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Title: The Salton Sea: An account of Harriman's fight with the Colorado River

Author: George Kennan

Release date: July 6, 2022 [eBook #68463]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Macmillan Company, 1917

Credits: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SALTON SEA: AN ACCOUNT OF HARRIMAN'S FIGHT WITH THE COLORADO RIVER ***





THE SALTON SEA




[Illustration]

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
  ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
  LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
  TORONTO

[Illustration: The Salton Sea in August 1906

  _Frontispiece_]




  THE SALTON SEA

  AN ACCOUNT OF HARRIMAN’S FIGHT
  WITH THE COLORADO RIVER


  BY
  GEORGE KENNAN

  ILLUSTRATED


  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  1917

  _All rights reserved_




  COPYRIGHT, 1917
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  Set up and printed. Published May, 1917.




FOREWORD


I desire gratefully to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Smithsonian
Institution, the U. S. Reclamation Service, the U. S. Geological
Survey, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the officials of
the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, for their courtesy in furnishing
me information, or permitting me to make use of their maps, diagrams
and illustrations.

  GEORGE KENNAN.




CONTENTS


                                 PAGES

  1. THE SALTON SINK                 5

  2. THE CREATION OF THE OASIS      18

  3. THE RUNAWAY RIVER              31

  4. THE SAVING OF THE VALLEY       61

  5. THE RECOMPENSE                 93




ILLUSTRATIONS


  The Salton Sea in August, 1906       _Frontispiece_

                                      _Opposite page_

  Relief Map of Imperial Valley                    19

  A Part of Colorado River Watershed               31

  Agricultural Lands Eroded                        57

  A Flood Waterfall                          }
                                             }     58
  Nearer View of Flood Cataract              }

  Channel Cut by Runaway River                     60

  Hind-Clarke Dam                            }
                                             }     89
  Railroad Track on Reconstructed Levee      }




THE SALTON SEA

 “The desert waited, silent, hot and fierce in its desolation, holding
 its treasures under the seal of death against the coming of the strong
 ones.” (_Inscription over the main entrance to the Barbara Worth
 Hotel, El Centro, Imperial Valley._)


No series of events in the history of southern California is more
interesting, or more dramatic, than the creation of the beautiful and
fertile oasis of the Imperial Valley in the arid desert-basin of the
Salton Sink; the partial transformation of this cultivated valley
into a great Inland Sea by the furious inpour of a runaway river;
the barring out of the flood by the courage and energy of a single
man, and the final development of the valley into one of the richest
agricultural areas in the world.

Sixteen years ago, the region whose productiveness now rivals that of
the lower Nile was the dried-up bottom of an ancient sea. It was seldom
sprinkled by rain; it was scorched by sunshine of almost equatorial
intensity, and during the summer months its mirage-haunted air was
frequently heated to a temperature of 120 degrees. The greater part of
it lay far below the level of the sea; nearly all of it was destitute
of water and vegetation; furious dust and sand storms swept across it,
and it was regarded, by all the early explorers of the Southwest, as
perhaps the dreariest and most forbidding desert on the North American
continent. This ancient sea-basin, which thousands of years ago held
the northern part of the Gulf of California, is now the Imperial
Valley--a vast agricultural and horticultural hothouse, which produces
almost everything that can be grown in lower Egypt, and which has
recently been described in the San Francisco Argonaut as “potentially
the richest unified district in the United States.”

As recently as the year 1900, the Imperial Valley had not a single
civilized inhabitant, and not one of its hot, arid acres had ever been
cultivated. It now has a population of more than forty thousand, with
churches, banks, ice factories, electric-light plants and fine school
buildings, in half a dozen prosperous towns, and its 400,000 acres of
cultivated land have produced, in the last six or eight years, crops to
the value of at least $50,000,000. The history of this fertile oasis in
the Colorado Desert will forever be connected with the name of E. H.
Harriman. He did not create the Imperial Valley, nor did he develop it;
but he saved it from ruinous devastation at a time when the agency that
had created it threatened capriciously to destroy it, and when there
was no other power in the world that could give it protection.




THE SALTON SINK


The story of the Imperial Valley begins with the formation, in remote
geologic times, of the great shallow depression, or basin, which
modern explorers have called the Salton Sink. Tens of thousands of
years ago, before the appearance of man on earth, the long arm of the
Pacific Ocean which is now known as the Gulf of California extended in
a northwesterly direction to a point more than a hundred miles distant
from its present head. Its terminus was then near the San Gorgonio
pass, about ninety miles east of the place where Los Angeles now
stands, and it extended across the Colorado Desert to the site of the
present town of Yuma. If it had not been affected by external forces,
it would probably have retained to the present day its ancient boundary
line; but into it, on its eastern side, happened to empty one of the
mightiest rivers of the Great West--the Colorado--and by this agency
the upper part of the Gulf was gradually separated from the lower,
and was finally turned into a salt-water lake, equal in extent to the
Great Salt Lake in Utah. This detached body of ocean water, which had
formerly been the upper part of the Gulf of California, completely
filled the basin of the Salton Sink, and had an area of approximately
2100 square miles.

“But how,” it may be asked, “could a river, however mighty, cut the
Gulf of California in two, so as to separate the upper part from the
lower and leave the former isolated?” Easily enough in the long ages
of geologic time. A great river like the Colorado does not consist of
water only. It holds in suspension and carries down to the sea a great
load of sediment, which, when deposited at its mouth, gradually builds
up a delta-plain of mud, and often changes topographical conditions
over a wide area. It was this deposited sediment that cut the Gulf
of California in two. The drainage basin of the Colorado and its
tributaries extends from the Gulf of California to the southern edge
of the Yellowstone National Park, and has an area of more than 260,000
square miles. Most of this area is mountainous, and the innumerable
streams that tear down through its gorges and ravines erode and gather
up vast quantities of sediment, which the river carries to the Gulf and
finally deposits in its waters. How great a load of silt the Colorado
brought down in prehistoric times we have no means of knowing; but it
transports past Yuma now about 160,000,000 tons of solid matter every
year, or enough to fill a reservoir one mile square to a depth of one
hundred and twenty five feet.[1] Century after century, the river
poured this vast quantity of silt into the Gulf opposite its mouth,
and gradually built up a delta-bar which extended westward, year by
year, until it finally reached the opposite coast. The upper part of
the Gulf was then separated from the lower by a natural levee, in the
shape of a delta-plain, which was perhaps ten miles in width by thirty
in length, and which extended from a point near the present site of
Yuma to the rampart of the Cocopah Mountains at Black Butte. When the
river had thus cut the Gulf of California in two, it happened to choose
a course for itself on the southeastern side of the delta-plain that it
had built up, and thereafter it discharged its waters into the lower
Gulf, leaving what had been the upper Gulf isolated as a salt-water
lake. Under the burning sun of that region about six feet of water
evaporates every year, and in course of time the lake dried up, leaving
the arid basin afterward known as the Salton Sink. This depression was
about one hundred miles in length by thirty five in width. It then had
a maximum depth of perhaps one thousand feet, and in the deeper parts
its floor was covered with an incrustation of salt.

[Illustration: The Ancient Gulf of California]

How long this ancient sea-bottom remained dry cannot now be determined;
but many thousands of years ago, probably in Middle Tertiary times the
Colorado River, which had first cut off the basin from the ocean and
thus allowed it to become waterless, proceeded to refill it. Running
over a raised delta-plain of silt, which sloped both ways, the river
could easily be diverted to either side, and in one of its prehistoric
floods it capriciously changed its course, leaving the Gulf and pouring
its waters into the dry basin of the Salton Sink. When it had refilled
this basin, and transformed it into a great fresh-water lake, it broke
through the silt dam, or levee, on the Cocopah Mountain side, and
found a new outlet to the Gulf through what is now known as Hardy’s
Colorado. For many years--possibly for centuries--the Salton Sink was
a fresh-water lake, into which the Colorado poured 150,000,000 tons
or more of silt every year. At last, suddenly or gradually, the river
again changed its course, abandoning the Sink and cutting a channel to
the Gulf through the eastern part of the delta plain. Then the Salton
Sea again dried up, leaving a two-hundred-mile ellipse of fresh-water
shells to mark its former level.

How many times, since the Tertiary epoch, the Salton Sink has been
alternately emptied and refilled, we have no means of knowing; but the
instability of the conditions that now determine the course of the
Colorado below Yuma seem to indicate that, at intervals of four or five
hundred years for many millenniums, the river, like a great liquid
pendulum, swung back and forth across its delta, now emptying into the
Gulf on the Arizona side, and then discharging into the Sink on the
California side. Every time the lake was deprived of the river water it
dried up, and every time the Sink was revisited by the river it again
became a lake. That the Colorado must have returned to this basin many
times, and flowed into it for long periods, is indicated by the fact
that after the Sink was separated from the Gulf of California, the
river carried into it something like seventeen cubic miles of silt.[2]
Artesian well borings at Holtville show that the sedimentary deposits
in that part of the Imperial Valley are now more than 1000 feet in
depth.

For three centuries or more--from 1540 to 1902--the Salton Sink was a
hot, arid desert. Melchior Diaz, a Spanish explorer in the service of
Cortes, reached the edge of it in the fall of 1540, and the Spanish
captain Juan Bautista de Anza crossed it two hundred and thirty four
years later; but neither of them saw anything like a lake. The only
evidence that the Colorado River ran into the Sink, at any time between
1540 and 1905, is furnished by the so-called Rocque map, now in the
British Museum, which was compiled from all the sources of information
that were in existence in 1762. This map shows a considerable body of
water in the Salton Sink, with the Colorado River flowing into it; but
no written record in support of the map has ever been found, and the
probability is that the water was nothing more than a comparatively
small lake, or lagoon, fed by the Colorado in time of flood. Overflow
water in considerable quantities often reached the basin when the
river happened to be more than bank full; but the main current of the
Colorado continued to flow into the Gulf, and the flood water in the
Sink soon evaporated.

In the latter part of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th,
many Spanish and American pathfinders crossed the Sink on their way
from Yuma to the California missions, but none of them found anything
like a lake. Colonel W. H. Emory, who traversed it with General
Kearney in the fall of 1846, described it as a hot, arid desert, where
there was a stretch of “ninety miles from water to water,” and where
no vegetation could be found except scattered desert shrubs and two
small patches of sun-burned grass. Captain A. R. Johnson, who also
accompanied the Kearney expedition, was the first to notice the fact
that this stretch of waterless desert was the dried-up bottom of an
ancient lake; but neither he nor Colonel Emory observed the still more
suggestive fact that it was below the level of the sea. In the deepest
part of the basin, near the present station of Salton, they discovered
a small lagoon; but its water proved to be so saturated with alkali
and salt that it was “wholly unfit for man or brute.” Three years
later, gold-seekers from the East began to take this route to the
Pacific Coast, and Bayard Taylor, in his “El-dorado,” has given their
impressions of the Salton Sink in the following words:

 “The emigrants by the Gila route gave a terrible account of the
 crossing of the Great Desert lying west of the Colorado. They
 described this region as scorching and sterile--a country of burning
 salt plains and shifting hills of sand, where the only signs of human
 habitation were the bones of animals and men scattered along the
 trails.”

Such, seventy years ago, was the Salton Sink, and such it had been
during the three preceding centuries of recorded history. If anyone
had then ventured to predict that this dried-up bed of the Gulf of
California, this hot, sterile and apparently irreclaimable desert,
would eventually become a beautiful cultivated valley, producing
cotton, barley, alfalfa, dates, melons and fruit, to the value of ten
or fifteen million dollars every year, he would have been generally
regarded as a visionary enthusiast, if not a desert-crazed monomaniac.

Although, at the beginning of the “gold rush” to California in 1849,
the Salton Sink had been known to the Spaniards for more than three
centuries, and to American explorers for at least twenty years, no
scientific examination of it had ever been made. Four years later,
however, in 1853, Jefferson Davis, who was then Secretary of War,
prevailed upon Congress to authorize a series of explorations for
the discovery of a practicable railroad route to the Pacific Coast.
Lieutenant R. S. Williamson, of the United States Topographic
Engineers, was selected as leader of the southern expedition, and with
him, as geologist, went Professor William P. Blake of New York, a young
graduate of the Yale Scientific School, who afterward attained great
distinction as geologist, explorer and mining engineer, in fields as
widely separated as Arizona, Alaska and Japan. Professor Blake was the
first to explain the origin of the Salton Sink, to trace its ancient
history, and to give a name to the great fresh-water lake that it
had once held. He was also the first to suggest the possibility of
irrigating it, and to predict that when it should be supplied with
water it would “yield crops of almost any kind.” Reclamation of desert
areas is now comparatively common; but sixty years ago, only a bold
and original mind could have entertained the idea of getting crops
out of such a “Death Valley” as the Salton Sink then was. Professor
Blake, however, had the imagination of an investigator, tempered by
the accurate knowledge of a scientist, and he could see that the
sedimentary deposits in that ancient sea-basin needed only water to
make them fertile.

