USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 17
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The results of the trip were presented to the Senate committee a couple of months later, officially placing on record the advantages of the Tonto Basin site.
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THE HENDERSHOTT CLAIMS
The people of the Salt River Valley were fortunate indeed in the ease with which the Reclamation Service secured title to the Tonto damsite, for its con- demnation might have been a task practically impossible if it had been held by a corporation that had insisted upon its rights to build a dam and thus to control the water system and the destiny of the valley below. There was some- thing almost providential in the manner in which the site was held for the use of the people as a whole.
A couple of years after the survey of the dam and reservoir sites by the Breakenridge party, there came to Phœnix a lawyer and promoter, Wells Hen- dershott. Happening to see the record of the discovery party, he proceeded to locate the damsite in the name of a corporation he then formed, the Hudson Reservoir and Canal Company. His especial idea was the conservation of the water supply for a large expanse of rich and even yet unwatered land east of Mesa, which he proposed to serve by means of a high-line canal, taken from the Salt at a point above the junction of the Verde. This idea was not original. It had been conceived by the arch-schemer Reavis. In some hypnotic manner Hendershott succeeded in borrowing considerable sums of money on his personal account purely, from Man & Man, reputable New York lawyers. A few months later, finding that their loans to him were likely to be lost, they looked further into his affairs and reluctantly took as security a large part of his interest in the reservoir company.
In 1905 one of the members of the firm came to Phoenix with Sims Ely, secretary of the corporation, with the idea of starting work, Hendershott having reported he had secured funds elsewhere to practically complete the financing of the project. It was demonstrated at once that this statement was invented. Messrs. Man and Sims then arranged for the preliminary work and shortly thereafter took over all of Hendershott's remaining interest, incidentally paying the indebtedness he had incurred. Contracts were secured from the various canal companies that assured good interest on the investment necessary to the building of the dam, the scope of the project having been modified so as to include only the lands of the valley already under canal. A deal was made also with a mining company of Globe for electrical power. Altogether the invest- ment seemed to assure an annual return of more than 20 per cent on the pro- jected investment of $3,000,000.
Notwithstanding the soundness of the project, the necessary capital could not be secured and, following the enactment of the Reclamation Act, a sale was made to the Government for $40,000, the Mans taking a loss of about $60,000. The Government was anxious to purchase, for the engineering and other data on the project was complete and had been verified by Government engineers. The project was in fact ready for an instant beginning, the only project thus available for the work of the Reclamation Service.
Even more important was the fact that rights had been acquired from the department of the interior that still had some years to run. If these rights had not been purchased, the activities of the Reclamation Service necessarily would have been diverted to some other locality and the Salt River project to-day might have been only in about the same constructive stage as that on the Rio Grande.
ROOSEVELT, THE TOWN THAT WAS DROWNED OUT
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AS THE ROOSEVELT DAMSITE WAS
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At that time also there was a great question concerning the power of the Government, under the law as enacted, to build a reservoir for lands privately owned. The officers of the Water Users' Association always were nervous over this legal question until the Government had made such large investments as to assure the completion of the project. If the Mans and Ely had stood on their rights and declined to sell, it is even probable that there would have been no reservoir at all, with the Government eliminated, with only the chance left of securing private capital for the completion of the enterprise.
AGITATING FOR NATIONAL SUPPORT
Maj. John W. Powell may be considered the father of national reclamation in the United States. He was one of the officers of the Geological Survey at the time of its institution in 1879 and already had printed a book on the arid regions of the West. In 1888, after years of importunity of Congress and after he had been made director of the Geological Survey, he was granted an appro- priation of $100,000 for investigation of the extent to which the arid regions might be reclaimed.
