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Show f TKE SALTON SEA. Imperial Valley Its Rich Soil Thickly In-! In-! habited, May Be Submerrjed I Break in I the Colorado River Is Not Closed Des- ert Lands of Arizona, California and Mexico Becoming an Inland Sea Ex-I Ex-I traordinary Phenomena Why the V ; President Gave Rush Orders to Stop the Break The Colorado River Changing Its Cours? Will Not Be Swayed by Corporate Cor-porate Wealth or the Ingenuity of Man What the Results Will Be Pen Pictures of the Past What We May Have in the Future. (Written for The Intormountain Catholic.) I A few weeks ago the Utah house of representatives representa-tives petitioned President Itoosevelt to '"desist from attempting to prevent the formation of the Salton sea." Passing over lhe peculiar wording of the petition, pe-tition, inay ask why the legislature, before mailing mail-ing to the Chief Executive that asinine request, did Dot, inform itself on' the problem now eon fronting front-ing the United States in its friendly intercourse t with Mexico and on the large interests involved and, threatened by the diversion of the course of 'the Colorado river? Why did not some one intelligent intelli-gent member of the house inquire from an aecred-- aecred-- iited meteorologist what would likely be the precipi- ; itation on the soil of Utah from an inland lake of no : great unnensjons whose evaporation was taking , place 'O0 miles away!? To escape stultification it is i worth the time of an individual or a representative . bo ijiform itself on facts. . v j I II t -flU ftli0 break in th.-? Colorado take? practically, j '. r r ' 77r .... ,y;;t .iiray . - yfdera big ' slice ; ?r t t; Out il territory and from large agricultural and- Tin'il11' ,a'fOTnia something must be I.. " 1 u close it, so that the breach in the river be-r an international concern. ) "T, 1ia the members of the Utah house ot reprcsen- 's know, or do ihey care, that if their request "xJ h grant eil 12.000 settlers would be driven a i their homes and many of them pauperized ? 1 'x'orth of the Mexican boundary is a splendid ilriet of land known as Imperial valley, homestead- rnj by 10,000 families. The chief towns Imperial. lloliville. Helper and Brawlcy are all now thriving thriv-ing and prosperous. South of the border is an area of l2X)d equal to that of Imperial valley in fertility j sud prvouct3venes5 belonging to the Colorado Kiver J rVrelopmcnt. company. The principal canal of the :srreat irrigating system leaves the Colorado river a few miles below Yuma & an elevation of TOO feet shone :he sea: asd crossing the Mexican frontier, i ihvsrs ra si ward into Imperial valley. The town of I Imperial almost in the center of the valley, is six- ! ty-iwo feel lovror than the ocean, and the grade 5 (continnas to fall till at Sail on Sink it is down to 2ST feet below sea level. This decline gives a Tapid 1 ourrcnt to ihe flowing waters, and lhe opening in I mhe rivpr hank ha. grown so wide lliat it will take I ranch time and millions to clo.-e it. If the break I ,1e noT repaired the Imperial valley and the entire 4 Colorado desert of southern California up to the ancient beaches on lhe inclosing mountains will Itfvome submerged and a great lake formed at the I nd of twenty years. So. at least the engineers of -she Southern Paein'c and the hydrographers now 3-iere assure me. ! The new s";i now forming in the desert lands of I 'Arizona. Mexico and California is one of the most I rxtraordinary assisted natural phenomena of mod- f cm time. It has changed the course of one of ihe 1 greatest rivers of the we.t. has forced one of the greatest railroads in lhe world to move hack, and t Jwek and hack again, is converting a desert into-an i inland wa. may possibly change tlie cJimate ot a I jrreat territory and even involve two friendly na- I lions in diplomatic controversy. ! Back of all is the sinister suspicion1 that bo- i Lhid the opening is a deep laid plot to acquire by I purchase from Mexico an important sliee of Lower 1 California. This suspicion has probably reached i iw f.nrt: i ihe President, who is above trickery and ! treachery, and may account for his "rush order" s 10 Mr. llarriman of the Southern Pacific to "close ! ihe breach: count not the cost, but close the 1 reach." It will be closed. J This morning I sailed over the ruins and roofs I id" some of the buildings of Salton Sink where a i f.