By William "Bill" Peck

In the 1930s and 1940s, Kirkland Creek at Yava was actually a stream. Water filled its bed and a good ditch of it irrigated the several tiny farms that filled the valley. Hay was the main crop although grain was raised to feed the horses that some still used as draft animals to plow and rake hay. Horses pulled the mowers and side-delivery rakes that windrowed the fresh-cut hay. Haycocks abounded put there by sulkey rakes that dumped it into piles to cure. The cured hay was hauled to the overshot stacker with buck rakes that literally threw the hay onto the stacktop where hands arranged it carefully to shed the rain. 

Joe Anderson and Raymond Percy leased most of the Yava Valley farmland in 1947 and raised hogs. Raymond was the tractor driver and Joe, the jack-of-all trades, fed the swine and butchered the porkers for market. It wasn't a very efficient operation even by the standards of the day. Consider that a mere 200 hogs a year were the product of farming on 200 acres. The barley fed the hogs wasn't rolled or ground, and by Joe's own words, "Oh, we don't grind the grain none. By the time it goes through the third hawg, its purty well ground up. The hawgs have ta go on the run 'cause there's always another'n ahind it waitin' fer a warm meal. By the third hawg, the grain's soft enough ter digest."

Farming was on the way out even in that early day. When the floods came with summer thunderstorms, the earthen dam thrown up by all the members of the ditch on the river, went down the creek in one fell swoop. Everybody canceled plans for the next couple of days and gathered at the dam site with their motley equipment, horses and fresnos, old Poppin' Johnny tractor of Percy's and Anderson's, shovels, crowbars, etc, until the river was re-diverted backing into the ditch. Since the floods tended to recur at frequent intervals in the monsoon season, it was an on-going job. I remember sitting beneath a mesquite exhausted after frantically putting the dam back in an effort to beat the rising water only to hear a thunder crack upstream a mile or so. We watched helplessly as the river rose and crested the dam. In thirty seconds, it was gone as was most of the available material to build another one. 

And there was the three miles of ditch to clean. Joe Anderson would ride the vee-ditcher pulled by the Poppin' Johnny, driven by Ray Percy. Joe was never timid about getting things done. The ditch bank was covered with Bermuda grass sod and willows that the ditcher had difficulty managing. Joe was riding the ditchers on a two by twelve plank that he had affixed so he could gain leverage from his paltry 140 pounds to help the blade bite the sod. The ditcher hit a concealed stump launching Joe through the air completely over the tractor were he came to rest flat on his back in the ditch. Ray stopped the tractor astraddle of Joe and glared down at him. "Joe! You have the dambdest habit o'jest appearin'." 

Today, Kirkland Creek rarely flows at all on the surface. Pumping up-river at Skull Valley, Kirkland, Peeples Valley, et al, has depleted the water table. Every little house-well helps. 

So what does the future portend? It is most likely that growth will continue. So, where will the water come from? The sky! 

Though water harvesting was the method of choice in the past, it fell into disuse due to disease that was associated with bad water. This was caused by poor collection and storage systems that allowed rats and other varmints a place to drown. Actually, the shallow dug wells that replaced them were more dangerous than the cisterns that they displaced. Rainwater can be and is the most wholesome and delightful water of all when handled properly. Ask any woman who has washed her hair in some. No bathroom stains, good coffee! There are few salts or other contaminants such as sewage to foul it. If filtered through a sand filter as it comes off the roof before it enters the cistern, it is pretty much clean. The secret to storing water is to isolate it from the air as much as possible and totally prevent light and critters from entering the storage area. Without light there is no algae. Few organisms that cause disease can survive for over a couple of days without nutrient. The longer the water stands and decants, the clearer and purer it becomes. Water does not become "stale". 

Our family has used rainwater for household use for some years. Even during the dry years we have recently been through we have gotten by solely from the rainwater from our roofs. Initially we didn't drink the water, but now we filter it through activated charcoal filters at the kitchen sink and find it equal to reverse-osmosis drinking water. If you're really a health stick-in-the-mud, you can easily dump a small amount of chlorine bleach into the cistern. 

For your information, 1200 sq. ft. of roof will field about 1000 gallons of water per inch of rain. That's about 15,000 gallons per year in our area. That's a small roof and a lot of water! Bottoms up! 

(William Peck is a long time resident of Hillside. If you are interested in writing short histories of Yavapai County and the region for the Courier, contact the Museum Archives at 928.445.3122) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (ra106pb). Reuse only by permission.
In the 1930s the Robinson Ranch in the Kirkland Valley area used this fancy "irrigating machine." That still did not mean that the ditches did not have to be dug out or that dams did not have to be protected from flood. Irrigation was hard work.