres. So you see Tacoma will be booming soon. They are building 3 boats in Olympia and several more under contract. They will cost $280,000 each. I presume you’ll buy a liberty bond. “Everybody’s doing it!” The Dupont powder works is all up. Yelm [...]
“Well the Nisqually is flowing thro’ Yelm and the millenium is fast approaching, in the minds of the promoters. All prospective millionaires. They are holding land at $200 per. There is a family on the Lake place but I don’t know what arrangements Lee made with them.” (Letter from J.C. Conine April 27, 1917)
I’ll sure [...]
Olympians will throng to Yelm Ditch Opening
Chamber of Commerce Obtains Autos for Excursion to Ceremony at Irrigation Canal
Olympia automobile excursionists will leave from the Chamber of Commerce this morning at 9 o’clock for Yelm, where the Yelm Irrigation company will hold the formal opening of its $100,000 Thurston county project.
Delegations from towns and cities in [...]
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R.D. White, of Yelm, has filed notice, as agent of the Yelm Irrigation Company, of intention to appropriate 2,000 cubic feet of water per second from the Nisqually River, for irrigation purposes on Yelm Prairie. With the appropriation of the water rights it is apparent that all details have been perfected and one of the [...]
Results of Irrigation
Yelm, Wash., July 18, 1911
Do you know where Squim is (spelled Sequim) too? Well, it is in the eastern part of Clallam County, on the entrance from the Sound to the Straits of Fuca. On the 5th of July, after the Carnival of Nations, I took a boat and landed at Sequim at [...]
IRRIGATION PUTS YELM ON MAP
Nisqually Plains Thrive When Water Projects Proves Big Success
News Tribune June 17, 1932(?)
By Elmer K. Fristoe News Tribune Staff Correspondent at Yelm
YELM, June 17.–Stretching southerly from Tacoma, through Pierce and Thurston counties, lie the Nisqually Plains, essentially a wide, gently rolling, open prairie country, but with enough timber in patches [...]
