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MAVERICK COUNTY IRRIGATION CANAL. In 1904 Louis Dolch, in partnership with
a rancher named Dobrowolski, cleared 400 acres of brush south of Eagle Pass
and began to irrigate crops of onions and figs with water pumped from the Rio
Grande. Without irrigation, truck farming was not possible in this arid climate,
which had an annual rainfall of twenty-five inches or less. Though small-scale
irrigation projects had begun in the area as early as 1901, the success of this
larger project proved the region could be excellent farmland if adequate water
was made available. Soon the company of Goldfrank and Frank opened the Indio
Ranch for settlement; the land was irrigated and planted in alfalfa and cotton.
There were eight irrigated farms in the county by 1909, totaling some 1,166
acres.
By 1885 Scottish-born rancher Patrick W. Thomson had come up with a project
to build a huge gravity-flow irrigation network that would draw water from the
Rio Grande. He formed the Eagle Pass Irrigation Co. and hired government engineer
F. B. Maltby to survey the site and estimate the costs of the project. In 1889
Thomson began work; he completed three miles of canal before the project was
stalled by lack of funds. Subsequently Thomson tried to raise money by forming
a company of English investors known as The South-West Texas Water Supply and
Land Co., Ltd. He acquired permits from the Mexican and United States governments
and asked an expert, Robert Wallace of the University of Edinburgh, to analyze
the soils of Maverick County and the feasibility of the project. Professor Wallace's
report was favorable; however, Thomson's financial negotiations were thwarted
by the outbreak of the Boer War and the subsequent economic panic. Until he
died (1910), Thomson continued to seek support for the irrigation project. The
project was not revived, however, until 1926.
In that year Capt. W. A. Fitch, then nearly seventy, started promoting Patrick
Thomson's canal project. Fitch, who had moved to Eagle Pass from San Antonio
in 1882, also drafted the efforts of his son, Maverick county judge W. O. Fitch.
Their work and that of other local leaders led to the organization of the Maverick
County Water Control and Improvement District No. 1. More than $4,000,000 in
bonds were floated to finance the irrigation project. Judge Don Alfonso Blissqv
was asked to help get the permit that would allow sufficient water to be drawn
from the Rio Grande to irrigate as much as 60,000 acres. The engineer was W.
L. Rockwell. In April 1932 a large gravity-irrigation canal went into operation,
bringing Quemado Valley land under extensive cultivation for the first time.
The canal drew water from a Rio Grande intake forty miles from Eagle Pass. By
March 1938 the canal serviced areas as far away as El Indio, south of Eagle
Pass. A total of 34,500 acres in the area had been brought under gravity irrigation
by the 1940s; by then an additional 6,500 acres could be irrigated by pumping
water from the canal. By the early 1970s the main canal was 108 miles long and
fed more than 200 miles of lateral canals. At that time the main canal was the
largest of its type in the state. Maverick County farmers could produce three
crops a year on land irrigated by the canal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eagle Pass Daily Guide, March 31, 1932. Ben E. Pingenot, Historical
Highlights of Eagle Pass and Maverick County (Eagle Pass, Texas: Eagle Pass
Chamber of Commerce, 1971). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University
of Texas at Austin.
Ben E. Pingenot