Two weeks ago, the sun stood still. June 21—the solstice—marked the year’s longest light. I’ve started calling it Great Feeder Day.
It’s not on any calendar except my own. But it should be. Because that same date in 1895 marked something rare and extraordinary: the day the Great Feeder opened.
If you’ve read my novel, The Meadowlark, you’ll know the story. The Great Feeder was an audacious irrigation innovation, dug by hand and by hope, breaking the banks of the Snake River and allowing new water to reach the dry, volcanic fields across the Snake River Valley (located near Ririe, Idaho). It changed the land—and the people—forever.
“On June 22, 1895, the Great Feeder was ready for operation. With another hot year already underway, a thick covering of dust hung in the air, replenished by every cart and buggy as people arrived. Tufts of cottonwood seed floated through the air like snow as over a thousand people gathered to watch as the final embankment was blasted away to allow river water to pour into the new channel.”
— The Meadowlark
There were speeches, songs, and a dynamite blast that went off early, sending the crowd scrambling for cover. Even so, the moment held.
“Webster shouted as he spoke so all could hear. ‘Capitalists dubbed this country a howling sagebrush flat. A group of honest sons and daughters of the soil have removed that stigma—we have proved them wrong. We have built the grandest piece of irrigation work ever accomplished in the West—in the world!’”
— The Meadowlark
The Great Feeder wasn’t just an engineering achievement. It was a covenant—a promise between people and place. That if they worked together, bent their backs and bore the dust, something good would come of it.
My own family lived downstream of that promise and was blessed by this for generations. And while the crowd is gone and the dynamite long silent, the water still runs. How soon we forget what got us to where we are today.
That’s why I mark the day. Quietly, but on purpose. Because remembering what people can build together—especially when no one thinks they can—is always worth honoring.
Here’s to Great Feeder Day. And to what still flows.