In 1896, in Phoenix, was held a most notable session of the National Irri- gation Congress, whereat, championed by "Buckey" O'Neill, declaration was made in favor of the policy of national irrigation and wherein one of the most active, assuredly one of the most eloquent, members was Geo. H. Max- well, who thereafter became executive chairman of the congress. Mr. Maxwell preached the doctrine of reclamation all over the United States, supported in this work by contributions from the great western railroads, which were anxious to increase population and traffic along their lines. To the Congress undoubtedly is due the migration of thousands of settlers into the irrigated districts of the Southwest and, still better, it was a prime factor in educating legislators to the point where finally the National Reclamation Act had a chance for passage, after violent opposition by the friends of capital and the advocates of state cession. One of the strongest advocates of this national irrigation policy was Francis G. Newlands, representative to Congress from Nevada.
The principal reason why the Roosevelt dam was built is that the people of Phoenix went after it with all their might. They were especially favored in the fact that Field Engineer Arthur Powell Davis of the United States Geological Survey, who visited this valley in 1896 and made a magnificent report upon its irrigation capabilities, was in a position at Washington to explain the advantages of putting the first demonstration of the uational irri- gation policy at a point where nature favored in such large degree and where the distribution of water already was provided for within one of the richest agricultural valleys of the Nation.
In 1900, under authority of the Legislature, Chief Justice Webster Street appointed a water storage commission, consisting of J. T. Priest, chairman ; W. D. Fulwiler, Charles Goldman, Dwight B. Heard and Jed Peterson. This commission made a favorable report on the Tonto Basin dam site, but there was almost despair concerning the matter of finance.
In 1900 Engineer Davis again was sent into the valley for further study of the local situation. He reported upon the McDowell Verde site unfavorably,
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and renewed his approval of the Tonto Basin site. This visit was largely due to the action of a committee of twenty-five members of the National Irrigation Congress, appointed in the same year. The Arizona member of this committee was B. A. Fowler of Glendale, who offered his personal guarantee for the expenses of the field investigation.
The first definite local work toward the building of the Tonto Basin reser- voir was begun in Phoenix in March, 1901, when, under the leadership of Geo. H. Maxwell of the executive committee of the National Irrigation Association there was held a meeting of business men and whereat, to push the work, was selected a committee, headed by B. A. Fowler. The Legislature of that year had authorized a Maricopa County tax levy of $30,000 for preliminary work looking toward water storage. There had been a national appropriation of $10,000 for the same purpose.
The people of the Salt River Valley were perfectly willing to build their own dam and, in March, 1902, petitioned Congress for authority to issue bonds for that purpose in an amount not exceeding $2,250,000. There had been many other plans to reach the desired end. Governor Murphy had fought for the cession of the arid lands of the West to the states, with the understand- ing that the states would sell much of the land to companies that would build the canals and reservoirs. Governor Wolfley, during his term of office, had addressed Congress suggesting that in the arid districts corporations be granted alternate sections of land, contingent upon the irrigation of the whole area.
PASSAGE OF THE RECLAMATION ACT
When, after the assassination of President Mckinley, Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidential chair, there was a marked change for the better. Colonel Roosevelt called a consultation of scientists and congressmen interested in irrigation and to them stated, with even more than customary emphasis, "I am going to incorporate in my first message to Congress a clause favoring a Federal irrigation law." All he wanted to know was in what shape he should put his message. Thereafter there was redrafting of the bill that New- lands had pushed, and on June 17, 1902, the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Ilill, the Reclamation Act became a law by the signature of the President. This act provided that the proceeds of land sales in the several states, should be utilized in the building of reclamation works. There was more or less assumption on the part of the western representatives that each state should be returned about what it had paid in. Arizona, however, had been decidedly favored in this respect, for she has received a score of times more money back than ever she has paid for lands into the Federal treasury, even though the Colorado River irrigation projeet at Yuma was partially charged against the State of California.
Though plans for a number of irrigation projects already had been sketched by the Reclamation Service officials, the first work was upon the Truckee River project, near Reno, the home of Mr. Newlands, and upon the Salt River project, wherein the Reelamation Service engineers saw their best chance for the evolution of an ideal storage and irrigation system.
