George E. Barstow

George Eames Barstow (1849–1924), described as a "capitalist and irrigation pioneer," was a Texas land developer and a member of both the Providence, Rhode Island, common council (four years) and the city's school board (fourteen years), as well as the State Assembly from 1894 to 1896. He was known as "the father of irrigation in the Southwest."

Barstow began his business career at the age of seventeen and eventually "founded, financed or organized" five worsted and paper mills in Rhode Island.

He then turned his attention to the Pecos Valley in Texas, where the Pioneer Canal Company was chartered on September 30, 1889, with Barstow as treasurer. He later served as president of a successor company, the Pecos Valley Land and Irrigation Company.

In 1891 Barstow and other land developers formed a project to promote a town on the Texas and Pacific Railway in western Ward County, Texas. By 1895 the town had taken on the name of Barstow, and Barstow himself moved there from New York City in 1904. He took part in organizing other irrigation and drainage systems through the West.

Barstow, a Republican, wrote pamphlets on varied subjects, including immigration, cooperatives, China-Japan relations and Americanism.

In 1908–09 Barstow was the president of the National Irrigation Congress, the leading organization interested in water projects in the West, and he was in charge of the annual convention in 1909 in Spokane, Washington. A Los Angeles Times reporter wrote about the impending congress that Barstow "has been a prime mover in inducing the federal government to build the systems that will make fertile over 3,000,000 acres of land which once was a desert." In an interview, Barstow predicted that isolated farmhouses would become "a thing of the past" and that farmers would commute from their homes to farms via fast horses or automobiles or interurban streetcars. He added:

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