The Kearney expedition of 1846, and the Bartlett and Williamson
surveys in 1850 and 1853, demonstrated the practicability of reaching
California by the southern route, and thousands of emigrants,
attracted to the Pacific Coast by the discovery of gold, went that
way in order to avoid the high mountains and the snow that they would
have encountered further north. This rising tide of travel soon led
to improvement in the means of transportation. Early in the “gold
rush,” Dr. A. L. Lincoln, a relative of Abraham Lincoln, established a
permanent ferry across the Colorado, near the junction of that river
with the Gila; a few years later, seventy four camels and dromedaries
were imported from Africa for use on the desert part of the route;
and in 1857, a private company began running bimonthly stages between
San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California. Finally, in 1858, the
Government established the “Butterfield Overland Mail,” which ran a
semi-weekly line of coaches from St. Louis to San Francisco, by way
of El Paso, Yuma and the Colorado Desert, on a time schedule of
twenty five days. This line was well equipped with more than a hundred
specially constructed Concord coaches, a thousand horses, seven hundred
mules, and about one hundred and fifty drivers. It received from the
Government a subsidy of $600,000 a year, and was the longest continuous
horse-express line then in existence on the North American continent.
Until the outbreak of the Civil War, this southern route was the main
artery of travel from the eastern States to the Pacific Coast; and it
is estimated that, between 1849 and 1860, eight thousand emigrants
crossed the Colorado Desert on their way to California.

Of all these eight thousand gold-seekers or pioneers, only one seems
to have been impressed by the agricultural possibilities of the Salton
Sink. Dr. O. M. Wozencraft, who has been described as “a man of marked
personality and far-reaching vision who lived a generation before his
time,” crossed the Sink on his way to San Bernardino sometime in the
early fifties; noticed the deposit of silt in the bed of the ancient
lake; observed that the shallow basin lay so far below the level of
the Colorado River that it might easily be irrigated therefrom; and
reached the conclusion, previously stated by Professor Blake, that the
arid waste of the Sink, if adequately supplied with water, could be
made to “yield crops of almost any kind.” This idea so took possession
of his mind that, during the next five or six years, he spent much of
his time and a large part of his private means in promoting schemes
for the irrigation of this desert area. His engineer, Ebenezer Hadley
of San Diego, made a preliminary survey of the Sink, and recommended
a canal location practically identical with that which forty years
later was adopted. In 1859, upon the initiative of Dr. Wozencraft, the
California legislature asked Congress to cede to the State 3,000,000
acres of arid land, including the Salton Sink, for irrigation purposes.
The bill was favorably reported by a House committee, but failed to
pass. The Congressmen of that time regarded the reclamation of the
Colorado Desert as a subject for jocular rather than serious treatment,
and most of them were in sympathy with the California humorist, J.
Ross Browne, who said: “I can see no great obstacle to success except
the porous nature of the sand. By removing the sand from the desert,
success would be insured at once.”

With the failure of Dr. Wozencraft’s attempt to bring about the
reclamation of the Colorado Desert, interest in that region gradually
waned. The Butterfield Overland Mail service to the Pacific Coast was
discontinued; a new “Pony Express” line to San Francisco, by way of
Salt Lake City, was established; and before 1865, the southern route,
via Yuma and the Colorado Desert, had been practically abandoned. Dr.
Wozencraft continued talking, to all who would listen, about his scheme
for the irrigation of the Salton Sink; but most people regarded it as
visionary, and nobody seemed inclined to take it up. Only in 1891,
thirty eight years after Professor Blake first suggested irrigation,
and twenty nine years after Dr. Wozencraft’s bill failed in Congress,
was a serious attempt made to realize the “dream” of turning water
into the Salton Sink and creating a fertile oasis in the heart of the
Colorado Desert.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Rep. of U. S. Geolog. Survey for 1916.

[2] “The Imperial Valley and Salton Sink,” by H. T. Cory, formerly
Chief Engineer of the California Development Co., p. 49; San Francisco
1915 (embodying paper read Jan. 8, 1913, before the Amer. Soc. of Civil
Engineers and published in its Transactions as “Paper 1270”).




THE CREATION OF THE OASIS


In 1891, John C. Beatty, of California, another man who had imagination
and foresight, became interested in the agricultural possibilities
of the Colorado Desert, and formed a corporation under the name of
“The California Irrigation Company” for the purpose of carrying
water into the Salton Sink from the Colorado River. He engaged as his
technical adviser Mr. C. R. Rockwood, who had been in the employ of
the U. S. Reclamation Service, and who was regarded as “a shrewd and
clever man and engineer.”[3] Mr. Rockwood made a careful survey of
the Colorado delta, and found, as Lieutenant Bergland had found in
an earlier survey, that between the river and the Sink there was a
natural obstacle in the shape of a range of sand hills, which extended
southward to the border line of Mexico. All natural overflows of the
river, in prehistoric times, had been south of this barrier, and Mr.
Rockwood thought that it would be easier and more economical to follow
the river’s ancient track than to put a conduit through these hills
on the American side of the boundary. He proposed, therefore, to take
water from the Colorado at Potholes, twelve miles above Yuma, carry it
southward into Mexico, thence westward around the promontory of sand
hills, and finally northward, across the line again, into southern
California. This plan would involve the digging of a curving canal,
forty or fifty miles in length, through Mexican territory; but it would
obviate the necessity of cutting through the sand hills, and would
perhaps enable the diggers to utilize, on the Mexican side, one of the
dry barrancas, or ancient overflow channels, through which the Colorado
discharged into the Sink in ages past.

[Illustration: Relief Map of Imperial Valley and Its Environment]

Owing to the lack of public confidence in reclamation experiments,
Mr. Beatty and his associates were not able to secure as much capital
as they needed for their enterprise, and when the monetary panic of
1893 came, they found themselves involved in financial difficulties
from which they could not extricate themselves. In the latter part of
1893 the California Irrigation Co. went into bankruptcy, and its maps,
records, and engineering data were turned over to Mr. Rockwood, in
satisfaction of a judgment that he obtained in a suit for his unpaid
salary.[4]

This seemed likely to put an end to the Salton Sink project; but Mr.
Rockwood, whose observations and work in the Colorado delta had given
him unbounded faith in the ultimate success of the scheme, determined
to undertake the promotion of it himself. After several years of
endeavor, he succeeded in forming another organization which was
incorporated in New Jersey, on the 21st of April 1896, under the title
of “The California Development Company.” For two years or more, this
corporation tried to get permission from the Mexican Government to hold
land, acquire rights, and dig an irrigating canal south of the boundary
line; but the Mexican authorities refused to make any concessions,
and it was finally found necessary to organize a subsidiary Mexican
company. This corporation, which had a nominal capital of $62,000, was
wholly owned and controlled by the California Development Co., but it
operated under a Mexican charter.

As the financial resources of both companies were largely on paper,
it then became necessary to secure real capital for the prosecution
of the work, and this task Mr. Rockwood found extremely difficult.
The proposed reclamation of an arid desert, where the thermometer
went in summer to 120 in the shade, and where only two or three
inches of rain fell in the course of the whole year, did not strike
Eastern capitalists as a very promising venture, and most of them were
disinclined to go into it. At last, however, in 1898, Mr. Rockwood
secured a promise from certain capitalists in New York that they would
advance the necessary funds; but two days before the papers were to be
signed, the American battleship “Maine” was blown up in the harbor of
Havana, and this catastrophe, together with the war that followed it,
put an end to the negotiations.

But the plan for the irrigation of the Salton Sink was not destined to
fail. Among the men with whom Dr. Wozencraft discussed it, in the early
eighties, was George Chaffey, a civil engineer and irrigation expert
of Los Angeles, who had had a good deal of experience in dealing with
water problems, and who had already established successful irrigation
systems in other parts of California.[5] Mr. Chaffey declined to go
into it at Dr. Wozencraft’s solicitation, not because he was afraid of
the engineering difficulties involved, but because he thought that
the torrid climate of the Sink would prevent colonization of it, even
if the colonists were promised plenty of water. Most men, he reasoned,
would be frightened by the prospect of having to do hard agricultural
labor in shade temperatures of 110 to 120, and sun temperatures of
perhaps 140 to 150. They simply would not go to a place where they
would be subjected to such heat. Some years later, however, Mr. Chaffey
carried through successfully an irrigation enterprise in the interior
of Australia, where the temperature in the shade often reached a
maximum of 125, but where, nevertheless, men were able to work without
danger or serious inconvenience. This changed his view of irrigation
in the Colorado Desert; and in 1900, when the California Development
Co. seemed unable to get money enough for its project elsewhere, Mr.
Chaffey offered to finance the undertaking and superintend the work.
His proposals were accepted, and on the 3rd of April 1900, he became
president of the company, and signed a contract by which he bound
himself to construct canals, at a cost of not more than $150,000, which
would carry to the Imperial Valley 400,000 acre-feet of water per
annum.[6]

Mr. Chaffey and his associates modified the plan of Mr. Rockwood by
taking water from the Colorado at Pilot Knob, nearly opposite Yuma,
instead of at Potholes, twelve miles above. Putting in a head-gate
there, they carried their main canal southward across the Mexican
boundary, in a course nearly parallel with the river, until they
reached the barranca, or dry overflow channel, known as the Alamo. As
this ancient watercourse meandered westward in the direction of the
Salton Sink, they were able to clear it out, enlarge it, and utilize
most of it as a part of their irrigation system. Then, at a point about
forty miles west of the Colorado, they carried their canal northward,
across the boundary line again, into southern California. The work
throughout was pushed with great energy, and on the 14th of May,
1901, a little more than a year after Mr. Chaffey assumed direction
of affairs, water was turned in at the Pilot Knob head-gate, and the
irrigation of the Salton Sink became a certainty, if not a fully
accomplished fact.

As the California Development Co. was a water-selling company only,
and had no proprietary interest in the lands to be irrigated, it
was thought best to form another organization for the promotion
of settlement; and in March 1901 the Imperial Land Company was
incorporated for the purpose of attracting colonists, laying out town
sites, and developing the Sink by bringing its lands into cultivation.
Then Mr. Chaffey and the Land Company began an advertising campaign for
the purpose of interesting the general public in the scheme; and in
order not to frighten settlers and small investors by using in their
advertisements and circulars the ominous words “desert” and “Sink,”
they changed the name of the basin that they proposed to irrigate and
called it “The Imperial Valley.” This title was evidently alluring,
because it attracted small investors in all parts of the East, and
particularly in New England. The Development Company’s stock was
bought, for example, in places as far away from the Salton Sink as
Boston, Concord, Hopedale and Waverley, Mass.; Barre and Montpelier,
Vt.; Portsmouth, N. H.; Elgin, Ill.; Portland, Oregon; and Toronto,
Canada.[7] Settlers soon began to come in; mutual water companies were
organized; and before the 3rd of April 1902, when Mr. Chaffey severed
his connection with the company, four hundred miles of irrigating
ditches had been dug, and water was available for 100,000 acres or more
of irrigable land.[8]

About this time, however, the future of the Valley was seriously
imperilled by unfavorable reports concerning its soil. In the early
part of 1902, the Bureau of Soils of the U. S. Agricultural Department
published the results of a survey of the irrigable lands in the
Colorado Desert, and reported that they were so impregnated with alkali
that very few things could be successfully grown on them.

 “One hundred and twenty five thousand acres of land” (the report said)
 “have already been taken up by prospective settlers, many of whom talk
 of planting crops which it will be absolutely impossible to grow. They
 must early find that it will be useless to attempt their growth....
 No doubt the best thing to do is to raise such crops as sugar beet,
 sorghum, and date palm (if the climate will permit), that are suited
 to such alkali conditions, and abandon as worthless the lands which
 contain too much alkali to grow those crops.” (“Field Operations of
 the Bureau of Soils, U. S. Department of Agriculture,” 1901, p. 587.)

