Benton City Historical Information

Irrigation In Early Kiona-Benton City

(Compiled by Diane L. Leist)

Irrigation was essential to the development of early Kiona and Benton City.  In the Kiona-Benton area, there were both private and federal irrigation projects.  The private projects were either an individual’s waterwheel to lift water from the Yakima to irrigate the landowner’s small acreage on a farmstead such as John Kennedy’s orchards in the bend of the Yakima.  Or these private ventures were backed directly or indirectly by the railroads.  

Locally, private projects were organized by an agreement formed between a number of local users to irrigate several farms such as in the case of the Prowell Ditch. The Prowell ditch was on land owned by Courtland Prowell and William Bauer with water rights filed under the Kiona Water Supply company which included David McAlpin as a trustee.  Prowell intended to water not just the peninsular piece of land inside the bend of the river, but also pipe it across the Yakima to Prowell’s homestead bordering the east side of the Yakima. After Bauer’s (1894) and Prowell’s (1905) deaths, David McAlpin and sons filed for water rights. The McAlpin families accessed water from the river using the water wheel at the site of the old Prowell Ditch, but used the temporarily dry Kiona Ditch to deliver water to their interests.

Another example of a local private project is the Yakima Irrigating and Improvement Company (Y. I. & I.)  The Y.I.& I. was formed in 1891 and began work in January of 1892.  The company was headed by a former Northern Pacific (NP) railroad engineer, H.S. Huson. Huson was responsible for surveying the route of the NP railroad and was the principal engineer during the NP construction through the Yakima Valley.  The Y. I. & I. bought lands formerly owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad and platted the acreage to small lots along the north side of the river.  All of the lots in the Y. I. & I subdivision in North Kiona were sold to former Horse Heaven homesteaders and became the lush irrigated farmsteads the area was known for in the early 1900s.

Between 1892 and 1910, the Y. I. & I. changed ownership and management multiple times. By 1907, the system was often just referred to as the Kiona ditch.  In 1917 this system became, as it is known today, the Kiona Irrigation District.  The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the waterwheels removed.  A decade and a half later, the 1996 flood caused extensive damage to the intake, flumes and canal banks.  The Kiona irrigation canal underwent a major overhaul bringing the district compliant with environmental standards of water conservation. With the installation of a positive-pressure delivery system with water pumped from a source miles downstream of the original in-take damn water is delivered via pipeline to all users.  

The early Benton Irrigation District (BID) was originally a private system that pumped water via a diversion dam from the same location as the Kiona Canal.  A pumping station lifted the water to the Highlands area on the table above the Benton townsite.  The Benton Irrigation was to water the 2000 acres of Highlands on the bench above the newly-platted Benton City.   These table lands lie north of the Yakima River and are were bounded by the southern slope of the Rattlesnake to the north. The promotional company fostered some development of these modest 10-acre tracts by installing laterals and planting small acreages to alfalfa and orchard.  

Within the decade, the once private BID became part of a federal reclamation project.  Through the efforts of S. J. Harrison, the BID joined the Sunnyside Division of the Yakima Project as one of its districts and improvements occurred between 1910 and 1916.   Old time residents referred to this change as the “Sunnyside Extension”.  Locally, this brought an additional 2000 acres under irrigation through a dependable federal program.  When completed, Harrison organized a large celebration in Benton City with an estimated 2000 guests including reclamation officials and the current governor of Washington. Benton Irrigation saw little change from that time until conversions began in 2009 to a pressurized, underground system compliant with current methods of water use and conservation.