Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1916 — GREAT RECLAMATIONS PROJECT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GREAT RECLAMATIONS PROJECT

BN the valley or the Rio Grande river, oil the border between the i United States and Mexico', engineers of the United States have almost finished the greatest reclamation project ever attempted. At a cost of $10,000,- _ OOP the-Elephant Butte dam in New Mexico, which will turn ISO • square miles of almost worthless desert’ into fertile farms, has , been constructed. jUor three yearS from the time the water was turned into the gigantic reservoir, the entire flow of the Rio Grande will be required to fill it. This artificial /lake is forty miles long and from three to six miles wide. It will hold 650,000,000 gallons, or enough to cover 2,000,000 acres of land with water to a depth of one foot. The work on the dam was started in the spring of 1911, and more than one thousand workmen have been employed on the construction ever since that time. When the project/is finally com pleted 110,000 acres of land in New Mexico, 45,000 acres in Texas and 25,0011 acres in old Mexico will be irrigated. Five hundred and fifty thousand cubic yards of solid masonry will have been put in place. This masonry forms a mass, which, if placed on a tract of land of the dimensions of an ordinary city block, would .cover the tract to a height equal to that of a 13 story building. This masonry has been placed at the rate of 1,225 cubic yards daily. All the gates of the dam have been put in place and the water in the reservoir stands at 37 feet above the old river bed. When it is filled it will have an average depth of approximately 66 feet. _ ... The Elephant Butte dam project far surpasses in magnitude the Assuan dam on the Nile in Egypt, which has in the past been regarded as the climax of possibilities in irrigation. As a matter of actual figures, the Nile dam holds only half as much water as will be contained hack of Elephant Butte dam. The dam itself is 1,200 feet long and will be 304 ~ feet high at the highest point. A permanent road- / way 16 feet high is being ~ ji r constructed on top. The m dam gradually widens to gS the base, forming a con- , Crete foundation, against which the raging torrents IbMBHm ' from the streams of the Rocky mouhtains will beat r < V for centuries without es- ... \ - | • \ In the construction of : *. v , .V. % S the reservoir it was nec- I a essary to wipe out throe Ifs' small towns; and although the population was not la/ge, the property values, which were made good by the government, renTS^^. eented in the aggregare a considerable, sum. Another town sprang up for the army of workmen. A railroad 15 miles long was built to haul material to the place where the dam was erected. In fact, the preliminary work was not a small part of the undertaking. Plants for the manufacture of cement, buildings for the housing of the workmen, a store, power station, transmission lines and. a great embankment at a gap in the hills northwest of the dam proper had *to be provided. Construction of main flumes, cofferdams, excavation in the river bed and the building of roads were among the preliminary tasks presented to the., engineers. The cost, with the exception of/ $1,000,000, will eventually be paid back into the government reclamation fund by land owners who will benefit by the dam, and will again be used by the government for reclamation work in some other section of the country. The $1,000,000 appropriated outright and is being used for that portion of the work which will benefit farmers in old Mexico. The appro- > priation was made to furnish this water in settlement of several million dollars in claims which the Mexican government had presented to the United States for damages to land on the Mexican side, as a result of the water from the river being used in small irrigation projects on the American side, thus robbing Mexican farmers of water which naturally Would have gone to them. Something of what is. to be expected as a result of-the work is demonstrated by the small tracts that have been irrigated by private irrigation systems. The great dam will connect two division dams already completed. One of these, at Leasburg, watters 25,000 acres in what is known as the rich Mesilla valley. It has been wonderfully productive. Farmers in this section have received a profit of S6OO an acre from truck in a single year. At other points along the Rio Grande, In both Texas and New Mexico, small dams have brought tracts of land under and made It possible to raise bounteous crops. jTho jjame fertility will be found on the 155,000 acres around the new dam in New Mexico and Texas. Great, valleys which have hitherto produced only during thb infrequent years that nature was kind enough to send more than the average rainfall, will be reached by the water from the irrigation canals and large yields will be assured. The statement that the reservoir will holch three years' flow of the Rio Grande river shows the greatness of the project. The Rio Grande is one of the longest rivers in the United States. It forms; far up in Colorado and is fed by/ rivers and streams extending much farther to tlie north, ft flows through a portion of Colorado, across New Mexico and forms the border between Texas ; and Mexico, finally reaching the Gulf. . Extensive irrigation from the ri\fer without the 1 frid nf ‘& great dam attd reservoir is impossible, because of the rapidity with which the stream changes from a raging torrent to a" bed of dry • 6*nd. rti ~ y- r With the completion of the dam and.other irrigation projects which will follow a great future the heart of the arid sectiwi of America. She has 122.460 square miles 'Of Vroad plains, rugged mountains, sage brush deserts; greater In extent jthan all New England, With New York and New

Jersey thrown in, but with a population of only about 500,000. So many generations ago that no records are left, a mighty civilization is said to have flourished in this territory. When Coronado sailed up~ the Rio Grande, Indians were leading the waters of the river over their fields and blossoming gardens. But with the cbming of civilization, led by the Spaniards, who sought only gold, the ancient irrigation system was abandoned, and for many generations this land which will now be made > fertile was ffeft idle. ,

GOVERNMENT d HAVE JUST FINISHED DAM S THAT WILL TURN 150 SQUARE I MILES OF DESERT INTO FERTILE FARMS IN SOUTHWEST.

When New Mexico became a part of tlie United States fully one-third of its area was included in Mexican and Spanish land grants, which for years afterward were unconfirmed and therefore paid no taxes, and were not available to settlers. The Indians and their Mexican neighbors had been irrigating their few crops through ditches constructed hundreds of years before. Little more than a quarter of a century ago, with the arrival of a railroad, new settlers began, i iwirroHnn CVQ-

to inhabit the section and modern irrigation systems were first thought of. The ditches these farmers made soon decreased the water supply in the Rio Grande, so that further development was impossible unless storage water was provided. This resulted in many of the old ditches being abandoned and thousands of acres were left to parch till the coming of Uncle Sam with his engineers, whose work will turn the arid desert into fertile fields, which will again be green with crops, as they were centuries ago, before the white man invaded the territory.