This report, which was widely quoted and commented upon, acted as a
serious check to the colonization of the Valley; and if it had been
made two or three years earlier, it might have been fatal to the whole
irrigation project. Fortunately, however, the crops raised by a few
farmers who had already been cultivating this “alkali impregnated”
land proved conclusively that the report of the analysis of the soil
made by the Government experts was unduly pessimistic, if not wholly
erroneous. Almost everything that was tried _did_ grow, in spite of
expert predictions, and the practical experience of men on the ground
gradually revived public confidence in the productiveness of the
irrigated lands. The colonization and development of the Valley then
proceeded with great rapidity. The two thousand settlers on the ground
at the end of 1902 increased to seven thousand in 1903 and to more
than ten thousand in 1904. A branch of the Southern Pacific railroad
was built through the Valley from Imperial Junction to Calexico and
Mexicali; town sites were laid out in six or seven different places;
the water system was extended by the digging of nearly four hundred
additional miles of irrigating ditches and canals; and before the 1st
of January 1905, one hundred and twenty thousand acres of reclaimed
land were actually under cultivation, while two hundred thousand acres
more had been covered by water stock.

[Illustration: Colorado Delta and Imperial Valley]

The observed fertility of the soil completely discredited the reports
of the Government experts, and more than justified the prediction made
by Professor Blake half a century before that when the Sink should
be supplied with water, it would produce “crops of almost any kind.”
Grapes, melons and garden vegetables matured in the Valley earlier
than in any other part of California; barley was a profitable crop;
alfalfa could be cut five or six times a year; and the finest quality
of long-staple Egyptian cotton yielded more than a bale (500 pounds) to
the acre. Experiments proved also that the climate and soil were well
adapted to the culture of grapes, grapefruit, oranges, lemons, olives,
figs, dates, pomegranates, apricots, peaches and pears.

The fear that men would not be willing or able to do hard work in the
hot climate of the valley proved to be wholly groundless. Great heat is
not necessarily weakening or prostrating unless it is accompanied with
great humidity, and the air of the Valley is at all seasons extremely
dry. In a discussion of this subject, Mr. H. T. Cory, formerly chief
engineer of the California Development Co., says:

 “The climate of the region, with its long, hot, dry summers, is
 peculiarly favorable to agricultural luxuriance. Thus it is that
 here the very earliest grapes, fruits and vegetables are produced
 for the United States market, with the consequent advantage of
 commanding the highest prices. This is notably true of the Imperial
 Valley cantaloupe, now famous all over this country, and of the
 early grapes, asparagus etc. On account of the very low humidity
 and gentle winds which blow most of the time in hot weather, the
 sensible temperature--which is indicated by the wet-bulb thermometer
 readings and gives the measure of heat felt by the human body--is much
 less than the actual temperature as measured by the dry bulb. It is
 conservative to say that a temperature of 110 in Imperial Valley is
 not more uncomfortable than 95 in Los Angeles, or 85 in the more humid
 sections of the Eastern States. Furthermore the nights are always
 cool, the low humidity resulting in rapid and large daily temperature
 variations.”

Under these favoring conditions of soil and climate, it seemed almost
certain, in 1904, that the Imperial Valley would have a great and
prosperous future; but no forecast in that region is trustworthy unless
it takes into account the irrigating agency, as well as the climate and
the soil. The Colorado River created the Salton Sink, and made fertile
the Imperial Valley; but it could destroy, as well as create; and in
1904 it showed itself in a new aspect and threatened the Valley with a
terrible calamity.

[Illustration: A Part of the Colorado River Watershed. The Grand Cañon]


FOOTNOTES:

[3] Mr. H. T. Cory.

[4] Mr. Cory.

[5] In his “Imperial Valley and Salton Sink,” Mr. H. T. Cory, formerly
chief engineer of the California Development Co., refers to Mr. Chaffey
in the following words:

“The writer takes pleasure in expressing appreciation of the standing
of Mr. George M. Chaffey in irrigation work in the West. The Ontario
Colony he founded in 1883 was selected ten years later as a model for
the irrigation exhibit at the World’s Exposition, and in his work at
Mildura, Australia, he designed, had built in England, and installed,
the first centrifugal pumps on the same shaft with a total capacity of
320 cubic feet per second lifted 20 feet. He is at present, among other
things, head of the magnificent water system irrigating 10,000 acres of
citrus lands near Whittier, California, including the highest priced
agricultural lands in California ($5,000 per acre). Furthermore he is
a man of affairs, and of large means which he acquired principally in
irrigation enterprises and banking.”

[6] Andrew M. Chaffey.

[7] List of stockholders in Sou. Pac. office, N. Y.

[8] Andrew M. Chaffey.




THE RUNAWAY RIVER


The most serious problem with which engineers have to deal in the
irrigation of arid land from a turbid river is the getting rid of
silt, and this problem is a particularly difficult one in the Imperial
Valley, owing to the immense amount of sediment that the irrigating
water contains. The Colorado River, until after it passes the Grand
Cañon, is almost everywhere a swift, turbulent stream, with great
eroding capacity. As Mr. E. C. LaRue has said, in a brief but graphic
description of it,

 “When the snows melt in the Rocky and Wind River Mountains, a million
 cascade brooks unite to form a thousand torrent creeks; a thousand
 torrent creeks unite to form half a hundred rivers beset with
 cataracts; half a hundred roaring rivers unite to form the Colorado,
 which flows, a mad, turbid stream, into the Gulf of California.”
 (“Colorado River and Its Utilization,” a Geological Survey report,
 Government Printing Office, Washington 1916.)

Such a river, naturally, dissolves the earth and gnaws the rocks over
which it tears its way, and takes up millions of tons of solid matter,
in the shape of gravel, sand and finely pulverized soil. This great
volume of sediment, when finally dropped, not only tends to change the
river’s course by creating bars at or near its mouth, but gradually
fills up the irrigating ditches and canals and thus lessens their
carrying capacity. A single day’s supply of water for the Imperial
Valley contains silt enough to make a levee twenty feet high, twenty
feet wide, and one mile long. (Imperial Valley Press, July 25 1916). If
this silt is not dredged out, sluiced out, or collected in a settling
basin, it eventually raises the beds of the canals, fills the ditches,
and chokes up the whole irrigation system.

The managers of the California Development Co. had difficulty, almost
from the first, in keeping their waterways open. As more and more land
was brought into cultivation, more and more water was required, while
the silting up of the canals lessened the ability of the company to
meet the constantly increasing demand. There was a shortage as early as
the winter of 1902-3; but the situation did not become serious until
the following year, when the main canal, for a distance of four miles
below the intake, became so silted up that it could not possibly carry
the volume of water that was imperatively needed. An attempt was made
to remedy this state of affairs by putting in a waste-gate, eight
miles below the intake, for the purpose of sluicing out the channel in
time of high water.

 “The idea” (as stated by Mr. Cory) “was to divert a large quantity of
 water during the flood season, waste it through the Best waste-gate,
 and in this way scour out the upper portion of the canal. At first,
 the action was as expected, and some two feet in the bottom were
 carried away. When, however, the river reached its maximum height, ...
 and carried an excessive silt content, especially of the heavier and
 sandy type, this scouring action was entirely overcome, and the bottom
 of this stretch was raised approximately one foot higher than during
 the previous year.”

This silting up of the main canal, and the consequent reduction of its
carrying capacity, caused great injury to the agricultural interests
of the Valley. Crops in many places perished for lack of water, and
hundreds of farmers put in damage claims, which amounted in the
aggregate to half a million dollars. In the late summer of 1904, it
became evident that radical measures would have to be taken at once to
increase the water supply. As the managers of the company had neither
the financial means nor the requisite machinery for quickly dredging
out the silted part of the canal, they decided, in September of that
year, to cut a new intake from the river at a point about four miles
south of the international boundary. This would eliminate the choked-up
part of the canal, and let water directly into the part that was
unobstructed.

[Illustration: The Three Headings (or Intakes), in Spring of 1905]

If President Heber and Chief Engineer Rockwood had been aware of the
fact that the Colorado was even then preparing to pour its waters
into the Salton Sink, by making one of its semi-millennial changes of
course, they might perhaps have fortified the western bank instead of
cutting through it; but there was little or nothing to show the extreme
instability of the conditions that were then determining the trend of
the river across its delta, and the idea that it might burst through
this intake and again turn the Valley into a fresh-water lake does not
seem to have occurred to anyone. The cutting was therefore made and the
water shortage relieved; but at the cost of imminent peril to the whole
Valley and its twelve thousand inhabitants.

In view of the tremendous and disastrous consequences of this measure,
it is only fair that Chief Engineer Rockwood should be allowed to
state, with some fullness, his reasons for adopting it, and for failing
to put in a head-gate to control the flow of water through the channel
and thus prevent its enlargement. In an article entitled “Born of the
Desert,” published in the second annual magazine number of the Calexico
Chronicle, in May 1909, he sets forth his reasons in the following
words:

 “As soon as the summer flood (1904) dropped, I discovered that instead
 of the bottom” (of the canal) “being lower, it was approximately
 one foot above that of the year previous.... We knew that with the
 dredging tools which we had it would be impossible to dredge out
 this four miles of canal in sufficient time for the uses of the
 Valley, providing the water in the river should drop as low as it had
 the previous year.... We were then confronted with the proposition
 of doing one of two things, either cutting a new heading from the
 canal to the river below the silted four-mile section of the canal,
 or else allowing the Valley to pass through another winter with an
 insufficient water supply. The latter proposition we could not face,
 for the reason that the people of the Valley had an absolute right to
 demand that water should be furnished them, and it was questionable in
 our minds as to whether we would be able to keep out of bankruptcy if
 we were to be confronted by another period of shortage in the coming
 season of 1904-1905.

 “The cutting of the lower intake, after mature deliberation, and
 upon the insistence of several of the leading men of the Valley, was
 decided upon. We hesitated about making this cut, not so much because
 we believed we were incurring danger of the river’s breaking through,
 as from the fact that we had been unable to obtain the consent of
 the Government of Mexico to make it, and we believed that we were
 jeopardizing our Mexican rights should the cut be made without the
 consent of the Government. On a telegraphic communication, however,
 from our attorney in the City of Mexico, to go ahead and make the cut,
 we did so, under the presumption that he had obtained the necessary
 permit from the Mexican authorities. It was some time after this, in
 fact after the cut was made in the river, before we discovered that he
 had been unable to obtain the formal permit, but had simply obtained
 the promise of certain officials that we would not be interfered
 with, providing that plans were at once submitted for the necessary
 controlling structures to be placed in this heading.

 “... In cutting from the main canal to the river at this point, we
 had to dredge a distance of 3300 feet only, through easy material to
 remove, while an attempt to dredge out the main canal above would
 have meant the dredging of four miles of very difficult material. We
 began the cut the latter end of September and completed it in about
 three weeks. As soon as the cut was decided upon, elaborate plans
 for a controlling gate were immediately started, and when completed,
 early in November, were immediately forwarded to the City of Mexico
 for the approval of the engineers of the Mexican Government, without
 whose approval we had no authority or right to construct the gate.
 Notwithstanding the insistence of our attorney in the City of Mexico,
 and various telegraphic communications insisting upon this approval
 being hurried, we were unable to obtain it until twelve months
 afterward, namely, the month of December 1905.

 “In the meantime, serious trouble had begun. We have since been
 accused of gross negligence and criminal carelessness in making this
 cut; but I doubt as to whether anyone should be accused of negligence,
 or carelessness, in failing to foresee what had never happened before.
 We had before us at the time the history of the river as shown by
 the rod-readings kept at Yuma for a period of twenty seven years. In
 the twenty seven years there had been but three winter floods. In no
 winter of the twenty seven had there been two winter floods. It was
 not probable, then, that there would be any winter flood to enlarge
 the cut made by us, and without doubt, as it seemed to us, we would be
 able to close the cut, before the approach of the summer flood, by the
 same means that we had used in closing the cut for three successive
 years around the Chaffey gate at the head of the canal.[9] During
 this winter of 1905, however, we had more than one winter flood. The
 first flood came, I believe, about the first of February, but did
 not enlarge the lower intake. On the contrary, it caused such a silt
 deposit in the lower intake that I found it necessary, after the flood
 had passed, to put the dredge through in order to deepen the channel
 sufficiently to allow water to come into the valley for the use of the
 people. This was followed shortly by another heavy flood that did not
 erode the banks of the intake, but, on the contrary, the same as the
 first, caused a deposit of silt and a necessary dredging. We were not
 alarmed by these floods, as it was still very early in the season. No
 damage had been done by them, and we still believed that there would
 be no difficulty in closing the intake before the approach of the
 summer flood, which was the only one we feared. However, the first two
 floods were followed by a third, coming sometime in March, and this
 was sufficient notice to us that we were up against a very unusual
 season, something unknown in the history of the river as far back as
 we were able to reach; and as it was now approaching the season of
 the year when we might reasonably expect the river surface to remain
 at an elevation that would allow sufficient water for the uses of the
 Valley to be gotten through the upper intake, we decided to close the
 lower.” (“Born of the Desert,” by C. R. Rockwood, Calexico Chronicle,
 May 1909.)

