USA > California > Imperial County > The history of Imperial County, California > Part 13
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HISTORY OF IMPERIAL COUNTY
vestment Company and that he believed that it would work out all right. I wasn't satisfied, however, and as the after history, which was very rapidly enacted, showed, my predictions in regard to the Delta Invest- ment Company were correct.
My feelings toward the Chaffeys was at this time of a nature that would hardly permit me to return to the Valley in active charge of the construction even had Mr. Chaffey so desired, which evidently he did not, as he himself took the title of chief engineer and made his head- quarters at Calexico during the winter of 1901 and 1902, and assumed direct charge of construction. Money was immediately forthcoming for construction purposes, but money through the Delta Investment Com- pany cost the California Development Company $2.00 for every dollar that it obtained, and I soon saw the end unless something was done.
I did not enter into negotiations with the Chaffeys at that time, but, using Mr. Heber as an intermediary, I notified the Chaffeys that unless things were put in a different shape immediately that the whole matter would be thrown into the courts, although I foresaw that this would necessarily stop the work of development in the Valley. But I had not only the interest of the settlers of the Valley to look out for, but I con- sidered even as a prior and superior lien upon my efforts the interest of the stockholders who had invested their money in the California De- velopment Company through me. The final result of this action was that negotiations were opened with the Chaffeys for the purchase of their in- terests in the company, resulting in the elimination of the Chaffeys from the management of the company in February, 1902.
Before this purchase was consummated, however, and the manage- ment of affairs turned back to its original owners, the Chaffeys, who were in control of the California Development Company and in control of the board of the Delta Investment Company, passed certain resolu- tions and made certain transfers that took from the California Develop- ment Company all of its bonds and a very large portion of its notes and mortgages, and in order to carry through the purchase we not only paid over to the Chaffeys, in addition to all of the securities of the company which they had taken, the sum of $25,000 in cash, raised not by the company but by individual stockholders in the company, and in addition we gave them our note for $100,000, secured by a majority of stock in the California Development Company.
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We started out then, about the first of March, 1902, with our bonds all gone, our mortgages largely depleted, not a dollar in the treasury, and invidually so deeply in debt to the Chaffeys that it was exceedingly doubtful whether we would ever be able to pull out.
We, however, took over the management of the enterprise and in order to provide funds for construction we succeeded in borrowing $25,000 from the First National Bank of Los Angeles, and I again took charge of construction.
In the deal made with the Chaffeys and the Delta Investment Com- pany, at this time, their personal interest in the stock of the California Development Company and of the Imperial Land Company was pur- chased by Heber, Blaisdell, Heffernan and Rockwood, of the old guard, and by Messrs. F. C. Paulin, J. W. Oakley and H. C. Oakley, who had been very active as outside agents under the Imperial Land Company, and who at this time became directly interested with us as owners of one-half of the stock of the Imperial Land Company, and of a smaller percentage of the stock of the California Development Company. Mr. Paulin became the manager of the Imperial Land Company, Mr. Heber being its president as well as president of the California Development Company.
As I said in a previous paragraph, under the agreement entered into by the Imperial Land Company and the California Development Com- pany, the Imperial Land Company was to have the townsites in the Valley, the California Development Company restricting its activities to furnishing water to the lands. It may be of interest to know some- thing regarding the townsites and why they came to be placed in the lo- cations which they now occupy.
On my return from the City of Mexico in October, 1900, I found that the then manager of the Imperial Land Company, Mr. S. W. Fer- guson, had selected for the site of what we intended to be the central town of the Valley, the lands now occupied by the town of Imperial. It had been decided before that this town, when laid out, should be given the name of Imperial, corresponding to the name that we had given to the Valley. Personally, I objected very seriously to the location that had been selected for two reasons, first, that the character of the soil was of such nature that it would be difficult to produce the flowers and shrubbery which residents of the Valley would naturally desire to put
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about their homes; second, I knew that any branch road reaching Im- perial from the main line of the Southern Pacific track would necessar- ily pass for several miles north of the town through a country that for years would remain undeveloped. I refer here especially to the rough and salt lands between Imperial and Brawley. I knew that in as much as all strangers coming into the Valley would pass over this land that the impression must be a bad one, and for these two reasons I urged that as not more than twenty lots had been sold at that time in the pro- posed new townsite, that it should be moved to a location which would have placed it one and a half miles north of what is now the town of El Centro. Had this been done at the time the opportunity would never have existed for a competitive town in the neighborhood of Imperial. The railroad would have been thrown farther to the east, coming through the highly cultivated area in the Mesquite Bottom, and the fac- tional strifes and difficulties which have arisen through the establish- ment of El Centro would never have existed, and instead of two fight- ing communities in the center of the Valley today, we would probably have a town of between three and four thousand people that would now be recognized by the outside world as one of the coming cities of Cali- fornia, and the bitterness engendered by the establishment of El Centro would have been obviated.
