Chapter XVII The End of the Desert
There must be, we are told, an end to everything, and the beginning of the end of the desert is at hand. Already two hundred thousand acres of the great Colorado Desert has been taken from it and placed with the productive acreage of the State.
This is but a fraction, to be sure, of the vast amount of arid land in the State and but about one five-hundredth part of the arid area in the United States, but it is a beginning, and when it is considered that it is the work of only two years it will be conceded that it is a marvelous beginning.
Irrigation, to be sure, is not new to the Western country, but reclamation on a gigantic scale is new. Farming was carried on by irrigation in the West before the first white man visited this continent. In Arizona and New Mexico are to be traced to-day vast irrigation canals and reservoirs used by a race that had been forgotten when the first white man visited the region. Some of these ancient canals are now being used by both Indians and white men in those Territories.
The national irrigation idea had its birth in Los Angeles in 1890, when the business men of that city met and opened a campaign for securing a Government system. Nearly six thousand letters were written and mailed to representative men of the country with the result that the idea took root and national irrigation became an accomplished fact.
Before the Government passed laws whereby irrigation became a national charge, private enterprise had taken hold of the matter, and the Imperial canal had been started out into the Colorado Desert. This canal has had marvelous development, and two years from the time work was begun upon it more lands had been reclaimed than by any other single irrigation system in the world.
The work of reclaiming the Colorado Desert was begun in 1900. Not far from the Mexican line, at Hanlon’s Crossing, the river left a convenient place for the headworks of the great canal. Here is where the river was tapped. About a mile from the headworks the river, which in the bygone ages laid down the sixty-mile barrier between the gulf and the desert, also left a channel whereby to aid in reclaiming the desert. The first ten miles of this natural channel required some deepening, and then for some sixty miles across the Mexican border and back to the international line the canal was ready-made.
From the point where the canal leaves the Colorado to where it returns to the international line, after circling through Mexican territory, there is a fall of one hundred and fifteen feet, less than two feet to the mile. This, however, is sufficient for the purposes of irrigation.
One of the first questions to be settled, when the project for leading the river out into the desert was considered, was the character of the water. Not all water found in the arid regions is good for irrigation. Much of it is so impregnated with alkali as to be injurious rather than helpful to the soil.
The University of Arizona made daily analysis of the waters of the river for a period of seventeen months. This analysis showed that the waters contained no injurious substances, but, on the contrary, much that is nutritive to the soil.
The waters of the Colorado carry in suspension one-fourth of one per cent. of solid matter. The color of the water is about like that of lemonade. The analysis shows that this matter in suspension is composed of clay, lime, phosphoric acid, available potash, and nitrogen. The fertilizing value of these substances is about 25 cents per acre-inch of water. As from twenty-four inches to thirty-six inches of water are used in the course of the year for each acre irrigated, it will be seen that the fertilizing value of the water is from $6 to $9 per acre per year. This means that the land will never wear out but will produce abundant crops so long as worked and irrigated.
Another question which came up for settlement was the permanence of the water-supply. The answer to this was equally satisfactory. The mean flow of the river is found to be forty thousand cubic feet per second, an amount of water ample to irrigate territory eight times as large as the Colorado Desert.
The volume of water in the lower Colorado River is greater in the summer, or dry season, than in the winter, or rainy season. This is because the river has its source in the great mountainous region in the north, where the melting snows on the mountain-tops during the summer season furnish large quantities of water to the streams which make up the river. This brings the greatest amount of water at the season of the year when the farmers use the most, a condition most satisfactory to the projectors of the irrigation system.
The main canal, which was begun in 1900, at the beginning of 1903 had grown to be one hundred miles long. This canal is seventy feet wide and eight feet deep, and supplies more than three hundred miles of lateral canals with water. The first season that water was turned into the canal, six thousand five hundred acres of crops were raised where for ages had been nothing but barren desert lands. The second season forty thousand acres were raised, and at the end of the season one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of land had been broken ready for seeding.
