RECLAIMING THE DESERT
By C. J. BLANCHARD
United States Reclamation Service
With Illustrations from Photographs Supplied by the United States Reclamation Service.
Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1918, by The Mentor Association, Inc.
MENTOR GRAVURES
A MIRACLE OF IRRIGATION, UNCOMPAHGRE VALLEY, COLORADO
HIGH LINE CANAL, UTAH VALLEY, UTAH
GUNNISON TUNNEL, COLORADO
MENTOR GRAVURES
ROOSEVELT DAM, ARIZONA
ARROWROCK DAM, IDAHO
SUBURB OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA
MAKING FURROWS FOR IRRIGATION
“It is a grander achievement to expand the domain of civilization by water than by blood.”
National reclamation was the dream of Western statesmen and thinkers for a quarter of a century before a laggard Congress gave it form and actuality by the law of June 17, 1902. With the passage of that law and another which initiated the construction of the Panama Canal,—both were signed by President Roosevelt in the same month,—the engineering forces of the nation were flung into widely differing fields of activity. With the Panama Canal engineers, the task, though herculean, was confined to a restricted and perfectly well defined area. On the other hand, the Reclamation problems were generally in regions widely separated, remote from transportation, and often unsurveyed and unexplored. To appreciate the variety and magnitude of the tasks involved, it is necessary briefly to describe the general character of the country in which these works were projected.
The Desert States
The great American desert may be roughly described as lying between the western boundary of the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Ocean, and as embracing about two-fifths of the total area of continental United States, exclusive of Alaska. The superficial area of the several states that comprise this desert is almost equal to the combined areas of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, the British Isles, Austro-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, the Balkan States, Turkey in Europe, and Japan. The population of the so-called desert states[A] is 16,423,625, while that of the countries above-mentioned is over twelve times as great. Within the confines of the desert is every gradation of climate from north temperate to semi-tropic found in these European countries. Its physical geography includes a wide variety of features from the Great Plains to the highest and lowest elevations in our country. Herein are found the most notable scenic attractions, including the great national playgrounds of Yellowstone, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake and Yosemite National Parks, the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and the principal national forests.
[A] Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma.
THE FIRST FLOW OF WATER
In Grand Valley Project, Colorado
As to water supply, the desert belongs in two regions, arid and semi-arid. West of the Missouri and extending to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, is a vast area of foothills and gently sloping, grassy prairies, which constitute a large part of the semi-arid or sub-humid region of the United States. This broad belt, stretching from Mexico northward into Canada, has no clear-cut boundary separating it from the humid region on the east or the arid region on the west, owing to the variance of the mean annual precipitation in many localities. A convenient and easily marked line for the eastern boundary of the arid region is one closely following the hundred and third meridian. On the north it bends away from the meridian toward the west, and on the south tends eastward north of the Rio Grande. On the west the arid region extends to the Pacific Coast in extreme southern California, but from Monterey north there is a narrow belt of semi-arid and humid country bordering the Pacific Ocean. The Coast Range is humid, especially in Oregon and Washington, where the rainfall is as heavy as in any other part of the United States.
FORTY BUSHELS OF WHEAT PER ACRE
Shoshone Project, Wyoming. This was desert land in 1915
The true desert, wherein the production of crops is wholly dependent upon the artificial application of water, lies for the most part west of the Rocky Mountains. Its estimated area, 900,000 square miles, is probably slightly greater than that of the semi-arid region. An accurate determination of the relative size of each, however, is not possible until a comprehensive hydrographic survey has been completed. Contrary to popular opinion, this region is not a vast wilderness, desolate and unpromising. Between the mountain ranges lie many beautiful valleys, through which flow numerous streams fed by melting snows. Utah and Nevada contain large areas of sage-brush desert, comprising what is known as the Great Basin, which has no outlet to the sea, and is doomed to aridity by reason of the absence of living streams. Millions of acres of desert now inhabited by the coyote and the rattlesnake await only the coming of the engineer to wake to teeming fecundity.
In one important respect the arid and semi-arid regions are alike, and that is in the character of the streams. Almost without exception the rivers of the West are erratic and “flashy” in flow, are subject to long periods of drought and sudden and destructive floods. The full utilization of these streams for irrigation and power necessitates storage. In the control of floods, engineers have found their greatest problem, and one whose solution has taxed the skill, imagination and daring of twentieth-century genius.
WHEAT ON SHOSHONE PROJECT, WYOMING
This land was desert in 1908
National Irrigation
National irrigation became a fixed policy of the American Government with the passage of the Reclamation Act in June, 1902. The principal provisions of this act are briefly as follows:
First. A reclamation fund in the Treasury consisting of the proceeds from the sales of public lands in the sixteen arid and semi-arid states.[A]
[A] These include the states named in the first foot-note, with Texas added.
