USA > New Mexico > History of New Mexico : its resources and people, Volume II > Part 64
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70
Irrigation in the Valley of the Pecos .- The drainage area or catchment basin of the Pecos river lying within the Territory, available for irrigation purposes, is estimated at 20,000 square miles, and embraces eastern and southeastern New Mexico. The most fertile lands, and those to whose development the most important irrigation systems have been directed, are in Chaves and Eddy counties, and the main projects undertaken in the past and still being prosecuted by the Reclamation Service have centered around Roswell and Carlsbad. The arduous and faithful initiatory work accomplished by Charles B. Eddy, Charles W. Greene, J. J. Hagerman and others has already been described in the histories of those counties. Upon their work, incomplete and disastrous though it was, the government en- gineers of the Reclamation Service have based their great irrigation works, centering in the construction of the Hondo reservoir, twelve miles west of Roswell, and the rebuilding of the Lake Avalon reservoir, six miles north of Carlsbad, with the entire remodeling of what was long known as the Southern canal of the Hagerman irrigation system.
The Hondo Project .- The credit for discovering the natural depres- sion north of the Hondo and suggesting the completion of the basin's rim by filling the few gaps in the encircling range of hills-the Columbus of the Hondo reservoir-was Leslie M. Long, a civil engineer, who came to Roswell in the early eighties and established a ranch ten miles west of town. His plans for transforming this depression into an artificial lake for irrigation purposes , included an inlet and an outlet canal from the Rio Hondo, and these he communicated to such men as Nathan Jaffa and William S. Prager, of Roswell. These men, with Peter Pauley, of St. Louis, formed the First New Mexico Irrigation and Reservoir Company, and for a number of years prior to 1890 its agents and engineers pros- pected and bored quite thoroughly in the site of the proposed reservoir, but the company was cramped for lack of funds, and in 1892-3 sold its rights to J. J. Hagerman and his associates.
It was then that W. M. Reed came to Roswell and first assumed the work of which he has remained in charge as a United States engineer with the Reclamation Service, and the plans which he then made are practically the same as those which he has carried out in behalf of the national govern- ment. While in charge of the work for the Hagerman Company he par- tially completed the inlet and outlet canals, the outlet ditch being quite
995
IRRIGATION
an expensive structure. Then came the panic of 1893, the paralyzing shortage of money, and the going out of the first Avalon dam, on the Southern canal. With the exception of performing the little work actually required in the maintenance of its property rights, the connection of the Hagerman Company with the Hondo reservoir ceased in the year named, and in 1904 the government made a legal and ready purchase of the site, improvements and property generally.
Two years of strenuous effort on the part of the citizens of Roswell had been required before this decisive step had been brought about. In the fall of 1902 an irrigation congress was held at Colorado Springs. This meeting had followed the passage of the irrigation act on June 17, 1902. A committee of Roswell men, composed of W. M. Reed, H. R. Morrow, G. A. Richardson. L. D. McGuffey and Jason W. James, waited upon the convention, and particularly upon Frederick H. Newell, of Washington, chief engineer of the United States Reclamation Service. One week later the government engineer was going over the ground of the Hondo reser- voir in company with Mr. Reed, and promised to start the project if the latter would take charge of the work and stay with it until completed. This request was made on account of a shortage of men who could take such responsibility. Mr. Reed made the promise, and the preliminary sur- veys were made in January of 1903 by W. A. Wilson, who was under Mr. Reed's direction, of course.
With these surveys the board of consulting engineers of the United States Reclamation Service gave the project the stamp of their approval by recommending that work be done. This recommendation was made to Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock, and in June of 1904 the secretary of the interior approved the work. The consulting engineers of the board then were A. P. Davis, G. Y. Wisner, W. H. Sanders and H. N. Savage. On December 5. 1904, the contract for blasting and removal of stone was let to the Slinkard Construction Company. of Roswell, and the contract for the removal and filling of earth work was let to the Taylor-Moore Construction Company, of Hillsboro, Texas. That same month the com- panies began to move their machinery to the site, and Slinkard's men were throwing rock and dirt by New Year's Day. The Taylor-Moore people began actual work in January, 1905.