The great sandy wastes have given way to green fields of waving grain, verdant seas of billowy maize and millet, broad meadows of rich green alfalfa, and wide pastures where thousands of cattle dot the plain. In addition to this, new cities are springing up where desolation so recently reigned, and a railroad has crept down toward the Mexican line, and is destined to go on to the line and over, even to the great gulf which ages ago retreated from the land now being turned into a paradise.
One of the first towns a man hears of now, when he enters the desert region, is Calexico, the most remote of the settlements in the desert north of the Mexican line. It is noted for two things, both of which have to do with the hotel, one of the half-dozen buildings which compose the town. When the visitor steps from the train at Old Beach, in the very heart of the desert, he is apt to be greeted with this question:
“Going down to Calexico?
“Waal, ye’ll git the best meal there of any place in the desert, an’ they’ve got a shower-bath at the hotel there, too,” is the information vouchsafed when the visitor announces Calexico as his destination.
These are the things which have given Calexico fame. It was nine o’clock in the evening when the writer and his party arrived at Calexico in June, 1903, after a two-days drive across the dusty, burning plain.
“This way,” said the landlord who answered our hail, showing us into a side room in the adobe structure. “Drop your luggage here. You can wash over there. And right in here,” said he, proudly pointing the way, “is a shower-bath. Help yourselves.”
A shower-bath in the very heart of the desert! It is no wonder the landlord is proud of it, for there is not another within two hundred miles.
Calexico is a town with a future,—like most of the desert towns,—in fact, it is nearly all future as yet. It has streets and public squares, but it lacks the buildings. They will follow, however, for the railroad is coming, and a rich farming region will center there. The town is laid out beside the irrigation canal which there forms a portion of the international boundary.
Over this ditch, in Mexico, is the embryo town of Mexicala, which consists of a single row of thatched huts and adobes strung along beside the canal. Nearly every building is a saloon or gambling den, or both. The town boasts of a population of three hundred souls, with but a single white man.
None of the towns in the Imperial country on this side of the line sell intoxicating liquors. This makes Mexicala the Mecca for the “spirituously” inclined. The liquor obtainable there is of a brand known as mescal, and there is murder in every glass. In proof of this assertion, just before we arrived there a Mexican took four drinks and then shot four persons.
Silsbee, twelve miles north of Calexico, is a very young city. There are three or four tents among the mesquites which border Blue Lake, and there is a general store, post-office, and dwelling combined. The building, as well as the business thereof, is composite. It is made partly of boards, partly of tent cloth, and partly of poles, thatched with greasewood boughs. The proprietor of the establishment, Dan Browning, is a red-faced frontiersman who has faith in the future of his city, and he is in on the ground floor. He will point out to the visitor “Main Street,” “the park,” “the hotel site,” and other attractions, and he sees them all in his mind’s eye. To the visitor, however, all these metropolitan wonders appear to be simply desert.
Imperial has the one church of the desert. It is a small wooden structure—the first wooden building in the valley—which is whitewashed on the outside. Imperial is ancient. It has two years the start of its sister towns and it looks down upon them with disdain. Some of the infant cities have designs upon their big sister, however, and they mean to outstrip her in the near future. Brawley is one of these ambitious towns. Heber is another and Holten is still another.
Plans have been perfected for the construction of a grand boulevard which will pass from the northern limit of the Imperial canal system to the international line at Calexico. This street will be one of the wonders of the State when completed. It is to be one hundred feet wide and thirty-five miles long, and will be so level that it cannot be determined with the eye which way the street inclines.
Along either side of the way and down through the center of the thoroughfare will be rows of trees to shut off from the street the glare of the desert sun. Also on either side will be small canals of running water which will serve, not only to irrigate the trees but will be utilized to lay the dust of the street. When completed it will require but two men to keep the entire street in order.
With this glimpse of the work of reclamation which is taking place in the desert thus afforded the reader, I will drop the subject and bring the final chapter to an end. The death of the desert will be a beautiful one. There will be no lack of flowers to lay upon its bier. Its grimness and fierceness and terrors will have given place to peace, plenty, and prosperity. The region of death will be transformed into a kingdom of life.