Two Sides of the River: Salt River Valley Canals, 1867-1902
Creators: name: Zarbin, Earl
Publisher: name: Salt River Project
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Salt River Valley
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/2784/salt-river-valley
subject: Maricopa (County)
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/3900/maricopa-county
subject: Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/culture-keyword/9535/salt-river-pima-maricopa-indian-community
subject: Hohokam
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/culture-keyword/21/hohokam
subject: Historic
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/culture-keyword/25/historic
subject: Canal or Canal Feature
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/site-type/275/canal-or-canal-feature
subject: Water Control Feature
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/site-type/279/water-control-feature
subject: Irrigation
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/561/irrigation
subject: Water Supply
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/32657/water-supply
subject: Arizona Canal
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/147603/arizona-canal
subject: Water Rights
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/31282/water-rights
subject: Phoenix Settlement
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168923/phoenix-settlement
subject: Floods and Incorporation
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168924/floods-and-incorporation
subject: Jack Swilling
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/147801/jack-swilling
subject: Reservoir
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/141498/reservoir
subject: M. Wormser
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168927/m-wormser
subject: Salt River Valley Canal Company
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168928/salt-river-valley-canal-company
subject: Desert Land Act
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168925/desert-land-act
subject: Unsettled Condition
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168926/unsettled-condition
subject: Mormon Settlement
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/31233/mormon-settlement
subject: Prior Appropriators
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168931/prior-appropriators
subject: Gate Breaking
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168932/gate-breaking
subject: Land Fraud
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168929/land-fraud
subject: Private Reservoir Companies
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/168930/private-reservoir-companies

description: Now, and into the foreseeable future, most water brought into the Salt River Valley, home to Phoenix — the nation’s sixth most populous city in 2017 — and other growing communities, is used for urban purposes. To the visionaries who passed this desert area in the 1800s, their predictions of a future metropolis were more than fulfilled. The most significant event in the transformation from desert to home to America’s 12th-largest metropolitan area with more than 4.5 million people was the construction of Theodore Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in the early 1900s.1 The water storage dam, managed by the Salt River Project (SRP) since 1917, was needed to enable irrigation of more land than could be farmed with the natural flow of the Salt River, which passes from east to west through the Valley in south-central Arizona. Shortly before passage of the National Irrigation Act of June 17, 1902, by the U.S. Congress to permit federal assistance in land reclamation, approximately 113,000 acres (176.5 square miles) of Valley land was irrigated. To reimburse the federal government for building Roosevelt Dam, the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association (one of two organizations making up today’s Salt River Project) was incorporated Feb. 7, 1903. In 1914, three years after completion and dedication of the dam, 219,690 acres within the Association’s boundaries was irrigated with the Salt River’s natural flow and water stored by the dam. With construction of additional dams on the Salt River and its tributary, the Verde River, more than 96% of the land — 229,940 acres — was in agricultural production in 1952 (another 8,460 acres was considered urban, for a total of 238,400 acres, or 372.5 square miles). At that time, with a post-World War II surge in population, SRP signed a contract with Phoenix and the U.S. Department of the Interior allowing the city to use SRP irrigation water for municipal purposes. Today the amount of land remaining in agricultural production inside the Association’s borders is about 9% (20,694 acres).