The town of Silsbee was selected on account of its location on the shore of Blue Lake, which previous to the overflow of the Colorado River gave the opportunity for the establishment of a very beautiful town and resort in the Valley. The town was given its name from the original owner of the lands, Thomas Silsbee.
Calexico, which derives its name from a combination of California and Mexico, simply happened. The engineering headquarters of the company were first established at Cameron Lake, but I decided for permanent quarters to erect the company buildings at the international line on the east bank of the New River. When the buildings were estab- lished at this point we knew that we would build a town on the line, but its exact location was not fully determined upon. Mr. Chaffey laid off the town of Calexico at the point where it is now established in the fall of 1901, and placed the property on the market, but it was soon with- drawn from sale for the reason that the Southern Pacific Railroad, in building the branch through the Valley, desired to run straight south
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from Imperial to a point near the international line, from which point they would swing eastward toward Yuma. The railroad would have been so built and the town of Calexico would then have been located to the west of New River and about two miles west of its present loca- tion but for the fact that it would have thrown a portion of the town- site on a school section which was held by a lady living in Los Angeles who refused to listen to what we believed to be a fair offer for her property, and as we were unable to obtain the lands necessary for our uses we got the Southern Pacific to run the road from Imperial straight to the present location of Calexico.
The townsite of Brawley was not, in the first place, controlled by the Imperial Land Company. The Imperial Water Company No. 4 had been organized and the major portion of its stock sold in a block to J. H. Braly, a banker of Los Angeles, who had undertaken the colonization of this tract of land. In the agreement with him he was to have the right to locate a townsite within the tract. Afterward, before the town was started, the properties owned by Mr. Braly were re-purchased by the Imperial Land Company and the Oakley-Paulin Company, and the town was laid out on its present location. Mr. Heber desired to name the town Braly in honor of Mr. J. H. Braly, but as the latter refused to have his name used in connection with the town, it was named Brawley, in honor of a friend of Mr. Heber's in Chicago.
The townsite of Holtville was selected by Mr. W. F. Holt and laid out by him under an agreement between himself and the Imperial Land Company.
The history of El Centro is so recent in the minds of the people that it is not necessary to refer to it here except to say that these lands were originally selected as a townsite by Mr. W. F. Holt, and he gave at that time to the town the name of Carbarker. The Imperial Land Company, realizing that the establishment of a town at this point would not only injure its property in Imperial, but would also injure the investment of the many people who had already purchased property at that point, made a contract with Mr. Holt whereby it agreed to buy from him the lands on which Carbarker was located, and the townsite of Holtville as well. The Imperial Land Company, after paying many thousands of dollars on this contract, found that it was unable to carry out its con- tract on account of the depression due to the agitations in the year
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1904-05, and it made a new contract with Mr. Holt whereby it agreed to turn back to him the townsite of Holtville and the lands on which Carbarker had been located on condition that the establishing of a town at the latter point should be abandoned.
The townsite of Heber was named in honor of Mr. A. H. Heber.
Water was turned into the No. I main canal for irrigation in March, 1902, and we succeeded in obtaining some funds so that the work on construction continued actively during that season, but, confronted as we were with the tremendous load of the Chaffeys, the fact that our bonds had been removed without sufficient consideration being placed in the treasury to allow rapid construction, we were very greatly ham- pered through all of the years 1902 and 1903, and it was impossible to obtain sufficient money to keep up the work of construction rapidly enough to meet the demands for water, notwithstanding the fact that we were willing to, and did, sacrifice our securities and our water stock in order to obtain funds to meet the pressing needs.
We had a great deal of trouble with the wooden head gate which had been built by Mr. Chaffey at Hanlon's, the floor of which, unfortunate- ly, had been left several feet above the bottom grade line of the canal as originally planned by me. When this gate was built by Mr. Chaffey, it wasn't considered as a permanent gate but as a temporary expedient placed there to control the entrance of water into the canal during the summer of 1901, and it was Mr. Chaffey's intention to replace this by a permanent structure as soon as time and finances would permit. This gate was well and substantially built, and had its floor been placed five feet lower, the probabilities are that it could be used safely today for the control of all water at present required in the Valley.
Due to the fact that the floor was left above grade, we found it nec- essary, in the falls of 1902, 1903 and 1904, to cut a by-pass around 'the gate to the river, and it was through this by-pass then, during these three years, that water was obtained at low water for the irrigation of the Valley.