The inlet canal takes its water from the Hondo at a point about thir- teen miles from Roswell. Thus it is about a mile above the reservoir, from east to west, and about twenty-five feet above it in actual altitude. This fall in the river gives the canal sufficient altitude to fill the reservoir to a depth of about twenty-five feet. This inlet canal was built with the wisdom of the best engineers of the United States. Should the water of the Hondo, muddy from is mad spring rush from the mountains, be run into the reser- voir, the silt that would settle there would, it is estimated, fill the entire basin in forty years. To avoid this and to make the life of the reservoir interminable, the inlet canal was made as one long settling basin. The water is to run into the canal to a depth of ten feet. Along the lower side of the canal, beginning near the intake and extending almost to the reser- voir, is a system of gates that will let the water on the bottom run out through small canals back into the river. Of these gates there are two spillways and four sluice gates. They will release the heavy. silt-laden water that sinks to the bottom. At the lower end of the inlet canal, a mile
996
HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
and a half from the intake, is a weir, which will permit only the top part of the settled water to spill into the reservoir. In this way the blackest of water entering the canal is absolutely clear when run into the reservoir. A test has proven that the theory is correct. Only a third of the water that runs into the inlet canal goes into the final receptacle, but with the average head of water that comes down the Hondo every spring the reser- voir can be filled in ten days, nevertheless.
To increase the capacity of the natural basin to an amount considered practical, six fills had to be made, the maximum height of these embank- ments being twenty-two feet. In each case these fills were made 130 feet wide at the bottom and twenty feet wide at the top. They were made by the placing of dirt, sprinkling and rolling it with immense machinery in thin layers. The tops of these embankments now make splendid drive- ways. Although they are made of dirt, they are so compact that even after a rain heavily laden wagons make no material impression on their surface.
The Hondo reservoir has a surface of 2,000 acres. From east to west it is two and a half miles long, and from north to south two and a quarter miles in width. 'A straight line over three miles long could be drawn, however, diagonally across the lake. The water will have an average depth of twenty feet, making its capacity 40,000 acre-feet of water. It will irrigate 10,000 acres of land, supplying every acre with a depth of forty- eight inches every year. Alfalfa, the most thirsty of all crops, requires no more than thirty inches of water per year.
The outlet pipes will pass a head of thirty-eight feet of water. Run- ning down the outlet canal and emptying into the river bed, the water will follow the natural stream's course for a mile. Then begins the system of laterals that will distribute it over 10,000 acres. This land extends on both sides of the Hondo from a mile below the reservoir to within a half mile of the city limits of Roswell. The lateral canals reach every quarter section in the irrigated district.
The land irrigated by this reservoir is owned entirely by individuals. They have formed the Rio Hondo Water Users' Association, and this cor- poration will have entire management of the reservoir after it is completed and accepted by the government. These owners will pay for their water rights at the rate of $2.75 per acre for ten years. The estimated cost of the work was $275,000, but it will probably go close to $300,000. The ap- propriation for this purpose was $275,000. Each acre of irrigated land will have paid $27.50 to the government in ten years. Thus the land owners will have to pay no interest. The entire tract is owned mostly in pieces of from twenty to 160 acres.
The Southern (Carlsbad) Canal System .- When the first dam at Lake Avalon, a few miles above Eddy (Carlsbad), was washed away in August, 1893, the Hagerman Company devoted its already shattered ener- gies to the work of repairing it. It was rebuilt, in spite of the depressing financial period, at a cost of about $180,000, but the canals were still leaky and imperfect, and, owing to cramped finances and inadequate expenditure, the entire system was imperfect. Still, with good times and fair receipts from water users, the faults would undoubtedly have been corrected; but the improvement was not to come under the Hagerman management, and
997
IRRIGATION
on October 2, 1904. when the second Avalon dam went out with the flood, the company was virtually bankrupt.
