From the 1961 Siskiyou Pioneer—Big Springs Edition
In 1916, Leo Brown and his crew pulled juniper trees across 3,000 acres of the Big Springs project clearing the land with holt Caterpillers to make way for the irrigation systems that would shape the Mayten district.
Brown’s memoir captures a pivotal transition in Siskiyou’s development. He worked for Dwinnell and Harlow, partners in the Mt. Shasta Land & Irrigation Company, who had acquired land from early pioneers. After the partners split, Dwinnell took the Montague reclamation project while Harlow claimed the Big Springs (Junipers) and Grenada projects, eventually establishing the town of Grenada itself.
Brown’s contract was straightforward: remove the trees. What happened afterward—whether water followed to irrigate the cleared land—was beyond his scope. Yet that proved to be the critical question. As Brown observed, water supply fell short, and much of the cleared acreage remained dry even decades later.
The editor’s note confirms some of that land is still not irrigated today.
Brown once had photographs of the pioneer families who first settled this rugged terrain. Those images, if they still exist, would be an invaluable piece of county history.
If you have photos or stories from Siskiyou’s early irrigation era, Siskiyou News would like to hear from you.
#SiskiyouHistory #BigSprings #MaytenDistrict #ThrowbackThursday
