The Mystic Mid-Region: The Deserts of the Southwest

by Arthur J. Burdick

This concern, the Liverpool Salt Company, had a competitor for the salt trade of the Pacific coast in the Standard Salt Company. The Salton fields are reached by means of the Southern Pacific Railway, which road has the handling of all the product of the salt-fields. The Standard Company alleged that the railroad people discriminated against it in the way of freight rates, excluding the Standard people from the coast markets, and thus securing a monopoly of the trade for the Liverpool Company. This led the managers of the Standard Company to look into the titles of the salt-fields. It was then discovered that the company operating was without title, and that the lands were unallotted Government lands.

The attention of the Government officials was called to the fact that the Liverpool people were trespassers, and an order was issued for the company to vacate. A bill was then introduced in Congress providing for filing claims upon saline lands, and the bill passed the Senate January 22, 1901. It yet required the signature of the President to make it a law, however, and it was then that matters became interesting in the desert.

Both companies congregated men on the lands adjoining the salt-fields, prepared to race to the choice portion of the field to stake claims the moment the wire should apprise them of the signing of the bill. Each company had an agent in Washington ready to telegraph the news the instant it became known, and each company had a man at the telegraph station at Salton, three miles from the field, to take the message to the men the moment it came.

The Liverpool Company felt confident of winning the race, for the company owned a spur track from the main line of the railroad to the salt-fields, and upon this line was placed a hand-car, manned ready to pull for the fields the instant the dispatch should arrive. This car could easily outstrip the fleetest horse, the yielding sands making it impossible for a steed to make rapid progress.

The manager of the Standard Company, however, did not depend upon horse speed, mule speed, or car speed. There are in Southern California an average of 316 cloudless days each year. He pinned his faith to the weather, and his confidence was not betrayed.

At 2.45 o'clock, the afternoon of January 31st, two telegrams arrived at Salton at about the same time. One was for the manager of the Liverpool Salt Company and the other was for the manager of the Standard Salt Company. The contents of the telegrams were identical. They told that the President had signed the bill which opened the lands in the salt-field to entry. In a moment the hand-car was off, the men pumping for dear life. Before they had gone a dozen rods there shot from the station a blaze of light—a message flashed by mirrors held in such a manner as to catch and reflect the rays of the sun. To the watchers three miles away, who were waiting for the signal, which had been prearranged, it was as though the station had burst into flame. At the sight of this signal the men rushed to the salt-fields and set the stakes and posted the notices required by law. When the hand-car men arrived it was all over, and there was nothing for them to do but to return and swallow their chagrin.

After the triumph of the Standard Company in this peculiar race, a compromise was effected whereby the Liverpool Company, which owned the mills and apparatus and the spur track, and all other equipments for the operating of the field, resumed the ownership of the field, and the Standard Company was granted concessions which placed them on an equal footing with their competitors in the markets on the coast.

In June, 1891, the laborers at Salton were treated to a surprise. They found the country filling up with water from an unknown source. A great deal of apprehension was felt, as it was thought that the water undoubtedly came from a crevasse which had been opened communicating with the sea. If such were the case it was to be expected that Salton would soon be 265 feet under water, for water seeks its level.

The flow of water continued till an area ten miles wide by thirty miles long was covered to a depth of six feet; then it was ascertained that the water was coming in from the Colorado River, which had risen above its banks and was cutting a channel across the desert, threatening to convert a large section of the Coachella Valley into an inland sea.

This inundation was caused by the co-equal rise of the head waters of the Colorado and Gila rivers. The waters of the lower Colorado rose five feet above high-water mark and continued to pour its waters into the desert till the flood subsided. After the flood had abated, the sands of the desert and the fiery sun soon drank up the lake thus suddenly formed.