The plant, which then belonged to the Pecos Irrigation Company, consisted of the McMillan reservoir, the upper storage dam; the Avalon reservoir, until its destruction known as the lower storage and diversion dam, and a system of canals furnishing water to about 14,000 acres of land. When the lower dam at Lake Avalon was washed away, this break in the diversion dam, at the head of the system, cut off the water completely from the canals. As the Pecos Irrigation Company could not undertake to repair it, an appeal to the Reclamation Service, supported by the water users, resulted in an examination and survey of the property by the gov- ernment engineers in order to arrive at a proper basis for its purchase. These government investigations were begun in December, 1904.
In January, 1905, certain individuals owning stock and bonds in the Pecos Irrigation Company subscribed an amount of money that was con- sidered sufficient for building a temporary diversion dam, turning the water into the canal, and for repairing the canals and concrete aqueduct across the river to the west side canal. The engineers of the Reclamation Service were asked to make plans for this temporary work and give general supervision to the construction, while making the investigations above re- ferred to. As money was very scarce, the plans for the construction of the diversion dam were based upon the assumption that there would be no floods in the river during the winter season, as the records of the company for sixteen continuous vears showed that the river was always low in winter and that no floods had occurred in winter during that period. The plans for this diversion dam are a strong earth embankment across the valley and a timber spillway 100 feet long at its center where it crosses the river channel. The top of the spillway is twenty feet above low water in the river and the top of the earth embankment is ten feet higher.
The construction was begun about the last of January, 1905. The weather immediately turned very cold and the month of February had three heavy snows with freezing weather that made it impossible to work. Then the floods hegan in the river and have continued ever since.
The work on the concrete flume was carried to successful completion and the earth embankment of the diversion dam was completed in like manner : but the timber spillway in the bed of the river and its connection with the embankment on each end has been the constant plaything of the floods. Lake McMillan, ten miles above, which had been relied on to con- trol the river and had never been full in the winter time before, was abso- lutely inadequate to control the floods of the season. It would hold the water only long enough to get in part of the foundations of the spillway in the river bed and then hegin to run over and cause a rise that would wash them out. Under these conditions the timber abutments connecting the earthwork at the left bank was so badly strained that it evidently de- veloped unobserved leaks in the sheet piling and planking underneath. which caused it to fail when the water was finally raised on it. The wash- out which occurred about midnight on June 4th took out this abutment, with a small portion of the timher work on one side and a small portion of the end of the embankment on the other side of it.
It would seem that the elements conspired against the construction of this diversion dam for the temporary relief of the people of the lower
998
HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
Pecos valley, although fortunately the rains during this season of attempted work were more abundant than usual. As the interior department has set aside $600,000 for this work, however, future operations will be conducted with a view of thoroughly remodeling the entire system on permanent lines.
Artesian Belt of the Pecos Valley .- The failure of the irrigation sys- tems of the Pecos valley to meet the requirements of this splendid agri- cultural and horticultural section of New Mexico has a partial compensa- tion in the development of the wonderful artesian supply, whose value even now can only be imperfectly gauged. The first well was discovered in Roswell in 1891, and there are now fully 400 in the district, flowing continually and apparently yielding inexhaustible supplies. The story of the wonderful development of the artesian belt in Chaves and Eddy coun- ties has already been told in the history of those counties. Considered from a scientific standpoint, this area of artesian waters is thus described by George P. Cleveland, of Artesia :
"Beginning at the head of North Spring river, where is located the beautiful town of Roswell, and following it nearly east for ten or twelve miles to the point where it empties into the Pecos river, and thence down the Pecos about fifty miles, you traverse a valley from ten to fifteen miles broad, under which is a subterranean watershed. Tapping this watershed with drills, as you go down the Pecos valley, on the west side, the water will rise higher and higher above the surface, until at Artesia it will reach a height of 210 feet.
