Every Farmer Took the Free Water and Laughed at His Well — 15 Years Later He Was the Only One Left – In the spring of 1972, a man from the federal government drove into Sheridan County, Kansas, in a white Ford sedan with a briefcase full of promises. His name was Richard Tully, and he worked for the Bureau of Reclamation. He had a sunburn, a firm handshake, and a presentation he’d given 47 times in 47 counties across the Great Plains.
The presentation was always the same. The message was always the same. water. Specifically, the Ogalala aquifer, the largest underground reservoir in North America, stretching from South Dakota to Texas, holding enough water to fill Lake Huron. The aquifer sat beneath western Kansas like a hidden ocean. And the federal government had a plan to tap it. Center pivot irrigation. You’ve seen them. Those giant sprinkler systems that roll across a field on wheels, turning a quarter mile circle of dry prairie into a green paradise.
The technology had been around since the 50s. But in 1972, the government was offering something new. Subsidized loans to install them, low interest rates, easy terms, and water rights so cheap they might as well have been free. Richard Tully held his meeting at the Sheridan County Community Center on a Tuesday evening in April. Every farmer in the county came. 43 men in work boots and caps sitting in folding chairs, looking at charts and diagrams of center pivot systems and projected corn yields.
The numbers were staggering. Dryland wheat in western Kansas yielded about 25 bushels an acre in a good year. Irrigated corn yielded 140. The math was simple. Irrigation multiplied your income by four or five times. The cost of a center pivot system about $35,000 for a quarter section could be paid off in three good years. Gentlemen, Richard Tully said, standing behind a folding table with his charts. The water is already there. It’s been sitting under your feet for 10,000 years.