It was our desire at all times, after taking over the enterprise from the Chaffeys, to construct a permanent gate on the site where it was afterward built in the winter of 1905-1906, but we were unable to ob- tain the large amount required and were forced, through lack of funds, to the expedient of leaving this open channel around the gate to be
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closed on the approach of the summer flood. The channel was success- fully closed against the approaching summer flood in the summers of 1902, 1903 and 1904. In the winter of 1903-1904 there was a very serious shortage of water in the Valley, due to the fact that the main canal, built by Mr. Chaffey, had not been constructed to its required depth, and with the machinery and funds at hand we were unable to increase the water supply fast enough to keep up with the demands of the Val- ley, and the water in the river fell exceedingly low in the spring of 1904, and made it impossible for us to obtain sufficient water through the main canal for the uses of the people, with the result that consider- able damage was done. The actual amount of damage, however, was but a very small proportion of the damage claims, as is evidenced by the fact that while these claims, amounting to over $500,000, were set- tled every one of them out of court in the year 1905 by a payment of less than $35,000, paid entirely in water and water stocks, and I believe that every claim was fairly settled.
These claims, however, had been very greatly exaggerated, due pos- sibly to the natural antagonism of any people living under a large water system toward the company controlling their source of supply ; due, also, to the fact that since the passage of the Reclamation Act in June, 1902, and the starting of the Yuma project later by the reclamation ser- vice, the people of the Valley had gotten into their heads the belief that if the California Development Company could be removed, that the reclamation service could be gotten to take up the work; that the entire enterprise would then be backed by the government with unlimited funds at its command and that the people would be obliged to pay to the government but a small portion of the moneys that they were obliged to pay to the California Development Company, and that they would eventually through that means achieve the very laudable desire of owning their own system. Undoubtedly the engineers of the reclama- tion service, who had made several trips, individually and as a body, into the Valley, desired to foment this belief, as it had been their inten- tion from the formation of the reclamation service to bring water into the Imperial Valley.
It was necessary for the reclamation service, in order to obtain abso- lute control of the waters of the Colorado River, to do away with this great prior appropriator, the California Development Company, whose
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work, if carried through to success, would cover, in one body, more than half of the irrigable land on the Colorado watershed. That it was the intention of the reclamation service to bring water into the Valley as early as December, 1902, is evidenced by the sworn testimony of Mr. J. B. Lippincott, supervising engineer, U. S. R. S., given in the case of the Colorado Delta Canal Company vs. the United States Government, which is a matter of court record.
The reclamation service had contemplated the construction of a ser- ies of high-impounding dams on the Colorado River, but through sound- ings, finding no bed rock, they were obliged to abandon this project, but finally, during the year 1903, outlined the plan of the Yuma project and the Laguna Dam.
The engineers of the reclamation service advanced the theory that no canal from the Colorado River could be a permanent success except that a diversion dam across the river be constructed which would raise the water and would allow them by means of the sluicing head that it would give, to wash out the silt that would drop in the canal. Not only then would the continuance in successful operation of the Imperial Canal disprove their theory that a dam was necessary and thereby ques- tion the necessity of the expenditure of the amount of money that the Laguna Dam would cost. But the cost of the Laguna Dam was to be-so great that it would put too great a burden on the farmers unless they could gain possession of the Imperial enterprise, and by so doing carry the Imperial Canal to the Laguna Dam, and thereby make the farmers of the Imperial Valley pay the major portion of the cost of that work.
The reclamation service then, in this year of trouble, 1904, advised the people of the Imperial Valley that if they desired the government to come in, it would be necessary for them to form a water users' associa- tion, and through it make the necessary petitions to the government. It would also be necessary in some way to get possession of the plant of the California Development Company or to ignore them. In order to ig- nore them, if possible, surveys were projected by the reclamation ser- vice with the idea of keeping the canal entirely in the United States, but it was found, according to their estimates, that to do so would cost at least twelve million dollars more than to follow the route of the Impe- rial Canal through Mexico; that, consequently, it was not feasible.
It was at this time, in the summer of 1904, harassed by lack of
VIEW OF MAIN CANAL BEFORE WATER WAS TURNED IN Taken September 24, 1901-then a vast desert, now a place of great productiveness and wealth
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EARLY HISTORY OF IMPERIAL COUNTY
funds, by damage claims piling up against us for failure to deliver wa- ter, by suits being threatened in every direction, by statements emanat- ing through the reclamation service, that we had no right to take water from the Colorado River on account of its being a navigable stream, that we decided that if the reclamation service desired to enter the Val- ley that we would sell to it all of our rights and interests, provided that we could obtain an amount that we considered commensurate with the value of the proposition. Mr. Heber, as the president and financial agent of the company, went to Washington in order to undertake these nego- tiations and the engineers of the reclamation service went over the en- tire plant of the California Development Company in order to estimate its value. Mr. Heber and the reclamation service, however, were far apart in their ideas of value, inasmuch as the reclamation service be- lieved that the only; remuneration that should be received by the stock- holders of the California Development Company was the amount that would be required to duplicate this system. They were unwilling to take into consideration that in this, as in every new enterprise, the securities of the enterprise must be sold at a very great reduction below par ; that in the building of such an enterprise the original cost must be far in excess of what it would be when the project is partially completed. They were unwilling to allow any consideration for the rights and fran- chises which we had obtained. They were unwilling to allow anything for the Alamo Channel, which had been purchased by us and used as a canal and which had saved at least one million dollars in the construc- tion of the system. It is possible that we might, at that time, however, have gotten together on some basis of settlement with the reclamation service, but that, unfortunately, the relations between Mr. Heber and the service became so strained that it was impossible to carry on nego- tiations and the whole deal was declared off by the reclamation service arriving at the conclusion that no law existed whereby they would be able to carry water through, Mexico; at any rate, this is the reason given for breaking off negotiations.