Under the provisions of the reclamation law of 1902, the United States Recla- mation Service was organized as a branch of the United States Geological Sur-
POWER LINE THROUGH SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS, ARIZONA
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vey, of which Chas. D. Walcott was director and Fred H. Newell chief hydrographer.
Return of the funds expended by the Government was to be made by the several projects in ten annual installments, commencing one year from the date of the formal notice of completion of the project. In 1914 this term was changed to twenty years. It was assumed at the start that the act was only for the benefit of unoccupied areas of land, which were to be taken up by bona fide settlers, under the homestead law, in small tracts. The actual working out gave results very different indeed. It soon was demonstrated that no poor settler possibly could exist upon a desert homestead during the years that would be necessary for the completion of the storage works and of the canals that would bring water to the arid acres.
Another feature, which practically cut the original settlers of the valley out from participation in the benefits of the act, in effect gave the ordinary stream flow to the older settlers and the stored flow to the new homesteaders. The main reason for the passage of the act was the necessity for water regula- tion for the benefit of settlers whose irrigation flow had theretofore been cut off in the dryer periods of the year. It was found impossible also to keep the funds of any one state to itself, as the expenditure involved for any one project was far in excess of local land office revenues.
But the new Reclamation Service tackled this job with enthusiasm, despite the deceiving limitations put upon its energies. Not only because of its natural advantages, but because its citizens had worked upon that line for years, the Salt River Valley was given preference as the site of the first large project, and, as a joint charge against Arizona and California, a diversion weir was planned across the Colorado.
There was much to do, however, in Phoenix, in order that the bounty of the Government might be accepted. A local committee of thirty members, headed by B. A. Fowler, for months met almost daily, wrestling with serious prob- lems of organization and finance, much impeded in its work by local dissensions concerning the manner in which the stored flow should be distributed. Owners of some of the lands of oldest cultivation, secure in their claims upon even the lowest summer flow, demurred at assuming any share of the burden of the cost of the project. On the other hand, owners of the newer lands sought in every way to secure for themselves the benefit of participation to the extent of even a greater acreage than has been contemplated as irrigable under the project.
Many of the difficulties were solved, however, by adoption of a plan for the organization of the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association, for which the articles of incorporation were filed with the county recorder February 4, 1903. This plan of forming an association to repay the Government the cost of the proposed works had been evolved by Judge J. H. Kibbey. The articles of incorporation later were adopted by the Government as a general plan for similar associations under every governmental reclamation project. B. A. Fowler was the association's first president and Judge Kibbey its counsel.
WORK ON THE ROOSEVELT PROJECT
On March 12, Secretary E. A. Hitchcock, of the Interior Department, tentatively authorized the construction of the Tonto dam. Phoenix burned
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much red fire on the night of October 15, 1903, on receipt of word that the secre- tary had made formal order to begin construction at the Tonto Basin dam site and had authorized the expenditure of $100,000 of a total fund expected to aggregate $3,000,000.
Soon after the passage of the Reclamation Act, a camp of engineers was es- tablished near the junction of Salt River and Tonto Creek. The camp and postottice were named Roosevelt, and this same name later was given the dam itself. A contract for the structure was awarded April 8, 1905, to John M. O'Rourke & Co., of Galveston, Texas, at an initial price of $1,147,600, the con- tractors to receive free electric power and free cement.
Something of a precedent was established in connection with the cement. Apparently in a trust, the manufacturers' lowest bid was $4.89 a barrel. The Reclamation Service, refusing to stand what was called a "hold-up," promptly proceeded to put in its own cement mill; a measure denounced at the time as socialistic in the extreme and a denial of the vested rights of capital. But the result proved the wisdom of the policy, for the gross cost of cement, per barrel, was only $3.11, or a saving of nearly $600,000 on the total cost of the structure. The cement cost was not a small one. Altogether were manufactured 338,452 barrels, at a gross cost of $1,063,542.
After bed-rock, at its greatest depth of forty feet, had been reached and the gravel and sand had been sluiced out by hydraulic jets, the first stone of the foundation was laid, September 20, 1906. The last stone, on the coping, 284 feet above, was laid February 6, 1911.
