About this time, perhaps a year or two later, Joshua Salisbury and George L. Farrell began dry-farm experiments in the famous Cache Valley, one hundred miles north of Salt Lake City.  After some years of experimentation, with numerous failures these and other pioneers established the practice of dry-farming in Cache Valley, which at present is one of the most famous dry-farm sections in the United States.  In Tooele County, Just south of Salt Lake City, dry-farming was practiced in 1877—­how much earlier is not known.  In the northern Utah counties dry-farming assumed proportions of consequence only in the later ’70’s and early ’80’s.  During the ’80’s it became a thoroughly established and extensive business practice in the northern part of the state.

California, which was settled soon after Utah, began dry-farm experiments a little later than Utah.  The available information indicates that the first farming without irrigation in California began in the districts of somewhat high precipitation.  As the population increased, the practice was pushed away from the mountains towards the regions of more limited rainfall.  According to Hilgard, successful dry-farming on an extensive scale has been practiced in California since about 1868.  Olin reports that moisture-saving methods were used on the Californian farms as early as 1861.  Certainly, California was a close second in originating dry-farming.

The Columbia Basin was settled by Mareus Whitman near Walla Walla in 1836, but farming did not gain much headway until the railroad pushed through the great Northwest about 1880.  Those familiar with the history of the state of Washington declare that dry-farming was in successful operation in isolated districts in the late ’70’s.  By 1890 it was a well-established practice, but received a serious setback by the financial panic of 1892-1893.  Really successful and extensive dry-farming in the Columbia Basin began about 1897.  The practice of summer fallow had begun a year or two before.  It is interesting to note that both in California and Washington there are districts in which dry-farming has been practiced successfully under a precipitation of about ten inches whereas in Utah the limit has been more nearly twelve inches.

In the Great Plains area the history of dry-farming Is hopelessly lost in the greater history of the development of the eastern and more humid parts of that section of the country.  The great influx of settlers on the western slope of the Great Plains area occurred in the early ’80’s and overflowed into eastern Colorado and Wyoming a few years later.  The settlers of this region brought with them the methods of humid agriculture and because of the relatively high precipitation were not forced into the careful methods of moisture conservation that had been forced upon Utah, California, and the Columbia Basin.  Consequently, more failures in dry-farming are reported from those early days in the Great Plains area than