-'w years ago were the greatest salt works am1. I evaporating pans in America, where three years I J1fr(, there was a desolate and forbidding wilderness :? there is now a lake t wenty-lhree miles wide, fifty j Vni long, in places forty feet deep and forced by the inrush' of the waters of the Gila and Colorado river i rising nearly one inch every twenty-four Lours. The break is in the banks of an irrigating I cai.al'a few miles south of Yuma. Ariz. Three miles I .,i,ve ihis town, the Colorado opens iis side and I takrv. i the Cila river and from there the flow V f-wein on HHV miles to lhe Gulf of California. I Poihly lhe mo-t ambitious atlempt at lrriga- i iioii of arid lands ever undertaken by private en- 1crtrUe was that o ft lie California . Development I companv which promised its shareholders to irri- I pa1(. bv'-ravitv from the Colorado river. SOO.OOO I fieres of desert land, one-fourth of which belongs lo I Mexico. The company was capitalized at $1.2rrfU00 ! Tins companv began operations in April. -ISO, and I ? in six vrars' villages and towns sprang into life, f nd whre a few rears ego there was a desert there f nre now fertile farm?, orange and Line groves and h I (Continued on Page 5.) THE SALTON SEA. J (Continued from Page 1.) ! comfortable homes occupied by thousands of industrious indus-trious and contented people. A canal called ihe Alamo was dredged from the Colorado through the sand lands, and from this canal by auxiliary ditches was furnished water for irrigating the farms. When the Colorado river was low, the canal Avas sluggish in its flow .the channel and subsidiary trenches filled with silt and the settlers became clamorous. TJien the company 'opened a second intake in-take known as the Imperial, which connected the Colorado with the Alamo canal. Here and now is where the trouble begins. Xeilher sufficiently strong nor perfected headgates, wing-dams or bulkheads were constructed and when, in the spring of ItNM, the Colorado, swollen from mountain and tributary streams, came rushing to the sea, it swept the artificial ar-tificial works aside and entered upon its present career of devastation. About this time a series of sharp, quick and rotary ro-tary earthquakes rocked thecountry and opened a gash in the Colorado above the Imperial weir. From this opening the Maters poured into what is now known as the new river and onward, almost due north, to Salton basin, seventy-five miles away. Salton Basin was a vast depression in the earth's surface, sinking from sea level to 287 feet below. It widened over two counties of southern California and stretched well into Mexico, forming a huge depression between well defined "beaches" of an ancient sea and covered an approximate area of fifteen fif-teen to forty miles wide and about 100 miles long. There is no doubt but that at some time in the past this sunken desert was an extension of the Gulf of California. From a point near the boundary line to the gulf, a distance of about eighty-five miles, lies the delta of ihe Colorado, a rich alluvial plain of great depth. equal in productivity to the delta of the Xile; n vast area, apparently as level as a tuble. built up by the Colorado river, that has d ravin its material from the plains of Wyoming through Grrrn river and. adding to it all down through Colorado. Ftah and Arizona, deposited it on the Inew land it was forming at the end of its flow. ) This is the first time in its histolry that the Colorado Colo-rado has changed its course and nil the efforts of men and money of the great Soutlhern Pacific and the giant irrigation companies halve failed j0 coax or force it back to its natural bd. A river that has flowed on through the ages, hiughing at all obstacles, ob-stacles, tearing the hearts out of opposing mountains moun-tains and ripping for itself in p.lacos a channel n mile dec and leagues wide, is 'not goinr j,, ),P turned aside easily. Great is the strength of the Southern Pacific; enormous is the power (f corporate cor-porate wealth; cunning is the brain and deft the. hand of the American; but as yet the -ticnjrth of the Southern Pacific, the power of corporate wealth, combined with the shrewdness and clearness of the American brain, have not been able to stilt-due stilt-due that turbid, treacherous, sullen river, the Kio (.'