At the time when the first attempt to close the intake was made, the
cutting was about sixty feet wide. A dam of piles, brush and sandbags
was thrown across it in March 1905, but it had hardly been completed
when another flood came down the Colorado and swept it away. A second
dam of the same kind, built a few weeks later, shared the same fate.
By the middle of June, the river was discharging 90,000 cubic feet of
water per second; the width of the lower intake had increased from
sixty feet to one hundred and sixty; water was overflowing the banks of
the main canal and accumulating in the deepest part of the Sink; and a
new Salton Sea was in process of formation.

[Illustration: Lower Intake at Time of Southern Pacific Loan]

Such was the state of affairs when Mr. Harriman and the Southern
Pacific Railroad Company first became directly interested in the
problem of river control. Early in 1905, the California Development
Co., finding itself in pecuniary difficulties, applied to Mr. Julius
Kruttschnitt, General Manager of the Southern Pacific, for a loan, on
the alleged ground that the Imperial Valley was furnishing a great deal
of traffic to the railroad, and the irrigation company was therefore
warranted in asking for financial assistance. Mr. Kruttschnitt,
however, declined to consider the application. The petitioners then
addressed the President of the railroad company, Mr. E. H. Harriman,
who, it was thought, might be induced to give the necessary aid, even
though he had no personal interest in the Valley and no connection
whatever with the California Development Co. Mr. Harriman, as a man of
imagination and far-seeing vision, was naturally in sympathy with the
bold attempt to irrigate and reclaim the arid lands of the Colorado
Desert, and when the matter of the loan was presented to him, he not
only gave it immediate consideration, but ordered an investigation and
a report. He finally consented, against the advice of Mr. Kruttschnitt
and other counsellors, to loan the Development Company $200,000, “to
be used in paying off certain of its floating indebtedness and in
completing and perfecting its canal system.” Inasmuch, however, as
the financial management of the irrigation company had not always
been judicious, Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific stipulated that
they should have the right to select three of its directors, one of
whom should be president, and that fifty one per cent of its stock
(6300 shares) should be placed in the hands of a trustee as collateral
security for the loan. This stipulation was agreed to, and on the 20th
of June 1905, the Southern Pacific Company, as chief creditor, took
temporary control of the California Development Company by selecting
three of its directors, and by appointing as its president Mr. Epes
Randolph, of Tucson, who was then acting also as president of the
Harriman Lines in Arizona and Mexico.[10]

When Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific thus took over the
management of the California Development Company, they had no intention
of assuming its responsibilities, directing its engineering work, or
deriving revenue from its operations. All they aimed to do was to
see that the money loaned was honestly and judiciously spent. The
financial management of the company, had not previously been above
criticism, to say the least; and Mr. Harriman was fully justified in
taking such control as might be necessary to ensure proper expenditure
of the funds that the Southern Pacific Company furnished. From the
representations made by the Development Company at that time, it was
thought that the lower Mexican intake might be closed at a cost of not
more than $20,000, and the Company proposed to use the remainder of the
$200,000 loan in “completing and perfecting its canal system,” under
the direction of its own technical experts. When, however, President
Randolph made a personal investigation of the state of affairs, shortly
after his appointment, he found the situation much more serious than
the Development Company had represented it to be, and telegraphed Mr.
Harriman that the Imperial Valley could not be saved by the expenditure
of $200,000. To control the river, he said, under the conditions then
existing, would be extremely difficult. Nobody could foresee what would
be the ultimate cost of the engineering operations, but it “might
easily run into three quarters of a million dollars.”

Mr. Harriman could have insisted, even then, upon a return of the
unspent loan, and could have withdrawn from the financially hazardous
undertaking; but instead of doing this, he telegraphed President
Randolph: “Are you certain you can put the river back into the old
channel?” Mr. Randolph replied: “I am certain that it can be done.”
Then wired Mr. Harriman: “Go ahead and do it.”

As Chief Engineer Rockwood was thought to be familiar with the problem
of river control, and quite competent to deal with it, he was allowed,
at first, to take such measures for closing the intake as seemed to
him best. He had made the cutting long before the Southern Pacific
had anything to do with the irrigation of the Valley, and upon him,
primarily, devolved the responsibility of averting consequences that
might be disastrous.

Although the Mexican cutting, at that time, had virtually become a
crevasse, the flow through it was not great enough to endanger the
cultivated lands of the valley. The excess of water overflowed the
banks of the canal--the old Alamo barranca--but it ran into the deepest
part of the Sink, where it slowly accumulated without flooding anything
except the works of the New Liverpool Salt Company. Civil Engineer C.
E. Grunsky, of the U. S. Reclamation Service, who made an inspection
of the intake three days after the loan to the California Development
Company, described the situation as “not serious, but sufficiently
alarming to require some attention.” The most disquieting feature of it
was the steepness of the incline toward the Imperial Valley as compared
with that toward the Gulf of California. The fall of the Colorado from
the intake to the Gulf was only one hundred feet, while that from the
intake to the bottom of the Valley was nearly four hundred feet. As
the distance was about the same, either way, the Valley incline was
approximately four times as steep as the riverbed incline, and if the
whole stream should break through the intake and go down the steeper
slope, the velocity of the current would make the stopping of it
extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible. When a turbulent
river, in flood, discharges at the rate of 100,000 cubic feet per
second down an easily eroded and comparatively steep declivity into an
immense basin four hundred feet deep, it soon gets beyond control.

The difficulty of dealing with these conditions was greatly increased
by the impossibility of predicting or anticipating floods. The annual
rise of the Colorado, above its junction with the Gila, begins in the
spring, reaches its maximum in July, and subsides to normal about the
middle of August. This period of high water is fairly regular and may
be counted upon. Floods in the drainage basin of the Gila, however,
are capricious, occur at all seasons of the year, and are particularly
violent in the fall and winter months. “These floods,” as Mr. Cory
says, “are far more to be feared and reckoned with, in preparing and
conducting engineering work along the lower Colorado River, than
anything coming down the Colorado River proper,” partly because they
come suddenly and unexpectedly, and partly because they carry immense
quantities of driftwood. During the Gila flood of November 29-30, 1905,
the water at Yuma rose ten feet in ten hours, with a maximum discharge
of 102,000 cubic feet per second, while driftwood almost completely
covered the water surface. Such floods, coming with little or no
warning, are almost irresistible.

When, in July 1905, the summer flood in the Colorado began to subside,
Chief Engineer Rockwood determined to fend off the main current, and
lessen the pressure on the crevasse, by means of a jetty. Just opposite
the intake was a bush-overgrown island, five eighths of a mile long
by a quarter of a mile wide, which split the river into two channels.
Across the western channel, from the head of the island to the bank,
a semi-barrier was built, of piling, barbed wire and brush. This
obstruction, it was thought, might check the flow into the western
channel, cause a deposit of heavy silt, and eventually create a bar
which would deflect the main current around the northern end of the
island and thus carry it away from the mouth of the crevasse. The
attempt was only partly successful. A bar was formed, but it did not
completely close the channel, nor deflect the main current. There was
still an opening, about one hundred and twenty five feet in width,
through which the rush of water was so great that it could not be
controlled. The attempt to deflect the main current into the eastern
channel, by means of a jetty, was then abandoned.

Up to this time, the Southern Pacific Company had not taken part
directly in the work of river control. After the failure of the jetty,
however, in August 1905, President Randolph sent his assistant, Mr.
H. T. Cory,[11] to the scene of operations, with instructions to
confer with Chief Engineer Rockwood and ascertain what his views
and intentions were. Mr. Rockwood, at that time, did not regard the
situation as at all alarming. The flow through the crevasse, he said,
was doing useful work in scouring out and deepening the main canal
(the old Alamo barranca) and there was little danger that the whole
river would go that way. He was not in favor of closing the enlarged
intake altogether, because that would shut off the water supply of
the Imperial Valley and cause more damage than was then being done by
the river. The deeper part of the Salton Sink, he said, was a natural
drainage basin, and as it was much below the zone of cultivation in the
valley as a whole, the accumulation of water in it was not likely to do
a great amount of damage.

“I told him,” Mr. Cory says, “that I thought the situation was
serious, even granting all he said were true; that he would better
shut the break right away, for while the water might be doing good
work in enlarging the canal of the California Development Company, the
situation was dangerous; that it was playing with fire.”

Throughout the month of August 1905, the intake continued to widen,
with the caving away of its banks, and in September Mr. Harriman and
President Randolph decided that another effort must be made either
to close the break, or to regulate and control the flow of water
through it. About the first of October, at the suggestion and under
the supervision of Mr. E. S. Edinger, a Southern Pacific engineer, an
attempt was made to close the channel west of the island by means of a
six-hundred-foot barrier-dam of piling, brush-mattresses and sandbags.
This dam, which was built in October and November at a cost of about
$60,000, might perhaps have checked or lessened the flow through the
crevasse if nothing unforeseen had happened; but on the 29th-30th
of November a tremendous flood, carrying great masses of driftwood,
came down the Gila and increased the discharge of the Colorado from
12,000 to 115,000 cubic feet per second. The dam could not withstand
such pressure, and even before the peak of the flood was reached it
went out altogether, leaving hardly a vestige behind. As a large part
of the island was eroded and carried away at the same time, further
operations in this locality were regarded as impracticable. The
crevasse had then widened to six hundred feet, and nearly the whole of
the river poured through it into the deepest part of the Sink, where
there was already a lake with a surface area of one hundred and fifty
square miles. The main line of the Southern Pacific, in many places,
was almost awash, and the whole population of the Valley was alarmed
by the prospect of being drowned out. If the break could not be closed
and the river brought under control before the period of high water
in the spring and summer of 1906, it seemed more than probable that
sixty miles of the Southern Pacific track would be submerged; that
the irrigation system of the California Development Company would
be destroyed; and that the whole basin of the Imperial Valley would
ultimately become a fresh-water lake.

The difficulty of dealing with this menacing situation was greatly
increased by the necessity of furnishing an uninterrupted supply of
water to the farmers of the valley while engineering operations were
in progress. It would not do to shut the river out altogether, because
that would leave without irrigation nearly two hundred square miles
of cultivated land. The Colorado must be controlled, but not wholly
excluded. Several methods of solving this problem were suggested, but
the only two that seemed likely to succeed were advocated by Consulting
Engineer Schuyler and Chief Engineer Rockwood. Mr. Schuyler proposed
that a new steel-and-concrete head-gate be put in near Pilot Knob,
where a solid rock foundation could be secured; that the four miles of
silted channel be re-excavated and enlarged by a powerful steam dredge
specially built for the purpose; and that the whole low-water flow
of the river be then turned through this head-gate into the enlarged
canal and thence into the Alamo barranca west of the break. By this
means the settlers would be continuously supplied with water, while the
crevasse-opening would be left dry enough to close with a permanent
levee or dam. The whole work, it was thought, could be finished in
three months, or at least before the coming of the next summer flood.

Chief Engineer Rockwood’s plan also involved the building of a new
head-gate, but he proposed to locate it on the northern side of the
intake, and to carry the whole low-water flow of the river through it
by means of an excavated by-pass. This, too, would keep the settlers
supplied with water and leave the crevasse-opening dry while it was
being closed. The chief objection to the latter plan was that the
head-gate would necessarily be of wood, and would have to stand on
a treacherous foundation of easily eroded silt which might possibly
be undermined. Late in November, after full consideration, President
Randolph decided to try both plans and to work on them simultaneously.
Contracts for the structural steel and iron work for the concrete
head-gate were let in Los Angeles; the machinery for the 850-ton
floating dredge “Delta” was ordered in San Francisco; materials for
the Rockwood head-gate were collected on the northern side of the
intake, and work was pushed on all of these structures with the
greatest possible energy throughout the winter. In spite, however, of
all efforts, none of them could be finished in the allotted time. The
steel-and-concrete head-gate was not completed until the 28th of June;
the dredge “Delta,” owing to the partial destruction of San Francisco,
was not ready until the following November, and even the Rockwood gate,
on which alternate shifts of men had worked night and day, was not in
working order until the 18th of April. Meanwhile, the summer flood
of 1906 had begun, with a discharge of 32,200 cubic feet per second
through the crevasse. This flow would have exceeded the capacity of the
Rockwood gate, even if it had been possible to turn the river through
the by-pass that led to it, and the attempt to bring the Colorado under
control was again temporarily abandoned.

