The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 43, July 1939 - April, 1940 Page: 78
576 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
placed in charge of farm employees at an attractive wage. In
1913, these improved farms were placed on sale at one per cent
down and fifteen years to pay the balance.15
If Post City had been located at the Commissary above the
Cap Rock, as originally planned, an inexhaustible supply of water
could have been obtained from wells on the premises. But the
City was located in the breaks below the plains, where well water
contained such a large amount of gypsum as to render it unfit
for use. Post considered at length how he might convey a life-
giving stream from sources beyond the Cap Rock. At first, he
planned a tunnel beneath the Cap Rock to contact the water-
bearing sands of the plains, but engineering difficulties and enor-
mous cost forced the abandonment of the novel scheme. Instead,
he set a battery of windmills on the plains pumping water into
four-inch mains that led to a reservoir below the Cap Rock and
a hundred feet above the level of the town. From this reservoir
water mains led into the town. Another huge concrete reservoir
with a capacity of a million gallons was constructed at a cost of
fifty thousand dollars. From the mains, smaller laterals led to
business establishments and residences in Post City. The com-
pleted waterworks cost over a quarter of a million dollars."
Post next determined to sink a deep well on the townsite, and
was prepared to drill to a depth of five thousand feet, if necessary.
He hoped to reach oil and minerals as well as usable water. Three
times, after drilling to a depth of eighteen hundred feet, the pipe
of the rotary drill twisted apart. After spending twenty thousand
dollars, the deep-well project was sorrowfully abandoned.17
City water was used by Post to irrigate an experimental garden,
a hundred-acre orchard, and a large nursery, all west of the city
limits, as well as to supply water for trees, shrubs, flowers, and
grass within the townsite. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction he
derived from his colonizing adventure was in seeing beautiful trees
and flowers flourish where only wild prairie grasses had grown
before. He thought unceasingly of trees and flowers that might
be grown, and of the nurture and care of the thousands of varieties
he had planted. Long and detailed letters of instructions con-
veyed his ideas on the subject to his managers. Chinese Elms,
IsPost Records, Minutes, III, 218-232.
16Post Records, Minutes II, p. 64, July 10, 1910.
17Post Records, Minutes II, p. 86, September 25, 1910.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 43, July 1939 - April, 1940, periodical, 1940; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101111/m1/86/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.