OCR Text |
Show p j (Completion of Hoover Dam vill Boon West! t . 4 By CECIL W. CREEL I Director, Nevada Extension Service The southern Nevada desert bord-1 ering the Colorado river, for years i visited only by the occasional pros-1 pector or tourist, has been the scene of great activity during the past 74 months. In this short space of time, Boulder City, a model community, has been built by the United States Reclamation service to house 5,000 people, while a newly completed government gov-ernment railroad and paved highway lead to Black canyon, 6 miles away, where 3,500 men are now at work preparing for the erection of the highest structure of its kind in the world Hoover dam. Although preliminaiy construction work is already a half year in advance ad-vance of schedule, many months of work are still ahead before the dam itself can be started.. The four great tunnels, 50 feet in diameter and nearly near-ly a mile in length, driven through the canyon walls, two on the Arizona side and two on the Nevada side of the river, while already nearly completed, com-pleted, still must be lined with cement ce-ment before they are ready to perform per-form the work of diverting the stream from its accustomed channel then upper and lower cofferdams must be built to confine the river to the tunnels and dry the former river bed at the site of the great structure. With an extent of (50 feet at its base, and width of 950 feet from canyon can-yon wall to canyon" wall, the Hoover dam, when it is finally completed in 1938, will tower 727 feet above bedrock bed-rock and 582 feet above the present river surface. The immense reservoir reser-voir back of the dam will be 115 miles mil-es in length, covering 145,000 acres of land in Arizona and Nevada. Publicly Owned Land Of this great area, all is publicly owned and withdrawn from entry with the exception of a few scattered mining entries and some 12,000 acres of agricultural and grazing lands, which must be purchased by the government. gov-ernment. The towns of St. Thomas, Nevada, together with adjacent farms and ranches, are destined to be under 25 to 100 feet of water, and, consequently, must be abandoned, their inhabitants being compelled to seek other homes in the west. This loss of agricultural lands in Nevada is small, however, in comparison com-parison with the immense areas in Arizona and California which can eventually be brought under cultivation cultiva-tion through the use of the stored water from the reservoir. Lands in Arizona include the Parker-Gila Valley project in the southwestern south-western part of the state with a gross area of more than 600,000 acres, ac-res, an investigation of which was authorized by congress under the terms of the Boulder Canyon project act; the Parker project of about 116,-000 116,-000 acres, near Parker; Mohave Valley Val-ley which has an irrigable area of nearly 33,000 acres across the river from Needles, California, and the Cibola Ci-bola Valley with . 16,000 acres in Yuma county. The Yuma project has about 55,000 acres irrigated at the present time, and a total ultimate irrigable area of 112,000, including about 45,000 acres of undeveloped mesa land. In California, the All-American canal, which will be constructed from the Colorado river to the Imperial Valley, is to be a part of the Boulder Bould-er Canyon project. To be built at a cost of $38,500,000, it will increase the irrigable area of the valley from 515,000 to 800,000 acies. The Coach-ella Coach-ella valley has an irrigable area of 72,000 acres, which can be served by a branch of the. All-American canal. The Palo Verde valley furnishes an additional 79,000 acres also sucept-ible sucept-ible of gravity irrigation from the Colorado. Reclamation by Pumping While Nevada has but a few thousand thou-sand acres which can be irrigated from the Colorado river by gravity, there are larue additional acreages in the southern end of the state sucept-iule sucept-iule of reclamation by pumping. Anions tlu-se are the Las Yesras val-1 ley, and directly north of Needles, California, the Searchlight Valley. Other southern Nevada valleys su-ceptible su-ceptible of reclamation by pumping ground waters include the Amargosa, Indian Springs, Pahrump, and Paran-agut Paran-agut valleys. It will thus be seen that the Bould-i er Canyon reservoir will store sufficient suffic-ient waters to reclaim nearly 2,000,-000 2,000,-000 acres of hew lands at some future fu-ture date, when economic condtions and growth of population make necessary nec-essary this increase in our agricul-' tura! area. In addition to its value for irriga-; tion, the great reservoir will forever : check the disastrous floods which ; have in the past years, swept down j the Colorado, threatening destruction : to the Imperial valley. An outstanding feature of the! Eoulder Canyon project will be the ! great hydro-electric plants at the! damsite, capable of generating over 1,000,000 horsepower or nearly twice the amount of electrical energy produced pro-duced by Niagara Fails, N. Y. Contracts Con-tracts for the sale of this power insure in-sure payment to the government of the cost of the clam and power plant, together with interest, within a period per-iod of 50 years. Industrial Communities Farmers and livestock producers of; southern Nevada, southern Utah,: southern California, and northern ' Arizona have, for the past several , years, been looking forward eagerly to the time when work would start on the Boulder Canyon project, knowing that the industrial communities to be created at Boulder City and Las Vegas Ve-gas would furnish excellent near-by markets for their products. With the utilization for manufacturing and refining re-fining purposes of large quantities of . power at or near the dam site it seems certain that the new industrial population in southern Nevada will not only remain after the dam is completed but will continue to grow, thereby furnishing' a steadily increasing increas-ing market for the crops and livestock live-stock of the nearby agricultural districts. dis-tricts. ; With the power lines radiating in ' all direction from the dam to the mining camjps and industrial centers of the four states, agricultural com-; munities will find little difficulty in j tapping these lines, thus making available cheap electrical power for. their homes and ranches. The benefits just mentioned are of necessity limited to the few thousand farmers and stockmen living within a ; radius of 300 miles of the dam. "In what way, if any, will the building of ; the Hoover dam benefit the Oregon dairyman, the Idaho potato grower, the Washington poultryman, the Montana cattleman, or the New Mexican Mex-ican sheepman?" Everyone of these producers will be benefited through the stimulus to the population growth which the Boulder Canyon project will give the entire southwest, south-west, more particularly the south Pacific Pa-cific coast cities. Food Being Exported Each of the 11 western states is now shipping foodstuffs to southern California and will continue to do so in ever increasing amounts if the rapid ra-pid growth of population continues. It is generally admitted that southern south-ern California, with its favorable climatic cli-matic condition, enormous oil reserves reserv-es and excellent water and rail transportation trans-portation facilities, will continue to grow in population and expand in commerce and manufacturing, if the present limiting factor, lack of water, wa-ter, can be overcome. With the water wat-er resources of the neighboring mountains, costal plain, and the Owens Ow-ens valley already fully utilized, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena, San I Diego, and neighboring cities are compelled to look eastward across the mountains to the Colorado river for any future increase in their water wa-ter supply. Hoover dam, therefore, holds the key to the waver situation in southern south-ern California, and through control of the water, control of the economic destinies of its flourishing cities. It is proposed that a portion of the flood waters of the Colorado river, now running to waste in the Gulf of California, be impounded in the Boulder Canyon reservoir as a domestic dom-estic water supply for the southern California cities. These waters will then be released and allowed to run down the river channel to a point near Parker, Ariz., where, with power pow-er supplied by Hoover dam, they will be pumped across the mountains to the great costal plain of southern California, there to create new wealth, greater population, and a larger market for the products from the farms and ranges of our western states. |