At the river level the dam is 235 feet long and at the top 680 feet. The entire length of the roadway on top of the dam is 1,080 feet, for 200 feet of length was added on either side for spillways, blasted from the mountain side. Its width at the base is 170 feet and at the top 16 feet. Within the dam are 339,400 cubic yards of masonry, and every stone was washed before it was cemented into place.
But there was much more to do than to merely build the dam. To provide power there was built a canal, heading nearly twenty miles above Roosevelt and terminating just above the dam. The peustock leads, under pressure of about 280 feet, to a power house in the cañon just below, where the initial hydro-elec- trie plant has been developed into one capable of furnishing 11,000 horse power. A part of this has been sold to mines at Miami, but the works also have connec- tion with Phoenix, seventy-six miles away, by means of a transmission line, whose steel towers are firmly set into the rocks of the Superstition Mountains. The total cost of power development was $2,741,000, not excessive considering the results achieved. The canals of the valley had to be bought, at a purchase and betterment cost of $604,000 and $126,000 went into pumping plants for exten- sion of the irrigated area. All these additions to the original plan were ap- proved by the Water Users' Association, though through them the cost of the project has been raised from an estimate of $4,000,000 to $10,000,000.
On the theory that there had to be connection between the dam and the valley it served, there was built the Roosevelt road, at a cost of probably $500,000. This road, through the most rugged of mountains and abounding in views of the grandest character, now is a part of a transcontinental automobile highway, as well as serving to connect Globe and Tonto Basin with the state capital.
IRRIGATION CANAL, MESA, SALT RIVER VALLEY
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In the summer of 1905 the Reclamation Service secured authority from the Interior Department for the construction of a bed-rock diversion dam across Salt River at Granite Reef, twenty-five miles above Phonix. The necessity for such a structure had been shown by a drouth of about six months, with serious results to the farmers and orange growers on the Arizona canal, which had lost its timber dam in the floods of the winter before. Service from the diver- sion dam was inaugurated in May, 1908. The structure cost $622,784.
DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY
Within the Salt River Valley were four small hydro-electric plants, pri- vately owned. Three of these have been acquired by the Reclamation Service, in pursuance of its plan for the development of about 25,000 horse power within the project. This led to some complications. The water power developed in two works along the Arizona Canal had been contracted for a term of twenty- five years, of which seventeen years were yet to run, to the local lighting monopoly of Phoenix. This contract stood very much in the way of the build- ing of a great power plant, contemplated at the end of a new cross-cut that was to connect the Arizona and Grand canals. So, finally, Project Engineer L. C. Hill solved the difficulty by a contract, that at the time excited the most violent criticism. This criticism simmered down, however, when the logic of the situa- tion became known. The Phoenix company was continued in its monopoly for the sale of small quantties of electricity, it to pay the Reclamation Service a charge of 11/2 cents per kilowatt for current furnished, but the power houses were surrendered to the service, and the term of the contract was reduced to ten years.
The largely increased cost of the project has been the cause of many allega- tions of recklessness. To investigate these charges, the Sixty-second Congress appointed a committee of investigation, comprising Congressmen Jas. M. Gra- ham, Walter N. Hensley and Oscar Calloway, constituting a sub-committee of the Committee on Expenditures of the Interior Department. The committee met in Phoenix in April, 1912, and investigated the project, and also visited the Pima and Maricopa Indian Reservation, where electric pumping works had been established by the Reclamation Service for the benefit of the Indians.
The report of the committee, submitted February 11, 1913, rather inferred that the difference between the original estimate and the actual cost had been due to mismanagement and waste, though figures were presented showing addi- tional cost not at first contemplated and that the purchases of the old canals of the valley were made at a cost considerably less than new canals could have been built paralleling them. The report clearly showed a desire to make political capital.