SAGE BRUSH AND ALFALFA, MINIDOKA PROJECT, IDAHO
On one side of the fence is the desert sage brush, on the other rich alfalfa
Second. A Reclamation Service in the Department of the Interior to investigate and report on the irrigation projects to the Secretary of the Interior, who, with the approval of Congress, may authorize construction and let contracts, providing the money is available in the fund.
Third. The return to the fund of the actual cost of each project by the sale of water rights, payments to be made in a series of instalments running over a period of twenty years without interest. The money so returned is to be used again and again on other works.
A COMFORTABLE “DESERT” HOME
Having electric power for heat, light and cooking
Fourth. The holding of public lands for actual settlers under the homestead act in small farm units sufficient to support a family.
Fifth. The sale of water rights to private land owners, but not for more than 160 acres.
Sixth. The ultimate turning over to the people of the irrigation system, to be operated and managed by them under a system of home rule.
HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING, MINIDOKA PROJECT
This beautiful, fully equipped school stands where there was only desert in 1907
The policy of national irrigation is broadly paternal and of enormous economic importance to the whole country. In the building of new commonwealths in the arid West the Government is utilizing its own undeveloped resources. It is creating opportunities for its citizens to establish themselves in permanent homes in which patriotism, loyalty and civic pride are bred and fostered. For a number of years the growth of population has been abnormal when compared with the development of the agricultural industries that must support the people. Farming as a profession has been languishing and falling behind the general development of the country. The rapid increase in land values has made it correspondingly more difficult for the man of small means to acquire a foothold on the land. Practically every progressive nation in the world has come to recognize this fact, and is making provisions to encourage and assist its citizens to undertake farming. The primary purpose of the Reclamation Law, therefore, is to make homes on the land. To the new empire in the West have flocked the young, the strong, the adventurous, and herein we are witnessing a gradual welding of all the Aryan races into a final race type. Signs are not lacking that this type in time will dominate the world, for the desert offers to every man his true birthright—room to breathe, sunshine, a sure reward for intelligent labor, the individual home, and an opportunity to become independent. Desert reclamation already has gone beyond the stage of prophecy. The material and substantial results that have been accomplished place the work of the Government on a practical and solid foundation.
The Romance of Reclamation
The history of national reclamation is as interesting and romantic as a tale from the Arabian Nights. Romance colored the vision of builders that saw in the sparkling streamlets, the unchecked floods, the wide, free plains and the vacant mountain valleys a promise of independence, happy homes and laughing children. Theirs was not the incentive of large emoluments, for Government salaries are notoriously meager. Their inspiration came from doing a signal work of splendid usefulness,—conquering nature in her unfriendliest mood for the permanent and lasting good of mankind. As they toiled in the fastnesses of the mountains, in abysmal canyons or far out in the voiceless desert, through the blazing summer heat of the Southwest or the fierce blizzards of the northern plains, this thought was uppermost, “By this work we shall make the desert blossom.”
CHICKENS THRIVE
In the dry climate of the desert
Their dramatic achievements stand out boldly in this age of engineering triumphs. The mighty floods of western rivers have been checked behind enormous masonry dams, several of which are ranked among the highest in the world. Physical geography has been altered by transferring rivers from one drainage basin into that of another. Whole rivers are now flowing through tunnels that pierce lofty mountain ranges, and the water is being distributed in thousands of miles of canals to a million acres of desert.
FIRST SETTLERS ON DESERT LANDS
Settlers’ houses where once was the haunt of the buffalo
Owing to limitation of space only a few of these interesting irrigation projects of the United States Federal Government are here mentioned, although each is worthy of extended description. The annual reports of the Service are obtainable from the Superintendent of Public Documents in Washington, and these contain full details.
In the order of their magnitude and the spectacular character of the engineering work, the Arrowrock dam in Idaho, Elephant Butte dam in New Mexico, Roosevelt dam in Arizona, Shoshone and Pathfinder dams in Wyoming, and Gunnison tunnel in Colorado, take first rank. Several of these are described at length elsewhere.
