USA > California > Imperial County > The history of Imperial County, California > Part 15
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Mr. Edinger, according to statements made to me, remained on the work at this time but a few minutes, when he returned to Yuma and took the first train for Tucson to see Mr. Randolph, to whom he said
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that neither he nor any other man could build that gate and put it in place and that he would not undertake it. He had plans for the construc- tion of a dam across the west channel from the head of the island direct to the Lower California shore, a distance of about 600 feet, by means of which he said he would be able to turn the water down the east chan- nel. He claimed that he could do this work in much quicker time than the gate could be put in, even if the gate could be built at all, which he denied. Mr. Randolph, who had great faith in Mr. Edinger's experience and ability, agreed to this change of plan without consultation with me, and authorized Mr. Edinger to remove all material from the gate site, and to proceed at once with the construction of what was afterward known as the Edinger Dam. This was on a Thursday that Mr. Edinger went to Tucson. On Friday they started to move all material to the site of the Edinger Dam, and I knew nothing at all of this change of plan until the following Monday, when I was notified by Mr. Randolph in Los Angeles of what he had done.
The dam met with several mishaps; Edinger was very much longer in its construction than he had estimated. One of the foundation mats had broken, and though it was held in place, I did not believe, nor did other engineers believe who examined the work, that it would be a suc- cess. On the 29th day of November, Edinger had succeeded in raising the water thirty-five inches by means of the dam and had some water going down the east channel. In order to have turned all the water down the east channel, it would have been necessary to have raised the water to a height of between eight and ten feet, and it is exceedingly doubtful if the structure would have stood the pressure, but that is merely a mat- ter of surmise.
On the 29th of November a very heavy flood came down the river and the entire structure was washed away and the work was abandoned.
Whether or not the first gate planned would have been completed be- fore the flood of November 29th, is a matter of conjecture. No man can tell positively, but, judging from the tremendous work evolved in the construction of the second gate, which would not have been incurred in the construction of the first, and judging, too, from the rapidity with which the second gate was put in place, it is my opinion and the opinion of others who were able to judge, that the first gate would have been in place before the flood came down; and that gate, with its concrete
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floor, would have stood the pressure that would have been placed upon it, in which case the river would have been turned in November, 1905, and at a cost that would not have exceeded $125,000.
On the 15th day of December, 1905, I was authorized to go ahead again with the construction of what has been known as the Rockwood Gate. The heavy flood of November 29th had enlarged the intake from a width of 300 feet to a width of approximately 600 feet. It had taken out the island between the by-pass and the intake, and as we could not hope for the completion of the new gate before April, 1906, by which time we might possibly have high water in the river, it seemed an unsafe proposition to attempt to build the gate in the old channel. After looking over the ground, then, I decided to build the new gate directly in the main canal and to carry the water around the gate by means of a new canal to be built. The first gate was planned for a width of 120 feet and to carry a maximum of nine thousand cubic feet per second, which was the estimated amount of water that might be in the river in the month of November, 1905, at which time I had expected to have the gate com- pleted. The Yuma records show that the amount of water flowing in the river previous to the flood of November 29th could have been success- fully carried through a gate of the width planned. As the new gate could not be completed until the spring of 1906, I decided that it would have to be built larger than previously planned in order to carry the larger amount of water that might be expected in the river at that time ; conse- quently, it was planned with a width of 200 feet.
The dimensions of the new gate, including its wooden aprons, was to be over all 240 feet by 10 feet. Instead of having a clear cut channel to work in, as we had for the first gate, the entire space had to be enclosed in a coffer-dam, and the excavation made from the interior of this enclo- sure. The work involved was such that the time required, as well as the expense, was fully twice as great as required for the construction of the first gate.
Mr. Randolph, while giving his permission to go ahead with this con- struction, expressed doubt of our ability to put the floor of the gate down to the elevation that I expected to reach. I succeeded in placing the floor one foot below the elevation proposed in the original plan and the gate, except for its rock aprons, which were never built, was com- pleted on the 18th day of April, 1906, practically within the time I had
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estimated, although at a very much greater cost. But we had had high water in the river since about the first of March, and at this time some 22,000 cubic feet per second were passing down the channel; and, while I believe that the gate might successfully carry 15,000 feet, it seemed foolish to place a test upon it, at this time, against a rising river, as it was exceedingly doubtful if we would be able to construct a dam across the 600 feet of channel with the means at our disposal before the sum- mer flood should be upon us ; consequently, we decided to stop the work until after the summer flood of 1906 should have passed.
I had found, at this time, that it was impossible for me to manage the affairs of the company in accordance with my ideas, and unless I could do so, I believed that it was best for the stockholders of the company that I should resign as assistant general manager, which I did the latter part of April, 1906. Mr. H. T. Cory was then made general manager and I became the consulting engineer.