"In prehistoric times there has been thrown up a section of country passing about twelve miles to the north of Roswell and continuing nearly south for about sixty-five miles, and thence westward to the foothills of the Guadalupe mountains. When this upheaval occurred, it broke and sealed all the strata below, and it now acts as a huge dam across an im- mense river, held down by an impervious covering; and it is this dam which caused the water to come to the surface at Roswell when it made North Spring river.
"Attempting to raise the water level, a dam was thrown across North Spring river near its exit from the hills, and the river refused to climb the dam. This proves there is a subterranean flow on the same level as is the water at the head of North Spring river, and that stream joined the flow instead of climbing to the higher level of the dam, the dam being removed to get back the flow of the surface part of this hidden river.
"To the east of this thrown-up country, against which the Pecos lies as it flows south, no artesian water has been found, nor do I know of any deep drilling there; but south of this area of upheaval, at Carlsbad, where it turns westward to the foothills of the Guadalupe mountains, which is about twelve miles below where the Pecos has cut its way through the surface of the subterranean dam, wells have been sunk to a depth of 2,200 feet and failed to flow. Some ten miles west of Carlsbad, Black river rises from the ground, and to the southward and eastward for a hundred miles, through the semi-desert country, a great number of streams or springs boldly gush from the soil. On the Texas Pacific, twenty miles west of Pecos City, is a good flowing well 800 feet deep, and along the river in and around that place are numerous shallow, light-flowing wells; all of which seems to indicate that the artesian watershed that was broken and
999
IRRIGATION
sealed by the above mentioned subterranean dike finds a westward outlet which is on a level with the headwaters of North Spring river. As to where all this water originates, we cannot hope to have any detailed knowledge, but in a general way conclude that it is drained from a good part of the subterranean watershed of our end of the Rocky Mountain range.
"Our known or proven artesian water level includes about 500,000 acres of land, and by drilling we have found that this watershed is miles broader than the area mentioned. And as to where this water goes, we cannot know; but it is highly important and intensely gratifying that it continues to flow and will not desert us, even after we drill holes enough to irrigate every inch of our 500,000 acres under our artesian level. In other words, water under this level will be the maximum and land the minimum, and I cannot find the existence of a like condition anywhere else. Nowhere else have we had any reliable data from which to calculate as to the cause of an artesian water level, or to determine approximately the quantity of water available.
"About twelve days ago ( from the time of writing) occurred a down- pour of rain, causing overflows which have not been equalled in twenty years. The flood came over the hills and poured into the basin at the head of North Spring river until it raised the water level about five feet, and that level being five feet higher than the subterranean exit, the flood water went off through the underground passage; as its gravity carried it to this lower level, the fish which were in the basin at the head of the river were borne along, and some of them came to the surface through the wells at Artesia, forty-five miles below where they doubtless commenced their journey. In one instance they came up through the drill pipe, having struck the flow about 875 feet below the surface. This evidence so forcibly corroborates the truth of my inductions that it sets me on the plane of conclusive fact instead of in the territory of theory."
The Elephant Butte Project .- The government projects for the irri- gation of lands in the Pecos valley are overshadowed by the magnitude of the enterprise now being prosecuted by the Reclamation Service at Ele- phant Butte, in the Rio Grande valley, due west of Eagle, a station on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, Sierra county. After years of futile effort on the part of the Rio Grande Dam and Irrigation Company to construct an enormous dam and reservoir at that point, bitter opposition from the national government, on the assumed ground that the works would be an obstruction to the navigation of the river. and many decisions by the district and supreme courts of New Mexico and the Supreme Court of the United States to the effect that the course of the Rio Grande above Elephant Butte never had been navigable and never could be-after a decade of contentions and litigations the great work, substantially as projected. has been assumed hy the United States Reclamation Service of the Interior Department. As it is estimated that more than $7,000,000 will be re- quired to complete the work. which is eventually to irrigate 180,000 acres of exceptionally fertile land in Sierra and Doña Ana counties, New Mexico. and El Paso county, Texas, the Elephant Butte project is obvi- onsly the most important and expensive system of irrigation which has ever been assumed by the United States.