AN OREGON MELON PATCH
The Most Capacious Irrigation Reservoir
In a region rich in thrilling reminiscence along the pathway trod by the Conquistadores of Spain, Federal engineers recently completed a monumental structure of masonry known as the Elephant Butte dam in New Mexico. This enormous mass of rock and cement effectually and permanently blocks the canyon of the Rio Grande just below the isolated basaltic peak from which it derives its name. It rises from the depths of the canyon 318 feet, and its crest length is 1674 feet. It owes its place among the greatest structures of the age to the enormous capacity of the reservoir created by it. Behind this towering monolith the greatest floods of the turbulent Rio Grande are held in a lake forty-five miles long and four miles wide. When full it will contain enough water to cover 2,627,700 acres to the depth of a foot, or sufficient to submerge the entire State of Connecticut ten inches deep. This stored water, when needed for irrigation, is turned back into the river and taken out at several points above and below El Paso, Texas; 180,000 acres in New Mexico, Texas and Old Mexico are being brought into cultivation. The charm of antiquity pervades the whole region. Here irrigation was practiced long before the first written word of our history. Centuries before the coming of the Spanish missionaries, a pastoral race dwelt here and cultivated this fertile valley along the stream. A later civilization merely absorbed and extended the primitive canals until the era of national reclamation aroused the valley to new life and purpose. While some of the primitive methods of agriculture, differing but slightly from those of Biblical days, are still practiced, modern harvesting machinery is replacing the hand sickle, the sulky plow supplants the sharpened stick, and the threshing of grain is now performed by modern methods, and rarely by means of goats and ponies. Splendid highways of concrete and macadam connect the farming communities with numerous thriving towns, and the quaint groups of adobe houses, which here and there rise in the desert, are the last remains of vanishing races that are slowly giving way to modern progress.
SIX YEARS FROM DESERT LAND
A rich and fruitful farm on land barren in 1912
The Shoshone Dam
In northern Wyoming, near the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park, the South and North Forks of Shoshone River plunge downward from the steep slopes of the Rockies and unite in a broad level-floored valley which in early geological times was a beautiful mountain lake. At the lower end of the valley the river rushes abruptly into a deep and narrow canyon. The entrance to the canyon, which is only sixty feet wide at the bottom, was selected as the site for the Shoshone dam. Before construction began it was necessary to blast a highway through the gorge for a distance of eight miles, in order to connect the work with the nearest railway. This highway is now a part of the road system into the Park, and is known as Cody Way.
DRYING ALMONDS
On the Orland Project, California
Nearly a year was spent in investigating bed rock conditions before the foundation was placed. Enormous boulders eighty feet in thickness were discovered in the bed of the stream; the removal of these, owing to the narrowness and depth of the canyon, proved expensive and difficult. Before any work was undertaken in clearing the channel of obstructions, the river was passed around the dam site by means of a tunnel. During the early period of construction the laborers were taken to and from their work, hundreds of feet below the camp, by means of baskets, and skips were suspended on cable ways across the gorge. Sudden floods, extreme cold weather, short seasons, and other unfavorable conditions greatly retarded progress.
The dam is a wedge of concrete, with curve up stream, 328 feet in height, and 200 feet long on top. It has restored the lake of olden times, and this beautiful body of water is now one of the attractions of the trip to the Park. The stored water will be utilized for the irrigation of 150,000 acres of land on the mesa (a high, broad, flat table-land) below Cody. This region until 1907 was a worthless and uninhabited desert. Today it is occupied by more than 700 farm families and three growing towns.
Conquering the American Nile
LAGUNA DAM, ARIZONA-CALIFORNIA
Length, 4781 feet; 19 feet high. Division Gates, 17×33 feet, are the largest in the world
The delta of the Colorado River, in Arizona and California, is often described as America’s Valley of the Nile. In climate, soil and agricultural conditions it is singularly like the great valley of Egypt. The conquest of this turbulent river of the West was a splendid achievement. The engineering features of the Yuma project, in Arizona and California, are in many respects original. The control of the stream called for a long diversion dam and more than 100 miles of strong levees. The dam is nearly a mile long, nineteen feet high, and 267 feet wide on the bottom. Its type is similar to that of the barrages of the English engineers in India. Laid on a foundation of shifting sand and silt, it is held in place by its enormous weight, 600,000 tons. Owing to the quantities of silt carried by this stream, the dam is provided with a large settling basin, sluiceway and gates, by which comparatively clear water is turned into the canals. The main canal system extends for twelve miles on the California side. Just opposite the city of Yuma, Arizona, the entire volume, 1,000 cubic feet per second, is dropped in a siphon 1,000 feet long and carried under the river to the Arizona side. Here are 90,000 acres of valley and mesa land, and more than half of the area is being developed intensively. The soil is of great depth and extremely fertile, and the climate is adapted to the growing of a wide variety of crops. The mesa lands which are to be opened later are described as frostless, and especially adapted to growing citrus and other semi-tropic crops.
The Pathfinder Dam
GRAND RIVER, ROLLER-TOP DIVISION DAM, COLORADO
Electrically operated rollers are lifted to pass the floods
Far from the beaten path of man, fifty miles from the nearest railway in a deep and narrow granite canyon of the North Platte River, in southern Wyoming, engineers in 1903 located an admirable site for a high masonry dam. Early maps of the expedition of Gen. John C. Frémont, the explorer, indicated the spot as the scene of a disaster where these adventurers suffered the wreck of their boats and the loss of many belongings in the rapids of the river. Hence the name Pathfinder dam. This is a beautiful structure of huge granite blocks 225 feet high and 600 feet long on top, and its cost was $1,000,000.