[Illustration: Lower Intake in Spring of 1906 (showing site of Rockwood
head-gate and first three attempts to close the break)]

Then a long series of misfortunes and catastrophes followed, one after
another. On the 18th of April, 1906, San Francisco was partially
destroyed by earthquake and fire, and Mr. Harriman hurried to the scene
of the disaster for the purpose of affording help. President Randolph
soon joined him there, and, at the first opportunity, described to
him the almost desperate state of affairs in the Colorado delta. The
California Development Company had used up the $200,000 loaned to
it by the Southern Pacific the previous year; the river was still
uncontrolled, and the impending flood threatened to inundate the Valley
and deprive 12,000 people of their property and homes. Mr. Harriman
was not a man to be daunted or “rattled” by a sudden and menacing
emergency. “There, in the bustle and confusion of temporary offices,
with the ruins of San Francisco still smoking, with the facilities
of his roads taxed to the utmost in carrying people away from the
stricken city, with the wonderful railway system which constituted his
life work crippled to an unknown extent, and with the financial demands
resulting from the disaster impossible to determine,” he consented to
advance an additional sum of $250,000 for controlling the Colorado
River and protecting the Imperial Valley. “It has always seemed to me,”
writes Mr. Cory, “that this was really the most remarkable thing in the
whole series of extraordinary happenings.”

With the promise of this additional sum of $250,000, President Randolph
returned to the Imperial Valley to take up again the fight with the
runaway river. The flood, at that time, was steadily rising; the width
of the crevasse had increased to a quarter of a mile, and the Colorado
was pouring into the Salton basin more than four billion cubic feet of
water every twenty four hours.

On the 19th of April, 1906, the day after the San Francisco earthquake,
Mr. C. R. Rockwood, who had been the chief engineer of the California
Development Company for about four years, tendered his resignation,
and Mr. H. T. Cory, President Randolph’s assistant, was appointed in
his place. The Southern Pacific Company then assumed full control and
direction of defensive operations, and all subsequent work was
planned and executed by its engineers, with the powerful support of Mr.
Harriman and his great railway system.

[Illustration: Agricultural Sands Eroded and Destroyed by Flood Water]

The task set before Messrs. Randolph, Cory, Hind and Clarke was one
that might well have daunted even engineers of their great ability and
experience. As the summer flood approached its maximum, in the latter
part of June, the crevasse widened to more than half a mile, and the
whole river, rushing through the break, spread out over an area eight
or ten miles in width, and then, collecting in separate streams as it
ran down the slope of the basin, discharged at last into the Salton
Sea through the flooded channel of the New River barranca. Thousands
of acres of land, covered with growing crops, were inundated, and
thousands of acres more were so eroded and furrowed by the torrential
streams that they never could be cultivated again. The works of the
New Liverpool Salt Company were buried under sixty feet of water; the
towns of Calexico and Mexicali were partially destroyed, and in many
places the tracks of the Inter-California Railroad (a branch of the
Southern Pacific) and the Holtville Interurban were deeply submerged
or wholly carried away. The wooden flumes which carried the irrigating
water over the New River barranca were swept down into the Salton Sea,
and 30,000 acres of cultivated land in the western part of the Valley
became dry, barren and uninhabitable. At the height of the flood, the
Colorado discharged through the crevasse more than 75,000 cubic feet of
water per second, or six billion cubic feet every twenty four hours,
while the Salton Sea, into which this immense volume of water was
poured, rose at the rate of seven inches per day over an area of four
hundred square miles. The main line of the Southern Pacific was soon
inundated, and five times in the course of the summer the company had
to move its track to higher ground.

[Illustration: A Flood Waterfall in Imperial Valley, Cutting Back]

[Illustration: Nearer View of Flood Cataract in Imperial Valley,
Cutting Back]

The most dangerous and alarming feature of the situation was the
“cutting back” of the torrents into which the flood-water collected as
it rushed down the delta slope toward the Salton Sea. The fine silt
of which the soil was composed washed out like powdered sugar, and
wherever there happened to be a strong current, the flow soon produced
a miniature rapid. The rapid then became a cascade, the cascade grew
into a fall, and the fall finally developed into a roaring cataract,
which “cut back,” upstream, at the rate sometimes of four thousand feet
a day, widening as it receded, and leaving below it a deep gorge with
almost perpendicular walls. Some of the gorges eroded in the light
friable silt by these receding waterfalls were fifty to eighty feet
deep and more than a thousand feet across. It was estimated that the
channels thus formed during the floods of 1906 had an aggregate length
of more than forty miles, and that the solid matter scoured out of them
and carried down into the Salton Sea was nearly four times as great as
the whole amount excavated in the digging of the Panama Canal. But the
damage actually done by these receding waterfalls was unimportant in
comparison with the damage that they threatened to do. If one of them
should “cut back” far enough to break into the irrigation system of the
California Development Company, all the water in the latter’s canals
and ditches would instantly flow down into the deep gorge below the
cataract, and bring about a disaster almost unprecedented in history.
The twelve thousand settlers in the desert oasis were wholly dependent
upon the irrigation system for their supply of drinking water, and if
that supply should be cut off, they would be compelled by thirst either
to camp around the margin of the Salton Sea, which was ten or fifteen
miles away from most of them, or else get out of the valley within
forty eight hours in a wild precipitate stampede. Paradoxical as it
may seem, the danger of being driven out by lack of water was even
greater and more immediate than the danger of being drowned out by the
rising flood.

The changes in the topography of the Colorado delta brought about by
the crevasse and the floods of 1906 were greater than any that had
occurred there in the three preceding centuries of recorded history. In
referring to them Mr. Cory says:

 “The effect of this flood, in a geological way, was of extraordinary
 interest and very spectacular. In nine months, the runaway waters
 of the Colorado had eroded from the New and Alamo River channels
 and carried down into the Salton Sea a yardage almost four times as
 great as that of the entire Panama Canal. The combined length of the
 channels cut out was almost forty three miles, the average width
 being one thousand feet and the depth fifty feet. To this total of
 400,000,000 to 450,000,000 cubic yards must be added almost ten per
 cent for side cañons, surface erosions etc. Very rarely, if ever
 before, has it been possible to see a geological agency effect in a
 few months a change which usually requires centuries.”

[Illustration: Channel Cut by the Runaway River on Its Way to the
Salton Sea]


FOOTNOTES:

[9] The sill of the Chaffey gate proved to be too high for low stages
of water, and a canal, at a lower level, was cut around the structure
and closed every year with a brush-and-earth dam before the approach of
the summer flood. G. K.

[10] Mr. Randolph was a distinguished civil engineer and railroad
manager, who had been, at one time, superintendent of the Tucson
division of the Southern Pacific under Mr. C. P. Huntington. After the
latter’s death, he went to Los Angeles, where he built and managed Mr.
H. E. Huntington’s interurban system of electric railways and where he
made the acquaintance of Mr. Harriman. Finding that his health would
not permit him to live in the climate of Los Angeles, he returned
in 1904 to Arizona, where he was appointed president of the Arizona
Eastern Railroad Company and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company of
Mexico--Harriman lines. Mr. Randolph, at that time, was regarded as
one of the ablest civil engineers in the United States, and he had
already had much experience in dealing with river-control problems in
the South. He was also one of Mr. Harriman’s most trusted counsellors,
and it was upon his recommendation that the Southern Pacific Company’s
lines were extended into Mexico.

[11] Mr. Cory was a talented civil engineer who had left his
professorial chair in the engineering department of the University
of Cincinnati to enter the service of the Southern Pacific Railroad
system. Just prior to this time--in May 1905--he had been appointed
assistant to President Randolph, with headquarters at Tucson.




THE SAVING OF THE VALLEY


When the Southern Pacific engineers undertook to avert the peril that
menaced the Imperial Valley in the summer of 1906, they found little
in recorded history to help or guide them. Inundations, of course, had
often occurred before, on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, in
the valley of “China’s Sorrow,” and in many other parts of the world;
but these floods were merely overflows on a relatively flat surface.
The cosmical plunge of a great river into the dried-up basin of an
ancient sea was an unprecedented phenomenon, and one which raised
engineering problems that were wholly new. Nobody had ever before tried
to control a rush of 360,000,000 cubic feet of water per hour, down a
four-hundred-foot slope of easily eroded silt, into a basin big enough
to hold Long Island Sound. There was nothing in the past experience of
the world that could suggest a practicable method of dealing with such
conditions. Neither was much help to be obtained from the advice of
hydraulic experts. Of the forty or fifty eminent engineers who visited
the Colorado delta in 1905 and 1906, hardly any two agreed upon a
definite plan of defensive work, while almost everyone found something
objectionable in the measures suggested by others. All admitted,
however, that “the situation was a desperate one;” that it was “without
engineering parallel;” and that “there seemed to be only a fighting
chance of controlling the river.”

Mr. Harriman, who believed and who once said that “nothing is
impossible,” never doubted that the control of the Colorado River was
within human power and human resources. In building the Lucin cut-off
across the Great Salt Lake of Utah he had successfully carried through
one “impossible” enterprise, and he did not hesitate to undertake
another. Inspired by his invincible courage, President Randolph and his
engineers set about their herculean task.

In preparing for a fifth attempt to bring the Colorado under control,
they determined to modify the plan of operations previously followed
by substituting rock for the materials that had before been used in
the construction of dams. Practical experience had shown that piling,
brush, sandbags and earth could not be made to support the pressure
of the river in full flood, while a series of rock-fill barrier dams,
of sufficient width and height, might be strong enough to stand even
a flood discharge of 115,000 cubic feet of water per second. In
making this change of plan, Mr. Randolph acted on his own judgment
and in direct opposition to the views and advice of experts who
were acquainted with the situation. Almost all of the engineers who
had visited the break, including many of national and international
reputation, regarded a rock-fill barrier dam as wholly unworthy of
consideration, for at least two reasons. First, the rock would probably
sink into the soft silt bottom, and keep on going down indefinitely.
It might perhaps be supported by a strong brush-mattress foundation,
but even then, the mattress would be likely to break under the weight
of the load and thus fail to answer its purpose. Second, the water
going over a rock-fill dam, while it was in course of construction,
would almost certainly wash away some one rock at the top. This, by
increasing the overflow at that point, would dislodge more rocks, and
finally create a breach that could not be closed. President Randolph
who had used brush-mattresses and rock-fill dams on the Tombigbee River
in Alabama many years before, fully considered these objections but did
not find them convincing and steadfastly adhered to his own plan.

The preparations made for the summer’s work were far more thorough
and comprehensive than any that had ever been made before. Realizing
the importance of adequate transportation, President Randolph and his
engineers immediately began the construction of a branch railroad from
the main line of the Southern Pacific to the scene of operations at
the crevasse, with ample sidings and terminal facilities at both ends.
Then they borrowed from the Union Pacific three hundred of the mammoth
side-dump cars known as “battleships,” which had been used in the
construction of the Lucin cut-off, and which had a carrying capacity
of fifty or sixty tons each. The California Development Company had
three light-draught steamers and a number of barges that could be used
on the river, and the Southern Pacific Company furnished complete
work-trains, from time to time, until a maximum of ten was reached. The
next requisite was material for levees and dams, and this they secured
by drawing upon all the rock quarries within a radius of four hundred
miles, and by opening a new one, with a face of six hundred feet and a
height of forty feet, on the granite ledge at Andrade near the concrete
head-gate. Clay they obtained from a deposit just north of the Mexican
boundary, and gravel they hauled from the Southern Pacific Company’s
“Mammoth Gravel Pit,” which was situated on the main line about
forty miles west of the crevasse spur. From Los Angeles they brought
1100 ninety-foot piles, 19,000 feet of heavy timbers for railway
trestles, and forty miles of steel cable to be used in the weaving of
brush-mattresses. The Southern Pacific Company furnished pile-drivers,
steam shovels for the granite quarry and gravel pit, several carloads
of repair parts, and a large quantity of stores and materials of
various kinds. It also detailed for service on the spur railroad and
at the crevasse as many engineers, mechanics and skilled workmen as
were needed. The chief reason, Mr. Cory says, “for having the railroad
company supply so great a quantity of labor, equipment and supplies,
was that it afforded an opportunity to assemble quickly a thoroughly
organized and efficient force of men; the advantage of obtaining
material and supplies through the purchasing department of the Harriman
systems; immediate shipment of repair parts not kept on hand; and the
ability to increase or decrease rapidly the force and equipment without
confusion.”

