At the present time (January, 1908), the population of this Colony is about 200. Nearly all the land is occupied in one way or another, either by colonists who own, or partially own, their land, or by renters, who are also called colonists. Several homes are vacant, but it is expected that they will be filled by renters before the Spring season opens. The little village consists of several stores, a blacksmith shop, a substantial railroad depot, a post office, a small hotel and a school house. A good many of the homes are built of stone, quarried on the Colony, and present a good appearance. Up on the higher land is situated a large stone structure, built by the colonists at an expense to the Army of $18,000.00, and first used as an orphanage, then as a sanitorium, and now abandoned. Irrigation ditches with a good flow of water are in evidence, and preparations for draining the land are under way. That this is necessary is forced upon us by the many white patches scattered here and there where the water, having evaporated, has left the destructive alkali salt on the surface of the ground. When we come to consider the other Farm Colony, Ft. Romie, situated at Soledad, Cal., in the beautiful Salinas Valley, we receive a more favorable impression, although we find that the Colony here has had many difficulties with which to contend. The Colony is smaller than that at Ft. Amity, but the land is better. The original 500 acres has been increased by the addition of a lease of 150 acres with the option of buying. In the year 1898, eighteen families were taken from the poor of San Francisco and placed upon the Colony, but unforeseen conditions prevailed, and, as a result, but one of these families remains to-day.[71] The great mistake was made of settling colonists upon land which needed irrigation, before that irrigation was provided. This mistake was brought out the more vividly, in that the three first years of the Colony's existence were years of drought, bringing evil to most parts of the State, and especially to that land which, like the Colony land, only received a slight rain-fall at best. The result of the first years of this experiment, then, was an abandoning of the land by the colonists, and a loss to the Army of $27,000.00.