SHOSHONE RESERVOIR, WYOMING
Judged from the service it has rendered mankind already, as a preventive against disastrous floods and a guarantor of generous harvests, it deserves a high place among the storage structures of the world. Since its completion the North Platte River has been completely tamed, and angry floods that once wrought millions of dollars of destruction are now so distributed as to insure an annual harvest valued at $6,000,000 in a region once occupied only by nomadic herdsmen.
Transferring a River
The waters of the Strawberry River in Utah, which for ages flowed idly to the Pacific Ocean, are today contributing to the material prosperity of a beautiful valley in the drainage of Great Salt Lake. The transferrence of a river from its own drainage into that of another has been performed by the Federal engineers on several occasions, notably in Colorado, where the Gunnison River is augmenting the flow of the Uncompahgre, the St. Mary River in Montana (a former tributary of the Arctic Ocean, now transferred to Atlantic drainage) and the Truckee River in Nevada, now consolidated with the Carson River.
PATHFINDER DAM, WYOMING
218 feet high, 600 feet long at top. Irrigates 220,000 acres; cost, $1,000,000
Strawberry Valley, Utah, in the heart of the lofty Wasatch Range, has been converted into a large lake by means of a dam in Strawberry River. The stored waters are turned through a tunnel four miles long, piercing the range, and dropped into Utah Valley on the Western slope. By means of sixty miles of cement-lined canals skirting the mountains, an area of 60,000 acres of excellent agricultural land has been reclaimed. The downward rush of water has been harnessed, and the surplus power developed is leased to several of the towns in the valley.
ELEPHANT BUTTE DAM, NEW MEXICO
Height, 318 feet; length at top, 1674 feet. Creates largest artificial reservoir for irrigation in the world
Reclamation Past and Future
Fifteen years have passed since reclamation became a Federal policy,—a short period in a nation’s life if measured only in time, but one of historic importance when measured by achievement and progress. In this brief span of years the Service has completed sixteen notable structures of masonry and concrete, controlling the floods of torrential streams, has excavated more than 10,000 miles of canals, many of which carry whole rivers, and seventy miles of tunnels, mostly in mountains. It has to its credit the highest dam, the longest tunnel and the largest storage reservoir for irrigation in the world. By an investment of $120,000,000, which is repayable by the farmers in twenty years, the productive territory of the nation has been expanded by more than a million acres, and there has resulted an annual increase in its food supply valued at $50,000,000. Where once the wilderness reigned, the hearth-stones of 200,000 people have been erected, and a citizenship established which constitutes a new bulwark of American liberty, and bulkhead the flood waters of anarchy. Thrilling, dynamic, and inspirational, this work quickens patriotic impulses and stimulates love for the republic that has promoted it.
OUTLET OF THE STRAWBERRY VALLEY TUNNEL
Four miles long, and connecting Pacific Ocean drainage with that of our great interior basin
Reclamation Plans
The plans of the Reclamation Service for the present and for the immediate future are centered upon the completion of twenty-six projects, embracing a total of 3,118,000 acres. To date, engineering works have made available an adequate water supply for approximately 1,800,000 acres. In 1917, water was applied to about 1,200,000 acres, and the gross value of crops was nearly $60,000,000. It is conservative to state that with the irrigation of all the lands included in these projects, 50,000 families will have been established on individual farms. The taxable wealth will be augmented by $300,000,000, and our annual returns from crops increased by $100,000,000. The area included in these projects exceeds the total cropped acreage of Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Delaware, and the estimated value of crops after reclamation is $20,000,000 greater than the total returns per annum of these states. In these estimates no account is taken of the important increment to our national wealth in the resulting growth of cities and towns, in the building of railroads, and in manufacturing and commercial institutions, which in aggregate usually equals that of land values.
THE NEW HOME ON THE DESERT
In fulfilling its manifest destiny, the West has undertaken the greatest and most splendid enterprise in the world—the upbuilding of Man. It is doing for the world what the world needs most. It is producing a great people. The sentiment of it has been expressed in eloquent terms by the late Henry Grady, “A citizen,” he said, “standing in the doorway of his home, contented on his own threshold, his family gathered about him, while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes that are dearest,—he shall save the republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are deserted.” This pregnant sentence epitomizes the final chapter of our Romance of the Desert, as it is now being written in the arid West.
PRODUCTS OF THE DESERT
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
| RECLAIMING THE ARID WEST | By George Wharton James |
| UNCLE SAM’S OUTDOOR MAGIC | By P. K. Fitzhugh |
DOCUMENTS ISSUED BY THE U. S. RECLAMATION SERVICE AND DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
⁂ Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor.