The Weekly Gazette

Will Conquer Great Desert
Waters of Rio Grande Soon Will Flow Into Three Southwestern States.

DENVER. - Conquest of America's great southwestern desert - started 400 years ago by Spanish explorers - is under way again, this time for a prize more valuable than the fabulous gold sought by the helmeted Conquistadores.

Ratification by Texas, Colorado and New Mexico of a compact apportioning the flow of the great Rio Grande opened the way for expansion of thousands of acres in farm lands that line the 1,800-mile-long river valley.

Guns and lances have no part in the modern conquest of the Southwest - rather the weapons will be dams, reservoirs and irrigation canals. The result will produce a fortune in tillable land far surpassing the wildest dreams of the conquering Spaniards when they marched northward from Mexico centuries ago.

Ratification Up to Congress.

Only the further ratification by congress is necessary to make effective the tri-state compact permitting actual work on a $50,000,000 program for construction of dams, power plants, diversion canals and reservoirs at various points on the river's course.

Hydro-electric, irrigation and flood control benefits will improve an area comparable in size to Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined.

Starting as a trout stream in the two-mile-high snowfields of the San Juan range in southern Colorado, the river flows through sand dunes and the volcanic badlands of New Mexico, runs placidly to El Paso and continues its lazy way after plunging out of Santa Helena canyon just southeast of the Texas city. Near its mouth, the river streams through the rich citrus farms of southern Texas.

Fulfillment of the Rio Grande compact was the result of more than 50 years of work by water experts, engineers, and the governments of the three states.

The treaty provides yearly quantities of water that must be delivered at the Colorado-New Mexico boundary and the amount that New Mexico must deliver to Texas. It limits the amount of water that may be stored during various stages of the river.

Studied by Engineers.

Army engineers already were studying the proposed Wagon Wheel Gap reservoir which would water the San Luis valley of southern Colorado. This $14,000,000 dam and its companion projects would supplement the present development of approximately 350,000 acres of the fertile valley. Flood control and power benefits also would accrue from the completed project.

Power for Albuquerque, Santa Fe and other northern and central New Mexico communities would be the product of a proposed dam near the Colorado-New Mexico state line. This structure also would be used to harness flood waters that annually flood the lower New Mexico valley regions causing thousands of dollars damage.

A projected series of silt reservoirs, dikes, canals and channel-deepening projects in the south-central section of New Mexico would cost approximately $10,000,000. Value of bordering farmlands would be doubled by this work.

Farther south, the Elephant Butte hydro-electric power plant and dam would be expanded and work completed for extended irrigation facilities.