About 1863 the first dry-farm experiment of any consequence occurred in Utah. A number of emigrants of Scandinavian descent had settled in what is now known as Bear River City, and had turned upon their farms the alkali water of Malad Creek, and naturally the crops failed. In desperation the starving settlers plowed up the sagebrush land, planted grain, and awaited results. To their surprise, fair yields of grain were obtained, and since that day dry-farming has been an established practice in that portion of the Great Salt Lake Valley. A year or two later, Christopher Layton, a pioneer who helped to build both Utah and Arizona, plowed up land on the famous Sand Ridge between Salt Lake City and Ogden and demonstrated that dry-farm wheat could be grown successfully on the deep sandy soil which the pioneers had held to be worthless for agricultural purposes. Since that day the Sand Ridge has been famous as a dry-farm district, and Major J. W. Powell, who saw the ripened fields of grain in the hot dry sand, was moved upon to make special mention of them in his volume on the "Arid Lands of Utah," published in 1879. About this time, perhaps a year or two later, Joshua Salisbury and George L. Farrell began dry-farm experiments in the famous Cache Valley, one hundred miles north of Salt Lake City. After some years of experimentation, with numerous failures these and other pioneers established the practice of dry-farming in Cache Valley, which at present is one of the most famous dry-farm sections in the United States. In Tooele County, Just south of Salt Lake City, dry-farming was practiced in 1877--how much earlier is not known. In the northern Utah counties dry-farming assumed proportions of consequence only in the later '70's and early '80's. During the '80's it became a thoroughly established and extensive business practice in the northern part of the state. California, which was settled soon after Utah, began dry-farm experiments a little later than Utah. The available information indicates that the first farming without irrigation in California began in the districts of somewhat high precipitation. As the population increased, the practice was pushed away from the mountains towards the regions of more limited rainfall. According to Hilgard, successful dry-farming on an extensive scale has been practiced in California since about 1868. Olin reports that moisture-saving methods were used on the Californian farms as early as 1861. Certainly, California was a close second in originating dry-farming.