After the summer flood had passed Mr. Cory moved his headquarters to the river and took complete charge of the work.
At this time, due to the summer flood of 1906, the intake had again been enlarged from 600 feet to approximately 2600 feet, and the work of filling was of such a magnitude that we decided it would be impossi- ble to accomplish it in the time at our disposal except by means of a branch road to be built a distance of seven miles from the Southern Pa- cific main line across the intake, on the site of the proposed dam. The construction of this line, which was immediately begun, gave us the op- portunity to throw a spur track in front of the gate and assure its safety, as it would permit rock to be dumped either on the gate or in front of it in case serious erosion should occur ; but the spur was not built until too late. The rock aprons that I had intended to build above and below the gate had not been put in, which omission allowed whirlpools to start in front of the gate which dug a hole below the sheet piling. The spur was then completed as rapidly as possible in order to bring in rock to fill the hole, but when the first trainload of rock started across the spur on the morning of October IIth, a part of the trestle gave way and the train was thrown from the track, and at three o'clock in the afternoon the gate rose and went out. I was not on the ground at the time, having resigned as consulting engineer in October.
Previous to this, however, this gate, which had been planned to carry
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12,000 cubic feet of water per second on an even flow, had been carry- ing for a period of nearly two weeks far in excess of the amount, and, due to the drift which had been allowed to accumulate in front of it, this water, instead of going through smoothly, was going through with an overpour exceeding four feet in height.
Whether the structure would have stood the strain had this spur been completed in time and had the rock aprons shown in my original plans been built, no man can tell, but it is my belief and that of other experi- enced engineers who examined it, that it would have stood and would have done the work for which it was planned, and would have been there today.
After the Rockwood Gate, so-called, went out, I understand that Mr. Randolph decided to throw a mat and brush dam across the river chan- nel below the intake of the concrete gate, which was built under my di- rection the winter before, and to force all the water through it. He was dissuaded, as I have been told, from this plan by Thomas Hind, who had been previously in charge of the work at the river under my direc- tions, and who was, at the time of the going out of the Rockwood Gate, foreman under H. T. Cory in charge of the river work. Hind said he could close the river and force the water back into the old channel by main force, providing they could furnish him with rock fast enough. They decided upon adopting this plan, which, at the time, was in all probability the only one that could have been adopted that would have succeeded in quick enough time to prevent the necessity of again moving the Southern Pacific tracks to the high grade level which they had been building at an elevation of 100 feet below sea level around the Salton Sea.
Mr. Randolph succeeded in getting the Southern Pacific to agree to this plan of procedure which necessitated, practically, the turning over of the entire trackage facilities of the Southern Pacific to this work.
Quarries from all over the country were brought into requisition and passenger trains were ordered to give way to the rock trains that would be required; and what is probably one of the most gigantic works ever done by man in an equal length of time was then inaugurated, and the work of filling the channel began. Most of the cars used were of the pat- tern called battleships, carrying fifty cubic yards of rock, and the trains were so handled that for several days, or until the fill was above the dan-
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ger point, one car of rock was dumped on the average of every five min- utes, night and day. This plan was successful. The Hind Dam was com- pleted and the water turned down its old channel toward the Gulf of California on the 4th of November, 1908.
The river did not stay long turned, however. A few weeks after the closure had been made, a flood came down the river which broke under the earth levees which had been constructed from the Hind Dam down the river for the purpose of preventing an overflow from entering the channel below the dam.
The floods which had occurred during the year 1905-1906 had caused a deep deposit of silt upon the lands below the dam. This silt deposit was filled with cracks, and when the Hind Dam was completed, the water at first raised above the natural ground surface and lay against the levee to a depth of from four to eight inches in the neighborhood of where the second break occurred.
Even this slight pressure of water found its way beneath the levee in many different places, and a large gang of men was required to prevent it from breaking; but nothing was done to make it safe, and when the next flood came down the river in December, 1906, it broke under the levee and again the water turned down to the Salton Sea.
This second break was closed in the same manner as the first had been, on the IIth day of February, 1907. After repairing the second break the levees were rebuilt and extended farther down the river and, in my opinion, they will now stand any pressure that may come against them, and I believe that the people of the Imperial Valley are now en- tirely safe from the probability of destruction due to future floods in the Colorado River, and that these floods may not occur, not because it is impossible that the flood waters of the Colorado should again find their way to the Salton Sea, but as the river has been twice turned, it can be turned again by the same means should it ever become necessary to do so.