It is very probable indeed, that were this Salt River project to be built again, at this date, the cost could be pared, but the fact remains that the settlers have received much more benefit than at first was contemplated, that they now own their own distributing and power systems and that all legal ques- tions have been cleared away concerning the use of the normal flow of the rivers or of the water stored.
The Salt River project is the first large enterprise of the sort ever handled by the Government and, in a way, was experimental, but through this experi-
.
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ment the farmers around Phoenix have been placed years in advance of other regions in the arid West, which may in time have irrigation works more econom- ically constructed, but which in the meantime will reap no benefit from the flood waters that are flowing away unchecked.
ROOSEVELT DEDICATES THE ROOSEVELT DAM
The formal dedication of the dam was delayed till March 18, 1911, when was secured the attendance of Colonel Roosevelt himself. Reference to his trip has been made elsewhere in this work. At the dam, the arrival of the colonel was the signal for a salute of dynamite that re-echoed down the cañon. There had been gathered as speakers a number of men prominent in the irriga- tion movement. John P. Orme, president of the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association, the official host, introduced Governor Sloan as chairman for the exercises and, in order, followed addresses by Chief Engineer Louis C. Hill, Statistician C. J. Blanchard of the Reclamation Service, and B. A. Fowler, president of the National Irrigation Congress and one of the men to whom largest local credit was due. Then the guest of honor expressed his gratifica- tion, not only over the completion of the structure to which had been given his name, but over the large degree of success that had attended the operation of the Reclamation Act, which had become a law during his term of office as President. He believed that the two most material achievements connected with his administration were the reclamation work in the West and the Panama Canal. The speaker paid especial tribute to Engineers Newell, Davis and Hill. At the conclusion of his address, Colonel Roosevelt, by means of an electric switch, opened sluice gates on the northern slope of the dam and from twin tun- nels leaped two great torrents of water that served to fill the bed of the river below, theretofore dry.
At the time of the dedication, behind the dam was only about 100 feet of water. The years of construction had been notably damp ones and then there had come a period of drought. At seventy feet the rising water had eliminated the original Town of Roosevelt, which lay on a shelf above the river bank a half mile above the dam site and the residents had hurriedly moved to a new loca- tion on the mesa beyond. All apprehension vanished, however, in the spring of 1915, when the water commenced to rise at the rate of several feet a day. Finally the reservoir was filled to its fullest depth of 225 feet on the evening of April 15, 1915. The first water that went over the spillway was saved for use in the christening in June of the new dreadnaught Arizona. The total capacity of the reservoir approximates 1,300,000 acre feet, in itself enough to insure the irrigation of the dependent lands below for about three years.
The final judgment of a reclamation commission, issued early in 1915, gave a net acreage of 180,599 acres, upon which will be assessed the cost of the project. In addition are 3,000 acres of Indian lands. Plans have been made for the irrigation of 220,000 acres, the balance generally by means of pumping. Still in addition will be the acreage to be irrigated by a proposed storage dam on the Verde.
AN IRRIGATION SCHEME ON A PIOUS BASIS
On the Verde River, above McDowell, about sixty miles northeast of Phoenix, the Salt River Water Users' Association is to build a storage dam
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Lake at junction of Salt River and Tonto C'reek
Roosevelt Dam, Upstream Face
Theodore Roosevelt addressing the specta- tors at the opening of Roosevelt Storage Dam, March 18, 1911
Louis C. Hill, chief engineer of Roosevelt Storage Project, speaking at opening of the gates, March 18, 1911 Granite Reef Diversion Dam Roosevelt Dam, seventy-six miles east of Phoenix
VIEWS OF ROOSEVELT DAM AND THE CEREMONIES OF OPENING DAY
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at a cost of $1,000,000, to save the flood waters of that stream. This dam is on the site of one planned as early as 1889 by the Rio Verde Canal Company, which proposed to build a 140-mile canal to irrigate 250,000 acres in Paradise . Valley, a northern annex to Salt River Valley. A diversion tunnel was dug around the dam site, and a long stretch of canal excavated within the valley.
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