TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Back in 1894, congress passed the Carey Act. It would grant each state a million acres of desert land, if that land could be irrigated and farmed within 10 years.
"A lot of people would have gone broke because your farm was worth nothing if you couldn't farm it and you couldn't build on it," said Brian Olmstead, a fourth-generation farmer in Twin Falls.
Twin Falls was prime location for such an endeavor. With local entrepreneurs I.B. Perrine and steel magnate and multi-millionaire Frank Buhl joining together to tap the Snake River and funnel water to farmers.
Tapping into a seemingly endless supply seemed to solve the big problem of how to populate a desert. However, that actually created another problem that farmers could not figure out for years.
Until they did 100 years ago. Most Twin Falls residents don't realize the solution to the problem is still here, about 10 feet under their feet.
There are more than a million acres of irrigated farmland in the magic valley. Without water, Twin Falls, with its combination of cultivation and cul de sacs, wouldn't be like what it is today.
But with it, it almost wasn't either.
Olmstead, like many of his relatives, has lived here all his life. Even so, there were some things about his hometown he didn't know about.
We went with him down into one of the tunnels.
"So, I'd always heard about these myths of the tunnels my whole life," Olmstead said, "and there's a couple spots here that are kind of head bonkers for me but just keep your eyes open. I never really thought it was real until I went to work for the canal company."
He started working with the company 25 years ago. As we wade through the water he explains.
"You always had stories about hobos that lived in them and that there were murderers and everything else," he said, "this one goes about 2000 feet, a little under a half a mile."
The tunnels were not created by chance. They were blasted into the lava rock ... for a reason.
Walking through the tunnel, Olmstead points something out.
"You see that? That's a well that they drilled to bring air into the tunnel," he said.
To understand the reason, you have to go back to the time of his great-grandfather. Who made the magic Valley his home in 1904. Olmstead said they were buying the promise of water. It wasn't just a promise his relative bought into, it was a promise made to a lot of other people.
"It wasn't called the Idaho Trail, they couldn't wait to get outta here cause Oregon had water," Olmstead said.
Twin Falls would get water, when that commitment was kept in 1905. The completion of the Milner Dam on the Snake River, and the subsequent canals, opened the gates for irrigating thousands of acres of future farmland.
Jennifer Hills, the Twin Falls Public Library historian said things changed very quickly when irrigation was introduced.
"If you had been here in 1903 and come back in 1906, it would have seemed like magic to see what was growing in the fields at the time," Hills said.
The problem caused by the irrigation would take a few years to figure out, local historian Jim Gentry said.
"Yeah by 1911 they were aware they had a problem," Gentry said. " I'm kind of fascinated in terms of local history in terms of how problems are dealt with. It was just too much water."
How could that be possible in a high desert landscape of lava rock and sage brush?
When farmers on the south side of the Snake River found ways to bring water to their fields, they assumed what wasn't absorbed by the crops would filter underground and eventually come out the porous canyon walls. Just like it did on the north side. What they didn't realize was just about four feet below the surface was a thick and very solid layer of lava rock.
"It did not drain, the water did not drain the way they had not anticipated and so it created a real problem for them," Gentry said.
Several months into the growing season, the water had nowhere to go but back up.
"So, it just built pressure and pressure and then it just came up, just bubbling up everywhere out through the lava and then up through the soil," Gentry said. "By 1911 the groundwater had risen so high that there were farms just turning into swamps.
At that time, nearly 150-thousand acres around Twin Falls was being used for farming.
A small percentage of which was succumbing to seepage.
"By 1913 there were about 500 acres that could not be cultivated," Gentry said. "210, 500 acres, doesn't seem like a lot, but it kept growing."
Digging drainage ditches and wells, the Twin Falls Canal Company was able to reclaim a few acres at a time. Yet they couldn't keep the drainage problem contained.
"Well, the issue was that in an area, that seemingly had an unlimited amount of water in a good sense, it ended up being an unlimited amount of water in a bad sense in terms of drainage," Gentry said.
"Then in 1924, Burton Smith, the newly named General Manager of the Canal Company, decided to take a different tact with a piece of property just above Rock Creek Canyon," he said.
Smith asked the Canal Company Board for permission to try a tunnel. He was denied, but he did it anyway. Blasts of dynamite shook the city of Twin Falls. Before long, those dry-run reverberations would eventually hit pay dirt.
"When they started blasting back in there, the ground above just went (slurp) and it drained," Gentry said.
With water passing through the sporadic cracks in the rock and the random wells drilled from the surface, the first tunnel would soon drain about a thousand acres of farmland. With 3.2 million gallons a day dropping into Rock Creek Canyon. What proved to be the perfect solution to their problem was made possible because of an experiment by a mutineer manager.
"They had eight tunnels going, I think within a couple of years of that," Gentry said, "and that story is popular cause it fits our sense of western individualism and not letting bureaucracy hold you back haha. Without those tunnels, the land would have been worthless."
That's the tale of how these tunnels pretty much saved Twin Falls.
Circling back to earlier in this story, my photographer Kevin Eslinger and I are with Olmstead down in one of the tunnels.
That first tunnel, known then as the "All Tunnel" because of who owned the property above, became known as the "Fish Hatchery Tunnel" because the water coming out of it was a filtered 58 degrees. The perfect conditions for a fish hatchery, which they built below in Rock Creek Canyon.
It led to dozens more tunnels, more expertly carved over the years, which would feed several other canyons. Like Dry Creek, Dead Man's Gulch, Cedar Draw by Filer and Mud Creek by Buhl. Olmstead said it takes the water about two months into the growing season to work its way into the tunnels.
By the fall, most tunnels are running knee deep. He also said some of that water they can re-deliver to farmers to extend the growing season on low water years.
Olmstead helped Gentry write his new book "The 51 Tunnels That Saved Twin Falls."
In the tunnel, Eslinger followed Olmstead all the way to the end of the Fish Hatchery Tunnel, all 1828 feet of it.
I did not. I prefer more open spaces. But Eslinger did leave me with a camera about 300 feet from the entrance.
While the two of them explore 10 minutes turns to 30, then into 40 minutes. We ended up making it out, and I learned that maybe it's better for me to take the high road.
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