Not only was our work greatly retarded and handicapped by the atti- tude of the reclamation service, which made the people of the Valley antagonistic to us, destroying our credit with the banks of Southern California and in the larger financial markets of the United States, but other departments of the government as well, from the very inception
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of the enterprise, instead of rendering us the assistance which we had every reason to expect we would receive from the government, retarded our progress and at times made it nearly impossible to carry through our work. I do not claim that this has been intentional on the part of any department of the government, with the exception of the reclamation service,; but that it has been due to the dilatory tactics of the govern- ment or to the fact that it has sent inexperienced men to undertake work of very great importance ; but no matter what the reason may be, the effect upon the welfare of the Imperial Valley and the welfare of the California Development Company has been very disastrous.
I refer in this especially to two things: first, to soil surveys made by the agricultural department in the winter of 1901-1902. The field work preceding this report was made by a young man by the name of Garnett Holmes. Mr. Means, his superior officer, came to me in Los Angeles in the summer of 1901, and stated that he desired to send a man to the Valley in the fall of the year to make a study of the soils and report upon the same; and requested my co-operation, which I very readily gave, as I believed that such a report from the government would ma- terially assist us in our work in the Valley. But as many of the early settlers know, the issuance of the report for the time entirely stopped immigration into the Valley and very nearly bankrupted the California Development Company, as it, by destroying the faith of investors in the Valley, destroyed for the time being the credit of the company. The re- port gave the impression that the larger portion of the Valley was un- fit for cultivation, and particularly warned the people who were intend- ing to settle here to be exceedingly careful in their selection of land, and expressed a very serious doubt as to the ultimate future of the Valley, due to the belief of the writer that the alkalies would rise to the sur- face and would destroy all plant life. Mr. Holmes made statements that in certain lands, near the townsite of Imperial, barley would not ger- minate due to the alkali. On this same land large crops have been pro- duced every year since, and, fortunately, people have finally forgotten the report or have lost faith in the accuracy and knowledge of the gov- ernment investigators ; but at the time the blow to us was a very serious one. Also, in our work we have been constantly hampered by the atti- tude of the land department, although it is my belief from personal in- tercourse with the officials in Washington that the desire of the depart-
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ment is to straighten out the surveys as soon as compatible with the red tape of the government, and not unjustly burden our people.
I referred before in this article to the basis that we assumed for the surveys projected to the north of the fourth parallel and the reason for taking as that basis the Brunt surveys to the south of that parallel. It was not until these surveys had been projected far to the north and work had begun on the retracing of the lines to the east of the Alamo River that we discovered wherein lay the real trouble with the surveys, by finding one of the old monuments of the survey of 1854, the finding of which showed wherein the Imperial land survey was wrong. Upon discovering wherein lay the error in the land company's survey, we immediately put several parties in the field searching for the old monu- ments of the surveys of '54 and '56, but in an area of thirty townships we found but five of the old corners that could be sworn to as authentic. These corners, separated as they were over such a large area, showed' that very great errors existed in the original survey ; for instance, be- tween the third and fourth parallels, a distance, according to the gov- ernment surveys, of twenty-four miles, we found the actual distance to be approximately twenty-five and a quarter miles; that is, the govern- ment had made an error of a mile and a quarter in running a distance of twenty-four miles north and south. East and west across the Valley in a distance of thirty miles the error was relatively the same, or ap- proximately two miles. It was manifestly impossible to trace the old lines and to reset the old corners, and it became necessary to either get the government to make a resurvey or else obtain an act of Congress adopting the surveys of the Imperial Land Company. Could the latter policy have been carried through, it would have done away with many of the difficulties and troubles that have existed since, but we found that that was impossible. Mr. Heber and I went to Washington in June, 1902, taking with us all of our maps showing all of the surveys that had been projected by the Imperial Land Company, so that we might place before the land department the exact condition of affairs in the Valley. We were informed by the commissioner of the general land office that no precedent existed, and that there was no law by which they could make a new survey without a special act of Congress. Although it was very late in the session and Congress was to adjourn in July, we suc- ceeded in having the act passed during that session which authorized
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