The people of the Imperial Valley have naturally expected great things of the management of the Southern Pacific, believing that an en- terprise backed by all its millions and its natural interest in the develop- ment of the traffic would at once surge ahead ; that all necessary work to put the entire enterprise in a safe and satisfactory condition for the distribution of water would be done, and that the work would be rapid-
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ly carried on to cover the entire acreage available for irrigation within the Valley.
Two years have now passed since the final closure was made, and on the 20th day of next June four years will have passed since the South- ern Pacific assumed absolute charge of the management of the affairs of the California Development Company, and yet, during that time, I doubt if sixty miles of new canals and ditches have been built, and I, doubt if to exceed 5000 more people are now in the Valley than were here on the 20th day of June, 1905.
The old company, hampered as it was by lack of funds and the er- roneous beliefs of the world regarding the possibilities of this region, began its work of construction at the Colorado River in September, 1900. It brought the first little trickle of water down through what is now known as the Boundary Ditch at Calexico on the 21st day of June, 1901. It was not able to turn water into its main canal for irrigation until March, 1902. Practically then the history of development in the hands of the old management, dates from the time when we turned over the management to the Southern Pacific on the 20th day of June, 1905; a period of four years. During that time, in spite of all that we had during the early period to overcome, we built nearly 800 miles of can- als ; we sold water rights covering approximately 210,000 acres of land, and we brought into the Valley not less than 15,000 people.
It must be remembered though that nearly two years of the Southern Pacific control was spent in turning the floods that threatened to de- stroy all, that it has been hampered by many adverse court decisions against the California Development Company, and it is a question as to whether any financial men placed in the same position that they are would have done more than they have, except that a different adminis- tration might have before this cleared the ground for future action and might have effected a reorganization which must undoubtedly be ac- complished before the great work can again go ahead smoothly.
Court decisions have been rendered which would naturally make the Southern Pacific, or any financial institution in its place, hesitate before spending more money in the Valley for the benefit of others. The de- cision of the United States Federal Court gave to the Liverpool Salt Company in a suit which it brought against the California Development Company for destroying its works a judgment of $450,000. The South-
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ern Pacific does not, naturally, care to pay this judgment. Some of the people of the Imperial Valley combined and assigned to one Jones in- numerable claims for damages, some real, some fictitious, all exag- gerated, but aggregating in the total amount some $470,000. The South- ern Pacific cannot be responsible for that damage, nor does it care to create additional wealth, additional assets, for the California Develop- ment Company that might be taken to pay those damage claims should Jones succeed in obtaining a judgment against the company.
I understand that plans had been drawn and consent had been given for the expenditure of a large amount of money for the construction of permanent gates in the main canal, above Sharps, when a decision ren- dered by the Federal Court in Los Angeles cast doubt upon the legality of the contracts entered into between the mutual companies and the California Development Company, and also threw a serious doubt upon the value of all water stocks and upon the value of future investments that might be made by the Southern Pacific in the canal system. Follow- ing this decision then they ordered all work stopped and notified the present management of the California Development Company that it must depend entirely upon its resources obtained from water rentals or from the sale of such water stocks as people might see fit to buy.
(The decision referred to above was reversed by Judge Welborn in February, 1900 .- Ed.).
If these water rentals were paid promptly it is doubtful if they would be sufficient to operate successfully the system, but I understand they have not been all paid and the present management of the com- pany, like the old, is hampered in its work by inadequate funds.
A new chapter has now been opened in the affairs of the Valley and in the affairs of the California Development Company by a suit brought on the 9th day of January, 1909, against the company by the Southern Pacific for, approximately, $1,400,000, the company suing on promis- sory notes given to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and by the Southern Pacific management of the California Development Com- pany. We may hope, however, that instead of this suit further com- plicating the situation and retarding development indefinitely, that it may prove an advantage to all concerned by clearing the ground and leaving it clean for future growth.
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Fight on for C. D. Control. A Late Letter from Mr. Rockwood
Los Angeles, Cal., May 12, 1909.
To the people of Imperial Valley :
It is with regret that I announce to you that on Saturday, May 8, 1909, Mr. W. F. Herrin, the head of the legal department of the South- ern Pacific, acting for that company, decided not to accept the propo- sition recently made by the stockholders of the California Development Company, whereby we agreed to sell to the Southern Pacific Company all of the stock of the C. D. Co., for $250,000, being $20 per share, or one-fifth of its par value. The price at which we offered the stock equals only about $1 per acre for the lands now under water stock and 25 cents per acre for the total irrigable area of the Valley.
The revenues from water rentals for this year, 1909, will equal the total amount that we have asked the Southern Pacific Company to pay us for our equity in this great enterprise, that was with your help and theirs created by us, an enterprise that, though still in its infancy, too young as yet to even dream the story of its future greatness, increased the revenues of the great Southern Pacific Company during the year 1908 by nearly two and one-half million dollars. They will undoubtedly deny these figures and I cannot prove them, but my information came directly from a high official of the company, whose name I will not give as such information is not for us common people, and I do not wish to embarrass my friend by subjecting him to reprimand from the higher ups.