The requisite most difficult to obtain, in sufficient amount, was
unskilled labor. An attempt was made to get five hundred peons from
central Mexico; but it did not succeed, and Mr. Cory was finally
compelled to mobilize all the Indian tribes in that part of the
Southwest--Pimas, Papagoes, Maricopas and Yumas from Arizona and
Cocopahs and Diegueños from Mexico. These Indians fraternized and got
along together amicably, and constituted with their families a separate
camp of about two thousand people. The rest of the laborers were
Mexicans from the vicinity, and drifting adventurers from all parts of
the United States who were attracted to the place by the novelty of the
work and the publicity given to it in the newspapers. Arrangements were
made with the Mexican authorities to put the whole region under martial
law and to send a force of rurales with a military commandant to police
the camps.

[Illustration: Situation in June, 1906 (whole river going into Salton
Sink)]

Active work began on the 6th of August, 1906, when the summer flood
had fallen enough to reduce the flow through the crevasse to about
24,000 cubic feet per second. By that time the receding water had left
exposed extensive sand-bars on both sides of the river, which narrowed
the channel to 600 or 700 feet, and President Randolph’s plan was to
dam this channel sufficiently to throw all or most of the water through
the by-pass and the Rockwood head-gate, and then permanently to close
the break. As it was deemed essential to blanket the bed of the river
with a woven brush-mattress, to prevent bottom erosion and to make a
foundation for the rock, two shifts of men were set at this work. In
twenty days and nights, they constructed, with baling-wire, steel cable
and two thousand cords of brush, about 13,000 square feet of mattress,
which was enough to cover the bed of the river from shore to shore
with a double thickness of blanketing about one hundred feet in width.
When this covering had been completed and sunk, a railway trestle ten
feet wide was built across the crevasse, and on the 14th of September
work-trains of “battleships” began running across it and dumping rock
on to the mattress at the bottom of the stream. Meanwhile, the by-pass
to the Rockwood head-gate was completed and enlarged, and in less than
two weeks the dam was high enough to close the crevasse in part and
thus divert water through the by-pass and gate. On the 10th of October,
nearly 13,000 cubic feet of water per second was passing through the
gate, while only one-tenth of that amount was flowing over the dam. The
gate, however, under the pressure to which it was subjected, both by
the water and by great masses of accumulated driftwood, began to show
signs of weakness, and at two o’clock on the following day two-thirds
of it gave way, went out, and floated down stream. The by-pass then
became the main river, while the top of the diversion dam was left
practically dry. Thus ended, in almost complete failure, the fifth
attempt to control the Colorado. The river had been barred in one
channel, but it burst through another, carrying with it a 200-foot
head-gate which represented four months of labor and an expenditure of
$122,000.

Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific engineers were disappointed but
not disheartened. The steel-and-concrete head-gate at Andrade had
been ready for use since June, and powerful dredges were set at work
clearing out and enlarging the four miles of silted-up canal south of
it, so that water might be furnished to the Imperial Valley by that
route while another attempt was being made to close completely both the
Rockwood by-pass and the original intake.

An inspection of the rock-fill dam, which had been left exposed by
the diversion of the river, showed that the objections made to a
structure of this kind were not well founded. The brush-mattress had
not been broken by the weight of the rocks; the rocks themselves had
not sunk out of sight in the soft silt of the bottom, and the dam had
not been breached or seriously injured. It leaked a little, but its
good condition in other respects suggested the possibility of quickly
closing the by-pass and the intake with rock barriers of this type.
Additional trestles were built across both waterways; ten trains of
flat cars and “battleships” were set at work bringing rock from three
or four different quarries, and the laboring force was increased to
about a thousand men with seven hundred horses and mules. Operations
were pushed night and day, and in a little more than three weeks, high
rock-fill dams were built across both intake and by-pass, and were
connected by massive levees so as to make a continuous barrier about
half a mile in length. Leakage through the dams was stopped by facing
them with gravel and clay, forced into the interstices and puddled
with streams of water from powerful pumps, and the levees at both ends
were connected with those that had previously been built up and down
the river by the California Development Company. In the course of the
work there were used, first and last, about three thousand carloads of
rock, gravel and clay, while 400,000 cubic yards of earth were moved by
dredges and teams.

[Illustration: First Closure of Crevasse, Nov. 4, 1906]

On the 4th of November, a little more than two years after the cutting
of the lower Mexican intake, the crevasse into which it had grown
was closed, and the river was forced back into its ancient bed. The
danger had apparently been averted and the Imperial Valley was safe;
but where a treacherous river like the Colorado is concerned, danger
is never over and safety can be secured only by incessant watchfulness
and continual labor. On the 7th of December, another sudden flood came
down the Gila and increased the discharge of the Colorado from 9000 to
about 45,000 cubic feet per second. The rock-fill dam of the Southern
Pacific engineers stood fast; but, about midnight, a reconstructed
earthen levee of the California Development Company, twelve or fifteen
hundred feet further south, was undermined, began to leak, and finally
gave way. The breach at first was small; but it was so rapidly deepened
and widened by erosion and caving that it soon became a crevasse, and
in less than three days the whole river was pouring through a break a
thousand feet wide and again rushing down the slope of the basin to the
Salton Sea.

This new crevasse, taken in connection with the history and the
experience of the two preceding years, showed conclusively: 1, that
the tendency of the Colorado to flow into the Salton Sink was
increasing rather than diminishing; 2, that floods of from 180,000,000
to 360,000,000 cubic feet of water per hour were liable to occur
at almost any season of the year; 3, that the defensive dikes of
the California Development Company were everywhere inadequate or
untrustworthy; and 4, that in order to afford certain protection to the
Imperial Valley, it would be necessary not only to close the new break,
but to build a stronger, higher and more massive levee along the west
bank of the river for a distance of at least twenty miles.

These considerations raised of course the question whether it was worth
while for the Southern Pacific Company to continue this work, upon
which it had already spent about $1,500,000. The interests chiefly
imperilled were those of the national Government. It owned all the
irrigable land along the lower Colorado, including even that upon which
the Imperial Valley settlers had filed.[12] It was then constructing
an immense dam at Potholes, twelve miles above Yuma, upon which it
had already expended about $1,000,000 (the Laguna dam) and with the
water to be impounded thereby it expected to irrigate and reclaim about
90,000 acres of fertile land in Arizona and Southern California. If
the uncontrolled river should continue to “cut back,” by means of its
receding waterfalls, it not only would destroy the Laguna dam, and
the irrigation works upon which the Imperial Valley depended for its
very existence, but would eventually turn the whole bed of the lower
Colorado into a gorge, out of which water for irrigation purposes could
never be taken. This would make valueless more than two thousand square
miles of potentially fertile land, which, if intensively cultivated,
would support a quarter of a million people.

The interests of the Southern Pacific Company, on the other hand,
were comparatively unimportant. The traffic of the Imperial Valley,
at that time, amounted to perhaps $1,200,000 a year, from which the
railroad derived a revenue of only $20,000 or $30,000 for freight
transportation.[13] This, in its relation to the whole business of the
company, was so insignificant as hardly to be worth consideration. The
flooding of the valley, moreover, could not injure the road much more
than it had already been injured. A section of new line, about sixty
miles in length, had been surveyed and graded, and the ties and rails
for it were on the ground. At an additional cost therefore of only
$50,000 or $60,000, the imperilled part of the track could be moved to
a higher location where the rising waters of the Salton Sea could not
reach it.

President Randolph, after full investigation reported the existing
state of affairs to Mr. Harriman by telegraph, and informed him that
while the original break might be closed at a cost of from $300,000 to
$350,000, permanent control of the river would require about twenty
miles of muck-ditching[14] and levee reconstruction, and that if he
(Mr. Harriman) decided to proceed with the work, he might have to spend
$1,500,000 more. In view of this possibility, Mr. Randolph suggested
that the Government, or the State of California, be called upon to
render aid.

Mr. Harriman, who had implicit confidence in the sound business
judgment as well as the engineering ability of Mr. Epes Randolph,
accepted the latter’s view of the situation. He did not doubt that the
Colorado River might ultimately be controlled; but as the expense would
be very great, and as the chief interests imperilled were those of the
nation, he did not think that the Southern Pacific Company, of which he
was President, was equitably or morally bound to do the work alone and
at its own expense. In a long telegram to President Roosevelt, dated
New York December 13th, he fully set forth the state of affairs, but
did not comment upon it further than by saying: “In view of the above,
it does not seem fair that we should be called to do more than join in
to help the settlers.”

The following telegraphic correspondence then ensued:

  Washington, December 15, 1906.

  MR. E. H. HARRIMAN,
  New York.

 Referring to your telegram of December 13, I assume you are planning
 to continue work immediately on closing break in Colorado River. I
 should be fully informed as to how far you intend to proceed in the
 matter.

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

  New York, December 19, 1906.

  THE PRESIDENT,
  Washington.

 Further referring to your telegram of the 15th inst. our engineers
 advise that closing the break and restoring the levees can be most
 quickly and cheaply done, if the work is undertaken immediately,
 at a cost of $300,000 to $350,000. The Southern Pacific Company,
 having been at an expense of about $2,000,000 already, does not
 feel warranted in assuming this responsibility and the additional
 expenditure which is likely to follow to make the work permanent,
 besides the expenditure which the company is already undergoing to put
 its tracks above danger line. We are willing to coöperate with the
 Government, contributing train service, use of tracks and switches,
 use of rock quarries, train crews etc., and the California Development
 Company will contribute its engineers and organization, the whole work
 to be done under the Reclamation Service. Can you bring this about?

  E. H. HARRIMAN.


  Washington, December 20, 1906.

  E. H. HARRIMAN,
  New York.

 Replying to yours of 19th, Reclamation Service cannot enter upon work
 without authority of Congress and suitable convention with Mexico.
 Congress adjourns today for holidays. Impossible to secure action at
 present. It is incumbent upon you to close break again. Question
 of future permanent maintenance can then be taken up. Reclamation
 engineers available for consultation. That is all the aid that there
 is in the power of the Government to render, and it seems to me clear
 that it is the imperative duty of the California Development Company
 to close this break at once.

 The danger is ultimately due only to the action of that company in
 the past in making heading completed in October, 1904, in Mexican
 territory. The present crisis can at this moment only be met by the
 action of the company which is ultimately responsible for it, and that
 action should be taken without an hour’s delay. Through the Department
 of State I am endeavoring to secure such action by the Mexican
 Government as will enable Congress in its turn to act. But at present
 Congress can do nothing without such action by the Mexican Government.

 This is a matter of such vital importance that I wish to repeat that
 there is not the slightest excuse for the California Development
 Company waiting an hour for the action of the Government. It is its
 duty to meet the present danger immediately, and then this Government
 will take up with it, as it has already taken up with Mexico, the
 question of providing in permanent shape against the recurrence of the
 danger.

  THEODORE ROOSEVELT.


Seldom, if ever before, in our country, had material and financial
interests of such tremendous importance been dependent upon the
decision of a single man. If Mr. Harriman should order a continuance
of the work, he would put at hazard a million and a half dollars of
his own money, or the money of the Southern Pacific stockholders, in
addition to the million and a half or two millions already spent.
He would have to do this, moreover, mainly for the benefit of the
Imperial Valley and the nation, without any assurance of reimbursement
or compensation, and without any certainty of success. If, on the
other hand, he should decline to sink any more capital in the effort
to retrieve a disaster for which neither he nor the Southern Pacific
Company was in the slightest degree responsible, the Laguna dam and the
Imperial Valley would both be destroyed; twelve thousand ruined and
impoverished people would be driven out into the desert, and 1,600,000
acres of Government land would be lost to the nation forever.

Mr. Harriman, at that time, was being prosecuted by the Interstate
Commerce Commission as presumably a malefactor, and President
Roosevelt, only a few weeks before, had characterized him as an
“undesirable citizen;” but in the supreme test of character to which
he was subjected, he showed magnanimity, courage and public spirit.
On the same day that he received the President’s telegram of December
20th, he replied in the following words:

 “You seem to be under the impression that the California Development
 Company is a Southern Pacific enterprise. This is erroneous. It had
 nothing to do with its work, or the opening of the canal. We are not
 interested in its stock and in no way control it. We have loaned it
 some money to assist in dealing with the situation. What the Southern
 Pacific has done was for the protection of the settlers as well as of
 its own tracks, but we have determined to remove the tracks onto high
 ground anyway. However, in view of your message, I am giving authority
 to the Southern Pacific officers in the West to proceed at once with
 efforts to repair the break, trusting that the Government, as soon as
 you can procure the necessary Congressional action, will assist us
 with the burden.”

