Bisbee Daily Review

HARRIMAN SAVES
IMPERIAL VALLEY

Responds to Appeal from Roosevelt and Dams the Colorado River.

CHICAGO, Aug. 3.—With the announcement that the break in the Colorado river has been closed and the Imperial valley saved ends, for the time being at least, the most heroic battle ever fought by man with nature. The reward was nothing less than the homes of 10,000 people and five millions of dollars. Man, in the guise of a corporation, has triumphed, and the river, ages old, has been forced back into the channel from which it threatened to engulf farm, town and railroad. That hero of the Crusades who cast his helmet into the midst of the Saracen hordes and swept them before the Red Cross was not more bold than the prosaic engineers who undertook to curb the Colorado. In this attempt there was only one precedent—failure.

Nevertheless, President Roosevelt's summons of last December was promptly answered. On the 20th of that month Mr. Roosevelt telegraphed to Mr. Harriman: "It seems clear to me that it is the imperative duty of the California Development Company to close this break at once." "This break" was a gap a fifth of a mile long through which the river, at a depth of thirty feet, was rushing into the Salton sink. Imagine an enormous teacup with a river flowing about its rim and you have the situation clearly outlined. To irrigate the wonderfully rich loam of the cup, the river had been recklessly tapped. From an irrigation canal, its waters became a raging torrent that only almost superhuman effort could control. Now the declaration that the river has been forced back into its banks and that "affairs at the river have been turned back to the California Development Association" marks the triumph of the Harriman engineers.

Against a flow of water that had resisted every effort to control it, the Southern Pacific titans in fifteen days and two hours erected a dam containing 77,000 cubic yards of rock, gravel, and clay. The locomotives of passenger trains were not too important to be called upon to help in this task. Men worked without ceasing for sleep—hardly for food—that the "break" might be closed. In money the Southern Pacific Railroad, interested in behalf of the company that had loosened the river's bonds and as one of the sufferers from the river's havoc, has advanced $1,500,000 to repair the break. In labor the railroad company has spent the efforts of its most skillful engineers and of thousands of laborers, day in and day out, night following night.

The actual work of damming the Colorado was done in two weeks after the President's call to pick and shovel. The formal announcement was delayed only for the finishing touches because the Colorado has been "controlled" before this, only to break its bonds. Now there is a sixty-foot dam, four feet above the highest known water, and the settlers who discovered that the "Salton Sink" was an out-of-door paradise for the almost magical growing of fruits and vegetables have returned to their homesteads in secure faith that the river, their greatest enemy, has been finally conquered. The railroad will replace its washed-away tracks and trestles and it is believed that the Imperial valley farmers may safely trust that there is nothing more to fear from the river.