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 that prosperity.
“We can’t be satisfied this time with simply replacing broken down material,’ he said. “It is our policy when flumes break down to replace them with permanent ditches. We’ve got to keep water flowing onto the prairie.”
And all the time the arguments were going on, folks were getting hotter and hotter under their collars, and the numbers of acres receiving water was getting less and less until, in 1950, the District discontinued operations altogether.
After another year the mess was straightened out. Folks got back to loving one another, and it was possible once more to get a clear title to prairie land and banks started lending money again to Yelm folks.