SOURCES OF WATER SUPPLY IN KANSAS.
The soil of western Kansas is from three to fifteen inches in depth. Below that lies a stratum of sand, perhaps fifty feet thick, and beneath that, a bed of clay. This sand it is that contans the water for irrigation purposes. If a well is sunk on the prairie lands thirty, forty, or fifty feet deep, abundant water is struck. A centrifugal pump, belted to one of the traction engines that every farm must have, will bring the water to the surface, and from such a well at an experimental station was recently pumped 260 gallons a minute. Presumably this water in the subsoil sand seeps through that stratum clear from the Rocky mountains. This vast sand reservoir also retains, when once the hard soil above is broken, the water that soaks through from the spring rainfalls—water that formerly ran off in surfacedrainage into the flooded creeks and rivers.
The soil of western Kansas is from three to fifteen inches in depth. Below that lies a stratum of sand, perhaps fifty feet thick, and beneath that, a bed of clay. This sand it is that contans the water for irrigation purposes. If a well is sunk on the prairie lands thirty, forty, or fifty feet deep, abundant water is struck. A centrifugal pump, belted to one of the traction engines that every farm must have, will bring the water to the surface, and from such a well at an experimental station was recently pumped 260 gallons a minute. Presumably this water in the subsoil sand seeps through that stratum clear from the Rocky mountains. This vast sand reservoir also retains, when once the hard soil above is broken, the water that soaks through from the spring rainfalls—water that formerly ran off in surfacedrainage into the flooded creeks and rivers.
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