“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.”
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