The government of the United States, through the relatively new
1000
HISTORY OF NEW MEXICO
bureau of the Interior Department known as the Reclamation Service, organized in 1902-3. after nearly a quarter of a century of continuous agitation, has been pushing forward its operations energetically and on a scale more extensive than the earlier advocates of the undertaking could have anticipated. Up to those years practically all of the irrigation in the west had been carried on by individuals or private associations. But no large private development work has been financially successful. In most cases the cost of durable irrigation structures has proven prohibitive to ordinary private enterprise, a fact that has become generally recognized only after millions of dollars have been expended in works which, in many instances. sooner or later have fallen as the result of the irresistible onslaught of mountain floods.
In the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico-"the American Nile," as it is coming to be known-the Reclamation Service recently has inaugu- rated work upon the greatest single irrigation project thus far undertaken in America. While it is totally different in magnitude and practicability, it occupies the same territory as an enterprise undertaken thirteen years ago by citizens of the southwest, financed by British capitalists, and aban- doned by the original promoters only after one of the most dramatic legal contests in the history of western development.
During the spring of 1892 Dr. Nathan Boyd, a wealthy Virginian, while in London learned from a fellow American of the organization of a corporation called the American Colonization Company, which had been formed for the purchase and improvement of irrigable lands located on the Rio Puerco, a branch of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Upon becoming acquainted with the salient features of the colonization company's scheme, he willingly advanced moneys, at various times, for the promotion of the undertaking. Soon afterward a number of young Englishmen of good families emigrated to America to join the company's settlement near Albu- querque. But they found that the company was not able to give clear titles to the lands they had purchased, which formed part of an old Spanish grant to citizens of the province of New Mexico, and they asked Dr. Boyd to advise them as to the best course to pursue. Sailing at once for America, he found that there were numerous Mexican claimants to the land which had been sold to the settlers, and that in all probability prolonged litigation would be required before perfect title could be established. So dismal was the outlook that the settlers soon abandoned their claims and the improve- ments which they had placed upon them. In the meantime a deputation of citizens of El Paso and Las Cruces had called upon Dr. Boyd and re- quested him to investigate the irrigation possibilities further down the Rio Grande, directing his attention particularly to the locality south of the natural dam site locally known as "Elephant Butte."
A knowledge of the characteristics of the Rio Grande and its catch- ment area is essential to a correct conception of the manifold troubles which followed Dr. Boyd's investigations. This great river, rising in the mountains of Colorado, flows in a southerly direction through the entire length of the Territory of New Mexico to the north boundary of Texas. From this point to "The Pass," about four miles above El Paso, it forms the boundary line between New Mexico and Texas. Throughout the re- mainder of its journey to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about thirteen hundred miles, it forms the boundary line between the United States and
1001
IRRIGATION
Mexico. It has always been a torrential or storm-water stream, subject to tremendous floods at certain seasons and a dry bed, in places, at other periods. The country through which it flows is extremely fertile, but so meagre and erratic is the rainfall that it is a desert, upon which no crops can be raised without artificial irrigation.
For more than a quarter of a century the American and Mexican farmers of that valley and the citizens of El Paso had been endeavoring to raise capital for the construction of a large storage dam and a scientific system of distributing canals for the irrigation of this large tract of land. National aid was long sought, and the co-operation of Mexico earnestly solicited, but in vain. Finally, in 1892, citizens of El Paso formed a com- pany to build an international storage dam in the canyon just above that city, but upon full investigation their engineers found that the cost of the undertaking would be practically prohibitive. They also found that many thousands of acres of fertile alluvial valley lands would have to be con- demned for reservoir purposes, and that the proposed dam would raise to a much higher level the sub-surface water-table (or underflow ) above, and thereby "waterlog" and render totally unfit for farming purposes some forty thousand acres in the Mesilla valley in New Mexico, much of which already was under cultivation.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.