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Before irrigation, the main crop in the Modesto area was wheat. ". . .the Modesto District was practically one wheat field of 82,000 acres," according to a 1920 Modesto Chamber booklet. | ||||||||||||
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Irrigation: Water Wealth
Thirteen years of litigation delayed the advent of irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley. It was a long time to wait until the dams and canals could be built to help provide water for new crops to be grown in the Modesto area. It seems odd now, as homes spring up everywhere on the once fertile soil; as it becomes more difficult to find actual orchards that have not been cut down so that a subdivision can rise where peaches and almonds once grew. Yet, in 1893, when the La Grange Dam was built at a cost of $543,164, it heralded an age of bounty for the Modesto District. | ||||||||||||
La Grange Dam -- Once called "the Niagara Falls of the West!" | ||||||||||||
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Even with the construction of the dam, water was not "turned into the district until 1903." The Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts had been formed in 1887 as a result of the Wright Law "which provided a method of irrigation then new and untried in California," according to Sol P. Elias in "Stories of Stanislaus." The Wright Law "would enable a fixed and definite majority to form an organization that would possess the power to construct an adequate system of irrigation."
Passed in 1887, it provided the structure under which the MID and TID were formed and given the power to build the dams and canals necessary for the development of the irrigation system in the Modesto and Turlock areas. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with the irrigationists and so, for years, the enforcement of the Wright Law and the building of the system was stymied in the courts. Elias says that passage of this law did not complete the victory of the irrigationists. "Fifteen more years of effort, of litigation, of depression, and of suspense were yet necessary for the full realization of the hopes of the first advocates of communal irrigation."