The company has recently engaged in an irrigation enterprise in the purchase of water-right priorities of the Arkansas River for seventy cubic feet of water per second, at an expense of one million dollars. These rights, which date back to 1860-62, are among the oldest existing, and they insure to the company the uninterrupted and certain possession of the river flow. A court decree enabled them to change the point of division, and they have constructed a new head-gate at Adobe, six miles east of Florence. A canal fifty-eight miles in length is being constructed from Florence to the mills owned by the company. The cost of this canal will be some three quarters of a million. These mills produce over seventy-five thousand tons of iron and steel each month. The manufacturing plant at Minnequa includes blast furnaces, converting works, blooming mills, a merchant iron mill, a hoop and cotton tie mill, a spike factory, a bolt factory, a castings and pipe foundry, with open hearth furnaces, a reversing mill, and many other appliances.
"It must not be supposed, because we find it necessary to practise irrigation in Colorado, that we therefore never have any rains," observed a Coloradoan; "on the contrary, the rains of spring are usually of such abundance as to make the ground in fine condition for ploughing and putting in crops, and we seldom find it necessary to apply water to germinate any kind of seed; only once, in thirteen years' experience at Greeley, were we compelled to resort to irrigation before crops of all kinds were well up and considerably advanced in growth. About the last of May, however, as regularly as the natural periods of summer, autumn, winter, and spring occur in the other states, never varying more than a week in time, these copious rains suddenly cease and give place to light and entirely inadequate local thunder-showers. Now is the accepted time, and all over cultivated Colorado, within a period of not more than two days, every flood-gate is opened and the life-giving current started to flowing on the rapidly parching grain. Corn will endure until later in the season, but all sowed crops must get one thorough application of water within two weeks or become severely injured for the want of it. Day and night the silent current flows on and on, among the fields of grain; not a drop of water nor a moment of time must run to waste until the first irrigation is completed."