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.