The contention of the Government was that inasmuch as the Southern
Pacific Company loaned $200,000 to the California Development Company
in June, 1905, and assumed temporary control of the latter’s affairs
for the purpose of safeguarding its loan, the lending company thereby
made itself responsible for all the unforeseen consequences of a ditch
dug by the borrowing company almost a year earlier. This contention
will not bear a moment’s scrutiny. The Southern Pacific Company did
not, at any time, own any of the Development Company’s stock. The
shares pledged as collateral for the loan were in the hands of a
trustee. The Southern Pacific Company did not even elect the president
and three directors of the Development Company. They were elected by
the latter’s stockholders under the terms of the loan agreement.[15]
The Southern Pacific was a creditor of the Development Company, but in
no sense a “successor in interest” by virtue of ownership.

The lower Mexican intake, which admitted the river to the Valley and
caused the disaster, was dug long before the Southern Pacific Company
had any control whatever over the Development Company, and it would be
a violation of the most elementary principles of equity if a lender
were held responsible for all previous transactions of a borrower,
merely because the latter had voluntarily agreed to share control of
his business in order to obtain the loan. If a farmer goes to a bank,
gives a mortgage on his farm as security for a loan, and agrees that a
representative of the bank shall supervise his agricultural operations
until the loan is repaid, the bank does not become responsible for
a dam across a stream on the farmer’s property built by the farmer
himself a year before he had any relations with the bank. The bank
might be responsible for a dam built under the direction of its
representative, but not for a dam built by the farmer a year before
such representative was appointed.

When President Roosevelt received Mr. Harriman’s telegram of December
20th, saying that orders had been given to proceed with the work, he
replied in the following words:

 “Am delighted to receive your telegram. Have at once directed the
 Reclamation Service to get into touch with you, so that as soon as
 Congress reassembles I can recommend legislation which will provide
 against a repetition of the disaster and make provision for the
 equitable distribution of the burden.”

[Illustration: Last Break in Defences, December 1906]

While the negotiations between President Roosevelt and Mr. Harriman
were in progress, the river-fighting organization on the lower Colorado
was kept intact. The rock quarry at Andrade was further developed;
sidings just across the Mexican boundary were lengthened to seven
thousand feet, and material and equipment of all possible kinds which
might be needed were gathered and held in readiness. When, therefore,
on the 20th of December, an order was received from Mr. Harriman to
go ahead and close the break, President Randolph, backed by all the
resources of the Southern Pacific, began a last supreme effort to
control the river and save the Imperial Valley. The crevasse, at that
time, was 1100 feet wide, with a maximum depth of forty feet, and the
whole current of the Colorado was rushing through it and discharging
into the basin of the Sink about 160,000,000 cubic feet of water
every hour. There was not time enough for the construction of another
brush-mattress, so the Southern Pacific engineers determined to build
two railway trestles of ninety-foot piles across the break, and then,
with a thousand flat cars and “battleships,” bring rocks and dump
them into the river faster than they could possibly be swallowed up
by the silt or carried down stream. Three times, within a month, the
ninety-foot piles were ripped out and swept away and the trestles
partly or wholly destroyed; but the pile-drivers kept at work, and on
the 27th of January the first trestle was finished for the fourth time
and the dumping of rock from it began.

Mr. F. H. Newell, Director of the U. S. Reclamation Service, in a
description of the final closure of the crevasse, says:

“The stones used were as large as could be handled or pushed from the
flat cars by a gang of men, or by as many men as could get around a
stone. In some cases the pieces were so large that it was necessary
to break them by what are called ‘pop-shots’ of dynamite laid upon
the stone while it rested on the cars. In this way the stones were
broken and then could be readily thrown overboard by hand. The scene
at the closure of the break was exciting. Train after train with heavy
locomotives came to the place and the stones, large and small, were
pushed off by hundreds of workmen as rapidly as the cars could be
placed. While waiting to get out upon the trestle the larger stones
were broken by ‘pop-shots,’ and the noise sounded like artillery in
action. Added to the roar of the waters were the whistle signals, the
orders to the men, and the bustle of an army working day and night to
keep ahead of the rapid cutting of the stream.

“As the rock heap rose gradually, it checked the river, causing it
also to rise higher and higher and to cascade over the pile of stone.
Riffles were caused, and an undercutting of the lower slope of the rock
heap allowed it to settle and the stones to roll down stream. All of
this undercutting and settling had to be made up and overcome by the
rapid dumping of other large stones.”

“It was necessary to raise the river bodily about eleven feet. As
the water rose and became ponded on the upper side of the rock heap,
train load after train load of small stone and gravel from the nearby
hills was dumped to fill the spaces between the large rocks. Finally,
after days and nights of struggle, the water was raised to a point
where it began to flow down its former channel and less and less to
pass over the rock heap. Then finer material was added and rapidly
piled up on the accumulated rock mass. At first, a large amount of
water passed through, and steps were taken as rapidly as possible to
close the openings by dumping sand and gravel, finishing this work by
hydraulicking silt or mud over the area and washing this in with a
hose. By thus piling up finer and finer material and distributing it,
the seepage or percolation through the mass was quickly checked and
the barrier became effective.” (“The Salton Sea,” by F. H. Newell,
Director of the U. S. Reclamation Service; Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institution for 1907, p. 331.)

The crevasse was closed and the river forced into its old bed on
the 10th of February 1907, fifty two days after President Roosevelt
appealed to Mr. Harriman, and fifteen days after the first “battleship”
load of rock was dumped from the first completed trestle. In
order, however, that this gigantic work might be accomplished,
the transportation of commercial freight on the western part of
the transcontinental railroad had to be temporarily abandoned. In
testifying before a House committee, about a year later, Chief Engineer
Cory said:

“For three weeks, two divisions of the Southern Pacific system,
embracing about twelve hundred miles of main line, were practically
tied up because of our demands for equipment and facilities. We had
a thousand flat cars exclusively in our service, and shipping from
Los Angeles’ seaport--San Pedro--was practically abandoned for two
weeks until we returned a considerable portion of the equipment. It
was simply a case of putting rock into that break faster than the
river could take it away.... In fifteen days after we got the trestle
across and dumped the first carload of rock we had the river stopped.
In that time I suppose we handled rock faster than it was ever handled
before.... We hauled it from Patagonia, Arizona, four hundred and
eighty five miles, over two mountain passes; from Tacna, sixty miles
to the east; from three other quarries--one on the Santa Fé, one on
the Salt Lake road, and one on the Southern Pacific--all near Colton,
two hundred miles to the west, and over the San Gorgonio Pass.... We
brought in about three thousand flat cars loaded with rock from these
immense distances, and we put in, all together, about 80,000 cubic
yards of rock in fifteen days.”

But the work of the Southern Pacific engineers was not confined solely
to the closing of the crevasse. In order to prevent a future break in
some other part of the irrigation company’s defensive system, they were
compelled to extend their branch railway, and to build or reinforce
levees all up and down the river. Describing this work soon after its
completion in 1907, the Director of the U. S. Reclamation Service said:

“There now extends from the head works in the United States along the
river, between it and the canal, a double row of dikes, the outer
one being occupied by a railroad. These extend in an unbroken line for
a dozen miles near the river and shut it off from the lowlands to the
west. The river side of this dike is protected by a thick layer of
gravel, and the railroad affords immediate access to all parts, so that
if menaced by the cutting of the banks it will be possible to bring
men and materials to check the floods from encroachment upon the dike
itself. Secondary dikes or cross levees run from the main structure
to certain subsidiary works, so that if the outer main dike is broken
or water flows through, this will be ponded, for a while at least,
against the inner line of defense, thus affording time to assemble the
necessary equipment to fight another intrusion.”

[Illustration: Hind-Clarke Dam by which Crevasse was Finally Closed in
January 1907]

[Illustration: Railroad Track on Reconstructed Levee]

In closing the second crevasse and completing the so-called
“Hind-Clarke” dam[16] there were used 1200 ninety-foot piles; 16,000
feet of eight-by-seventeen-inch pine stringers, and 5765 carloads
of rock, gravel and clay. In reconstructing and extending the levee
system nearly 900,000 cubic yards of earth were excavated or placed in
embankments, while 5285 carloads of gravel for blanketing were brought
from the Mammoth Gravel Pit, forty miles west of the river on the
main line. The total cost of the defensive work done after President
Roosevelt made his appeal to Mr. Harriman was about $1,600,000,
and this added to the cost of previous operations made a total of
approximately $3,100,000 expended in the effort to control the Colorado
and keep it out of the Imperial Valley. But the work was thoroughly
and effectively done. The river has never broken through the Southern
Pacific defences, although since the final closing of the second
crevasse in 1907 there have been two floods in which the discharge of
water has exceeded 140,000 cubic feet per second, or twelve billion
cubic feet every twenty four hours.

The great service thus rendered by Mr. Harriman to the people of
the Imperial Valley and to the nation has never been set forth more
clearly, perhaps, than it was in the message sent by President
Roosevelt to the Congress on the 12th of January 1907, while the work
of closing the second crevasse was in progress. In that historic paper
he said:

“The governor of the State of California and individuals and
communities in southern California have made urgent appeals to me
to take steps to save the lands and settlements in the sink, or
depression, known as the Imperial Valley, or Salton Sink region, from
threatened destruction by the overflow of Colorado River. The situation
appears so serious and urgent that I now refer the matter to the
Congress for its consideration....

“By means of the facilities available to the Southern Pacific Company,
the break in the west bank of the Colorado River was closed on November
4, 1906. A month later, however, a sudden rise in the river undermined
the poorly constructed levees immediately south of the former break,
and the water again resumed its course into the Salton Sea.

“The results have been highly alarming, as it appears that if the water
is not checked it will cut a very deep channel which, progressing
upstream in a series of cataracts, will result in conditions such
that the water cannot be diverted by gravity into the canals already
built in the Imperial Valley. If the break is not closed before the
coming spring flood of 1907, it appears highly probable that all of the
property values created in this valley will be wiped out, including
farms and towns, as well as the revenues derived by the Southern
Pacific Company. Ultimately the channel will be deepened in the main
stream itself, up to and beyond the town of Yuma, destroying the homes
and farms there, the great railroad bridge, and the Government works at
Laguna dam above Yuma....

“If the river is not put back and permanently maintained in its natural
bed, the progressive back-cutting, in the course of one or two years,
will extend upstream to Yuma, as before stated, and finally to the
Laguna dam, now being built by the Government, thus wiping out millions
of dollars of property belonging to the Government and to citizens.
Continuing farther, it will deprive all the valley lands along the
Colorado River of the possibility of obtaining necessary supply of
water by gravity canals.

“The great Yuma bridge will go out, and approximately 700,000 acres
of land as fertile as the Nile Valley will be left in a desert
condition. What this means may be understood when we remember that
the entire producing area of southern California is about 250,000
acres. A most conservative estimate after full development must place
the gross product from this land at not less than $100 per acre per
year, every ten acres of which will support a family when under
intense cultivation. If the break in the Colorado is not permanently
controlled, the financial loss to the United States will be great. The
entire irrigable area which will be either submerged or deprived of
water, in the Imperial Valley and along the Colorado River, is capable
of adding to the permanent population of Arizona and California at
least 350,000 people, and probably 500,000. Much of the land will be
worth from $500 to $1500 per acre to individual owners, or a total of
from $350,000,000 to $700,000,000....

“The point to be especially emphasized is that prompt action must be
taken, if any; otherwise the conditions may become so extreme as to be
impracticable of remedy.... It is probable now that with an expenditure
of $2,000,000 the river can be restored to its former channel and
held there indefinitely; but if this action is not taken immediately,
several times this sum may be required to restore it, and possibly it
cannot be restored unless enormous sums are expended.” (House Report
No. 1936, 61st Congress, 3rd Session, pp. 153-157.)


FOOTNOTES:

[12] The settlers had made desert or homestead entries on the land,
were actually in possession of it, and had an equitable right to it;
but the original survey of this part of California had been found
inaccurate and defective, and the Government would not--possibly could
not--issue patents until boundaries had been more clearly defined by
a re-survey. The settlers, therefore, could not raise money on their
farms by mortgaging them, because the legal title was still vested in
the Government. This became a very serious matter when they wished to
help the Southern Pacific in its fight with the river.

[13] Maxwell Evarts.

[14] Where the soil, on the site of a proposed levee, is loose and
porous, so that water percolates rapidly through it, a “muck-ditch”
is dug, to a depth of six or eight feet; material of more solid
consistency is packed into it, and the levee is then built on the
impervious foundation.

[15] The text of the agreement may be found in Report 1936, House of
Representatives, 61st Congress, 3rd Session, Jan. 18, 1911.

[16] The northern part of this dam, across the by-pass and intake,
was built under the immediate supervision of Superintendent Thomas J.
Hind, and the southern part, across the second crevasse, under that of
Superintendent C. K. Clarke. Both were Southern Pacific engineers.




