The Huntley Irrigation Project: Harnessing the Water of the Yellowstone River

By editor

Worden, Yellowstone County, Montana

When Captain William Clark floated down the Yellowstone River back in 1806, he saw a land that was “rich in game and resources,” which was a polite way of saying it was full of critters and promise, but not exactly ready for a plow. The valley was a wide, semi-arid plain that didn’t naturally lend itself to farming unless you were willing to coax the water out of the Yellowstone River with some serious elbow grease and engineering. It took a while for folks to figure out that farming this land was less a matter of luck and more a matter of harnessing water.

By the turn of the 20th century, the United States government, flush with Progressive Era confidence and cash, decided to tackle the problem with what they called “reclamation projects.” The Huntley Irrigation Project, which threw open its gates in 1907, was the second such federally funded irrigation effort under the Reclamation Act of 1902. This act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt, was designed to bring dry Western lands into agricultural production by building canals, reservoirs, and other waterworks. Roosevelt himself was fond of saying the West needed “dams, ditches, and irrigation” if it was ever going to feed the nation.

The Huntley Project was not some small-time local fiddle-faddle. It covered thousands of acres and divided the land into 582 farm units -- each 40 acres of pretty dry ground that, until then, had been mostly grazing land or reservation territory. These units were up for grabs, and the demand was fierce. According to historical records, there were 5,491 registrations for those first 582 units. That’s nearly ten hopeful farmers for every 40-acre plot. You could say the idea of irrigated farming in Montana was about as popular as a gold strike--except with less pickaxe and more plow.

The project was centered near Worden, just west of Huntley, in Yellowstone County. It involved diverting water from the Yellowstone River into a network of canals and ditches that spread out over the valley. The system was engineered by the Bureau of Reclamation, which had learned from its first project down in Wyoming’s Shoshone Valley. The Huntley canal alone was about 17 miles long, and the entire irrigation network covered some 45,000 acres.

One of the more colorful figures involved in the planning and construction was a Bureau engineer named Frederick H. Newell, who later remarked on the project’s scale: “The work undertaken at Huntley was more than a mere local improvement; it was a demonstration of the power of irrigation to settle arid lands.” That’s a fine way to put it if you want to sound official, but for the farmers who signed up, it meant turning scrubby sagebrush and dust into something that could grow sugar beets and wheat.

Sugar beets were the cash crop that paved the way for Huntley’s economic life. After the irrigation system brought water to their fields, farmers planted sugar beets that were harvested each fall. These beets were hauled to beet dumps--large collection points--before being shipped by rail to sugar factories, often as far away as Billings or even further east. It was a labor-intensive process involving horses, tractors, and plenty of sweat. A 1916 Mogul 10-20 tractor, still on display at the Huntley Irrigation Project Museum, was among the first mechanized tools to break the soil with a gang plow, a device that could turn multiple furrows at once. Before that, the farming was done mostly with horse-drawn implements, including combines that took days to harvest what a modern machine would finish in hours.

The transition from horse power to machine power was gradual and sometimes reluctant. One local farmer, John W. Smith, wrote in a 1915 letter to a Montana agricultural journal, “There’s a stubbornness to the land here, and to the men who work it, but with water and the newfangled steam tractors, we might just pull through.” And pull through they did, though not without setbacks. The irrigation canals had to be maintained constantly to keep the water flowing, and the settlers had to contend with dry spells, floods, and the occasional failure of the system.

Another interesting wrinkle was the social dynamic of the project. The land was formerly tribal territory belonging to the Crow Nation and other tribes, and the federal government’s policies shifted from reservation to allotment to open farming in a few decades. The Huntley Project was part of a broader push to settle the West with small-scale farmers, a political and economic move designed to break up large ranches and tribal lands alike. The farmers who came to Huntley were mostly immigrants and second-generation settlers, many of them from Scandinavia or Eastern Europe, who brought with them farming knowledge and a fierce work ethic.

The Huntley Project was also deeply tied to the railroad. The Northern Pacific and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads ran lines nearby, providing the essential means to get crops to market. Without railroads, the beets and wheat would have been stuck in the dirt. The railroads had their own reasons to push for irrigation: more farms meant more customers and more freight. The intertwining of rail, irrigation, and agriculture was a powerful engine for settlement and profit.

Despite the enthusiasm, the project was not without controversy. Some critics argued that the 40-acre farm units were too small to be truly viable, especially in a region where irrigation and infrastructure costs were high. Others pointed out that the project’s costs ballooned beyond initial estimates--over $3 million by 1912, a hefty sum for the time--and that the settlers often struggled to pay back the government loans that financed their land and equipment.

Still, the Huntley Irrigation Project transformed the Yellowstone Valley from a place of uncertain potential into one of steady production. By 1920, the valley was supplying significant quantities of sugar beets and wheat to national markets, contributing to Montana's agricultural economy in a way no one had imagined just decades before. Farmers, engineers, and railroad men had combined their efforts, using water as the key to unlock the land’s promise.

Today, the Huntley Irrigation Project Museum, located at 770 Railroad Highway in Huntley, preserves the tools, equipment, and stories from those early years. Walking through the museum, you can see the old farm implements, the horse-drawn plows, and the early tractors that helped turn water into wealth. It’s a place to consider how modern technology and government planning joined with human grit to reshape a landscape.

In the words of an early project report, “The success of the Huntley Project can be attributed to the determination of the farmers who worked the land, and the community spirit that bound them together.” While that sounds like a line from a booster’s brochure, it’s hard to argue with the facts: thousands of acres irrigated, hundreds of families settled, and a valley that went from dust to harvest in a generation.

See also

• The Huntley Irrigation Project at Worden, Yellowstone County
• [Lewis and Clark