(dorado. Three times, at a cost of a half million of dollars, dol-lars, the Southern Pacific has wrenched apart and moved back its trunk line, twenty, thirty and now, through a cloud of profanity, seventy-five miles from its lawful bed. Already Salton. with all its buildings, its vast evaporating pans and improvements, improve-ments, is submerged, and fertile farms and ranch lands are destroyed, it may be. for all time. The towns and improved lands of Imperial valley, the grazing lands of the Pioto region of Lower Calt- fornia. Mexico and millions of dollars invested in railroad and other valuable securities are threatened, threat-ened, and to save them" may call for the co-operation of two nations an dthe expenditure of an enormous enor-mous sum of money. The whole territory, from the Chueknwalla mountains and far south of the Mexican frontier, is menaced with annihilation. Fnless the inrush of the Colorado is checked, it is very probable that the Salton sea and the Gulf of California will again form one great body of water. wa-ter. This means that the inland sea will become an important port where, a few years since, there was a field of sand 120 miles from the sea. Thus, sometimes, do natural phenomena, in I time, make for the prosperity or decadence of a nation. Tn spite of evaporation, the profanity of the Southern Pacific shareholders and the herculean hercu-lean attacks of 2.000 laborers, led by expert hydraulic hy-draulic engineers, the inland sea is widening, for the waters of the great fiver are rushing to its 'assistance 'as-sistance at the rate of .S.000 cubic feet per second. This is the volume at the lowest stage of the water: the spring freshets will swell it to "0,000 feet, for that is the average high flow of the river. At present the new inland lake is a beautiful sheet of water and is a never failing source of wonder to eastern tourists after crossing hundreds ' of miles of arid wastes, of sand, greasewood and ' cactus. To the west, from the fond-du-lac or foot of the lake, tower the snow-capped peaks of Mount San Bernardino and Mount San Iacinto, each about 12,000 feet high. For ages the Bernadino : has held back the restless, crawling sands of the ', thirsts desert which searched its foothills and at last tie coo Iwaters havovcome aud rippling waves play with its founrhttions. Facing Salton or jwhat was o?;ee Salton the soa-is about twelve miles vide and t'ie mountains, rising majestically to the west, mirror themselves on its placid surface. Here in Yuma, they tell me, the temperature was no higher than usual last summer; yet the heat was the most oppressive in the history of the place. They attribute this oppression to the Salton sea and dread the approach of June with a much greater area under water. ' Whatever the outcome, of this continuous inundation inun-dation may be. if not arrested, whether the present waters join the gulf or an inland sea is formed, a remarkable climatic change is sure to occur and, indeed, is now in process of evolution. For the past year, more rain has "?."lhr.i : jT. "nd around Yuma than in the last five years, cud sections of land that were formerly a wilderness of shifting sands are ' now blossoming like a garden. ( Here before our very eyes is the verification of the prophecy of Isaias: "The land that was desolate and impassable impas-sable shall be glad." and the wilderness shall rejoice re-joice and shall flourish like a lily; it shall bud forth and blossom and shall rejoice with joy; the glory of Libanus is given to it; the beauty of Carmel and ' Sharon." The vitality of desert seeds is imperishable and, like the peace of ihe Lord, surpasseth the understanding under-standing of man. There arc places near here, now bright and green with flowers and grasses, that a few years since were wastes of sand and from immemorial im-memorial time scorched -with hopeless sterlity. Since "the waters have broken out in the desert and streams in the widnemess" the face of this region re-gion is taking on the look of youth and the land si comoetitive value. ' At Salton the water is as translucent as the, sea at Abalone and is even more salty. It seems almost al-most uncanny to cruise about in skiffs and launches over places which, a while ago, were barren lands, and over homes where people lived. At the present time two great forces aw battling bat-tling for the mastery of a territory as large as the state of Ilhode Island. On the one side is the Colorado Colo-rado river tha thas never been controlled by man; on the other is a powerful irrigation company supported sup-ported by the genius and resources of a great railroad rail-road corporation. There are indications that they may retire from the fight and run for the hills, leaving the governments of the United S.tates and Mexico to engage the monster that threatens the annihilation of Imperial valley and. its thousands of cultivated acres and prosperous homes. Yuma. February Ifi. |