THE RECOMPENSE


One might naturally suppose that when a private citizen, at the head
of a great railroad company, averted a national calamity, and saved
for the country public property that was actually worth $25,000,000 and
that had a potential value of “from $350,000,000 to $700,000,000,” he
would be entitled, at least, to the thanks of the national legislature.
If, even in Russia, a railroad president, at the request of the Czar,
controlled a great flood in the Volga, barred that river out of the
city of Astrakhan, and saved from total destruction “700,000 acres” of
fertile land potentially worth “from $350,000,000 to $700,000,000,”
he would certainly receive the thanks of the nation, expressed in a
suitably worded resolution of the Duma and the Council of the Empire.
It is more than probable that, even in China, something of this kind
would have been done for a railroad president who had controlled
a disastrous flood in the valley of the Hoang-ho. But no such
acknowledgment of valuable service was ever made by the Congress of the
United States.

Perhaps, however, Mr. Harriman was not entitled to credit, for the
reason that the work in the field was done by the Southern Pacific
Company and its engineers. This was not the view taken by the company
and the engineers themselves. If Mr. Harriman, personally, had been
asked who finally controlled the Colorado River and saved the
Imperial Valley, he undoubtedly would have replied: “Epes Randolph,
H. T. Cory, Thomas J. Hind, C. K. Clarke, and their associates.” But
these gentlemen have publicly said that the driving power behind
their work--the one thing that made it successful--was the invincible
determination of their chief. In a written discussion of the operations
on the lower Colorado, which was conducted by the American Society of
Civil Engineers, Mr. C. K. Clarke said:

“The writer desires to put on record the fact that the accomplishment
of the work was due primarily and exclusively to the independent
judgment and courage of Mr. Harriman, who persisted in his belief that
the breaks could be closed, and his determination to close them, in the
face of opposition, and regardless of the positive assertions of a host
of eminent engineers that the closure was a physical impossibility.”
(Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Paper 1270,
pp. 1551-2.)

In the course of the same discussion, Mr. Elwood Mead, Chief of
the Irrigation and Drainage Division of the U. S. Department of
Agriculture, said:

“It was the duty of the State or Nation to take charge, and provide
the money and men needed to restore the river to its former channel.
Apparently no one in authority was interested; the State Government
only considered the matter long enough to write a letter to the
President, and the President, having Congress on his hands, shifted the
responsibility to the head of a railroad company; and it was not until
the railroad company took charge that we have the first refreshing
example of generosity and public spirit. Nothing could have been finer
than the action of Mr. Harriman. The loan of $250,000, when his time
and resources were overtaxed by the earthquake at San Francisco, and
the providing more than $1,000,000 for the last hazardous attempt
to save the valley, furnish an inspiring contrast to the supine
indifference and irresponsibility shown by both the State and Federal
authorities.” (Same Paper, p. 1510.)

Mr. Epes Randolph, who as President of the California Development
Company directed and controlled the engineering operations in the lower
Colorado from 1905 to 1907, said, in a private letter to a student of
the subject:

“It was a great work, and I do not believe that any man whom I have
ever known, except Mr. Harriman, would have undertaken it. All of those
of us who actually handled the work were merely instruments in the
hands of the Master Builder.”

From these expressions of opinion it clearly appears that, in the
judgment of the men “on the firing line,” the fight with the Colorado
was inspired, directed and won by E. H. Harriman; but no acknowledgment
of indebtedness to him personally was ever made by the Congress of the
United States. The service that he personally rendered was recognized
and publicly acknowledged only by the people of the Imperial Valley. In
testifying before the House Claims Committee, in March 1910, Mr. J. B.
Parazette, speaking for the farmers of the Valley, said:

“We do feel rather differently in that Valley toward Mr. Harriman
from the way others seem to feel elsewhere over the United States. We
believe that Mr. Harriman felt a very human interest in our troubles
there.... We volunteered to furnish about five hundred horses, and to
bed and board them, and to furnish men to work during the time that the
break was being closed; but we heard that Mr. Harriman said that the
farmers down there, he supposed, had a great deal to do (it was seeding
time with them) and they had about all the work to attend to that they
could handle, and the Southern Pacific would fix the break anyway. What
we could have done would not have amounted to much to the railroad
company, but it would have amounted to considerable to the farmers
there, taking their teams out at that time of the year when they wanted
to put in crops.”

This expression of gratitude to Mr. Harriman for “showing a human
interest” in the farmers’ “troubles,” and for declining to increase
their hardships by shifting a part of the burden of work from his own
shoulders to theirs, must have pleased him more than any formal vote of
thanks from Congress could have done.

When Mr. Harriman, on the 20th of December 1906, telegraphed the
President that, “in view of” his “message,” he would resume efforts
to control the Colorado, he ventured to express the modest hope that
the Government, as soon as the necessary Congressional action could be
secured, would “assist with the burden.” Mr. Roosevelt replied that
he would recommend legislation to “provide against a repetition of
the disaster and make provision for an equitable distribution of the
burden.” (House Report No. 1936, 61st Congress, 3rd Session, p. 163).
Three weeks later, however, when the work was actually in progress,
he merely said, in his message to Congress, that “the question as to
what sum, _if any_, should be paid to the Southern Pacific Company
for work done since the break of November 4th, 1906, is one for future
consideration. For work done prior to that date no claim can be
admitted” (Same Report, p. 157). This may have seemed to Mr. Roosevelt
a proper recommendation, and one likely to secure “an equitable
distribution of the burden;” but it would not have made that impression
upon an irrigation expert, say, from the planet Mars, because it
suggested a doubt whether “_any_” of the burden should be borne by
the chief beneficiary, namely the Government. However, when a bill to
reimburse the Southern Pacific Company was introduced in the House of
Representatives in 1908, the President did give it cordial support by
saying, in a letter to the chairman of the Claims Committee:

 “... I accordingly wrote an earnest appeal to the officials of the
 road” (the Southern Pacific) “asking them to act. They did act, and
 thereby saved from ruin many people in southern California, and saved
 to the Government the Laguna dam.... I feel that it is an act of
 justice to act generously in this matter, for the railroad, by the
 prompt and effective work that it did, rendered a notable service to
 the threatened community. In no other way could this result have been
 accomplished.” (House Report No. 1936, 61st Congress, 3rd Session.)

Mr. Roosevelt’s “earnest appeal” had been addressed, as a matter of
fact, to E. H. Harriman, not to “the officials of the road;” but
the President, apparently, could not bring himself, either in this
letter or in his previous message, to mention the name of the man
who, at the very time when he was struggling with the Colorado River
at the request of the Government, was being prosecuted by that same
Government as a malefactor. Names are often embarrassing, and the name
in this case might have suggested to the public mind the obnoxious
idea that Mr. Harriman, after all, might not be a wholly “undesirable
citizen.” Then, too, there would have been a certain incongruity in
denouncing “Harriman,” by name as a public enemy, while asking the
same “Harriman,” by name, to render a great public service; so it was
apparently thought safer to mention the name in one case and drop it
out of sight in the other.

The President’s appeal to Congress to “act generously,” was not
so successful as had been his appeal to Mr. Harriman to stop the
Colorado River and save the Imperial Valley. Congress seldom acts
“generously” except on measures likely to influence votes, such as
pension bills, public building bills, and bills for the improvement
of rivers and harbors. Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific
Company had “improved” a national river, at a cost to themselves of
about $3,000,000; but inasmuch as they were then under a cloud of
unpopularity created by official and unofficial misrepresentation,
their influence on Congressional elections was negligible, and Senators
and Representatives might safely--perhaps judiciously--ignore their
claim regardless of its merits. The reimbursement bill, therefore,
dragged along without action for about three years. Hearings were held,
witnesses from California and Arizona were examined, expert engineers
were consulted, and the whole subject was thoroughly threshed out.
Memorials in support of the bill were received from towns, communities
and chambers of commerce in the Imperial Valley; and the entire
Congressional delegation from California, as well as almost all the
newspapers of the State, urged reimbursement as a matter of simple
justice. But Congress could not make up its mind to do justice, either
to Mr. Harriman or to a railroad company. In 1909, when William H.
Taft became President, he at once took up the matter, and in his first
message to Congress referred to it in the following words:

 “This leads me to invite the attention of Congress to the claim made
 by the Southern Pacific Company for an amount expended in a similar
 work of relief called for by a flood and great emergency. This work,
 as I am informed, was undertaken at the request of my predecessor,
 and under promise to reimburse the railroad company. It seems to me
 the equity of this claim is manifest, and the only question involved
 is the reasonable value of the work done. I recommend the payment of
 the claim, in a sum found to be just.” (House Report No. 1956, 61st
 Congress, 3rd Session.)

Two years later, when nothing had been done, President Taft sent to the
Chairman of the House Committee on Claims the following letter:

  White House
  Washington, Jan. 16, 1911.

  HON. GEORGE W. PRINCE,
  Chairman of Committee on Claims,

  _My dear Mr. Prince_:

 As I recommended in my message, I sincerely hope that Congress, at
 this time, will compensate the Southern Pacific Railway for work which
 it did in the Imperial Valley under stress of great emergency. I do
 not know what amount is just, but I do know that that company came to
 the rescue of the Government at the instance of President Roosevelt,
 and that there was an implied arrangement under which they were to be
 compensated, and I think that Congress should take up the matter and
 do justice to that corporation in this instance.

  Sincerely yours,
  W. H. TAFT.


Under this pressure from the White House, the Committee on Claims
finally acted. On the 28th of January 1911, after having reduced the
proposed appropriation from $1,663,000 to $773,000, the committee, by
a divided vote, reported the bill to the House with the recommendation
that it pass. Five members, however, namely Representatives Goldfogle,
Kitchin, Candler, Shackleford and Adair, presented a minority report
in which they described the bill as “an attempted raid on the Federal
Treasury;” denied that there was “any legal, equitable, or moral
obligation on the part of the Government” to pay this sum, “or any
amount, for closing the break in the Colorado River;” referred to
the proposed appropriation as “purely a gratuity,” “a gift of the
people’s money,” and declared that they were opposed to this “gift
to the Southern Pacific Company, as well as all other gratuities to
private enterprise.” (House Report No. 1936, part 2; 61st Congress, 3rd
Session.)

This minority report seems to have given the _coup de grace_ to the
reimbursement bill. Whether the members of the House were lacking in
a sense of justice; whether they were indifferent to the bill because
there was “nothing in it for them;” or whether they were afraid, in
an election campaign, to face the charge that they had “given the
people’s money,” as “a pure gratuity” to one of Mr. Harriman’s railroad
corporations, it is impossible to say. Certain it is that no action was
ever taken on the bill, although it had been favorably reported by the
Committee on Claims; had been repeatedly recommended by two Presidents,
and had been unanimously supported, regardless of party lines, by the
people of the Imperial Valley and by the whole State of California.
There are certain events which may seem inexplicable, but upon which it
is not necessary to comment. The barest recital of facts is eloquent
enough.

Shortly before his death, Mr. Harriman made a trip through the Imperial
Valley and over the reconstructed levee which kept the Colorado River
within bounds. Upon his return to Imperial Junction, he was met by a
representative of the Los Angeles Examiner who, in conversation about
the work, said:

“Mr. Harriman, the Government hasn’t paid you that money, and your
work here does not seem to be duly appreciated; do you not, under the
circumstances, regret having made this large expenditure?”

“No,” replied Mr. Harriman. “This valley was worth saving, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said the reporter.

“Then we have the satisfaction of knowing that we saved it, haven’t we?”

It is unfortunate that so fine an achievement as the controlling of
the Colorado River and the saving of the Imperial Valley should have
been clouded by national ingratitude or indifference; but if Mr.
Harriman were living today, he would doubtless find compensation and
satisfaction enough in the results of his work as they now appear.
The Salton Sea, which once threatened to submerge and destroy the
artificially created oasis in the desert, ceased to rise in 1907 and is
now slowly drying up. The great Laguna dam above Yuma is done, and is
furnishing water to tens of thousands of acres in southern California
and Arizona. The territory along the Colorado River below the Grand
Cañon, whose prospective value President Roosevelt estimated at “from
$350,000,000 to $700,000,000” is safe. The Imperial Valley, which was
yielding only $1,200,000 to its cultivators ten years ago, is now
producing cotton, barley, alfalfa, cantaloupes, grapes, vegetables
and live stock worth more than ten times that amount. According to an
estimate made by the Imperial Valley Press in June, 1916, the farmers
of the Valley will earn this year a sum equivalent to the interest on
$500,000,000. And all of this actual and potential wealth, as well
as the land that has produced or will produce it, was threatened
with total destruction in 1906, and was saved for the nation by the
constructive genius and the invincible resolution of the “Master
Builder.”


Printed in the United States of America



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