The little we have asked them to pay us out of their much is, we be- lieve, far below the sum that we are justly entitled to for our part in building up this Imperial empire of the southwest. A year ago we made a proposition to the Southern Pacific Company to settle our differences. They refused it. We have made others since, all of which have been ignored, and they never made to us a counter proposition, unless that we pay back to them all of the money they have squandered in misman- aging our affairs, with interest, be considered a proposition. This sum, which includes freight at $12 a ton, $18 per cubic yard, on much of the rock that was used in closing the break, amounts, according to their statement, to approximately $4,000,000, and unless we are prepared to pay them this sum they have decided that we who have created for
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them a revenue of $2,500,000 per year, are entitled to no consideration from them.
This is of interest to you, of vital interest, and for that reason I am taking you into my confidence and telling you these things that mean the retarding of the development of our great Valley unless we, the stockholders and owners of the California Development Company, who conceived and planned this enterprise and put into it our all, give up that all to satisfy the rapacity of the Southern Pacific Company.
When we offered them the stock at $20 per share we offered them nearly all. We offered it because we are weak as compared with their great strength, and because we hoped that if we gave them title to the property that they would use their great power and resources to devel- op it. I am informed that the attorneys for the Southern Pacific in Los Angeles and San Francisco advised settlement on this basis, that this was also the desire of Messrs. Cory and Doran, the Southern Pacific managers of the California Development Company, but Mr. Espes Ran- dolph and Mr. W. F. Herrin control, and they decided against it, and instructed the Los Angeles attorney to begin marshaling their legal hosts against us.
The fight is on. I am sorry for your sakes as well as my own, but I think there are but few of you who can in your hearts expect or ask us to do more than we have. Personally I have given sixteen years out of the middle of my life in turning the Colorado Desert into the Imperial. Valley. I have succeeded, not alone to be sure. Without the help of the brains and money of my associates I could have done nothing. Without the help of the Southern Pacific in time to save all our efforts might have been fruitless, but that they did save no more entitles them to say to us, the stockholders, give us all in payment, than it does to say to you, give us the farm we saved for you.
I try not to be egotistical, but when I now ride through our fields of waving grain and look miles across broad acres of alfalfa, dotted here and there with comfortable homes, and the evidence of a prosperous people, and think of that day, more than sixteen years back, when, without a wagon track or trail to guide me, I first crossed the then unin- habitated solitude, I know that I have accomplished that which is given to but few to do, and while my reward is mostly in doing that which I undertook to do, still I believe that in my work I have honestly earned
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in that visible evidence of success, money, a competency. But I do not expect it now out of my work in the Valley unless I can acquire it in the future through the same opportunities that have been given to you.
Personally I own 712 shares of California Development Company stock. At the price it was offered to the Southern Pacific Company I would have received $16,240, not a very magnificent money reward to be sure; but even this they refused, and now to get it or anything I must fight through the long, tedious process of the courts. In the fight I, we, want and hope to receive the sympathy and moral support of the Valley people.
The time must come when you, the people, will own the great water system on which you are so entirely dependent, and now that your land titles are being adjusted the time may be not far away when you can offer a security that would permit you to purchase. Hope then, for your own sakes, if not for ours, that we may win, for undoubtedly the price we will ask of you will be but a small part of the demands of the South- ern Pacific Company.
I believe that in this fight we are legally and morally right, and that the courts of our land will not oblige us, or you, to return to the South- ern Pacific Company the millions unnecessarily spent, and spent in any case not for our protection but for their own, and I believe we will win, and if we do, you do.
Requesting then your patience and your continued good-will, I remain,
Yours sincerely,
C. R. ROCKWOOD.
CHAPTER IV
IRRIGATION
BY EDGAR F. HOWE
WHEN Congressman Roberts of Pennsylvania had traversed the desert to enter Imperial Valley, he said: "The one incomprehensible fact with me is that you people came here. Now that you are here and have brought about this marvelous development, I can well understand why you stay here. But how did it happen that you came out into this Valley when it was such a forbidding desert as I have seen in coming here ?- that is the mystery."
Congressman Roberts did not realize that there is in America a nomadic race of beings, always pressing toward the frontier and carv- ing empires to endure for the ages. Here in Imperial Valley, last of the American frontiers, they saw their opportunity, and we may believe that as they settled down near the river to make new habitation they but duplicated the processes of the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians, throwing off the nomadic instinct for the time being and adding to the processes of the ancients the skill of the moderns.
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