An Orchard In The Desert

I want to pick up where I left off with my post about our little ghost town. Investors came to this piece of desert and transformed it for a while. The desert has reclaimed what was hers, but the tale of making this arid place bloom for a time is a tale of carrying water.

I wish to quote Ron Marlow here, but I encourage you to read his entire article about the history of this town. It is not long, and can be found here:
http://payettecounty.info/marlow/mesaorchards.html

"Imagine a fruit enterprise so large that it had its own post office, general store, school and a repair shop. This business covered approximately 1400 acres and was managed by J.P. Gray. It started as a land promotion scheme in 1908 by the Weiser Land and Water Company and was headed by a three-man team. It was called "Mesa Orchards." Small tracts of hillside land were sold for apple growing. The 10 acre lots sold for $500 an acre. Getting water to the land was the problem, as the nearest water supply was the Weiser River - miles away. Engineers constructed a small dam on the Middle Fork of the Weiser River for the Mesa Company water needs. Each buyer had 10 shares of stock in the Orchards Water Company."

"Six miles of flume was constructed, four feet deep and six feet wide with two inverted siphons. Some 36 inch pipes were used. The venture was costly and kept a maintenance crew constantly cleaning trash and debris from the water system."

The flume is still visible, barely. The labor, the expense, all crumbling to dust. In this picture, you can see what sort of looks like a road cut, across the face of 2 ridges. That is where the flume crossed a saddle to get out of the Middle Fork Weiser River drainage and flowing toward the orchards of Mesa.

The road along the river is normally closed through the winter, but it has been a very mild year so we ventured on, hoping to get a picture of what is left of the headgate of the flume. Here we are nearing our goal and you can see the remnants of the flume, now at roughly road level, across the river.

This is where the water was once dammed. From this lovely mountain river, it was flumed to the desert to grow apples.

Yet solving the water issue was not enough to keep the orchard viable. It required CONSTANT maintenance. The local legend has it that the last man to maintain it worked for old Mr. Ball, the family mentioned at the end of the article I linked. Mr. Ball was killed in an horrific tragedy, and the family and their workers were in shocked grief for weeks. When the man who kept the flume running at last went to check it, it was beyond repair. It was made of wood, and letting it dry out for a couple weeks was the last tragedy for the ill fated apple orchard.

All photos are my own. Thank you to @fishyculture for her assistance with my post, living with a word nerd has its perks!