Arizona republican., 1890-06-06
TO OPEN A NEW REALM.
A RICH COUNTRY BETWEEN DEN.
 YER AND THE SEA.
Engineer stanton Tells of What It Can Produce-Its Wealth in Fruits and Grains-lts Abandoned Ranches.
From the Denver Republican,

From the Denver Republican,
 Having just returned from the mouth of the Colorado river at the head of the Gulf of California, I was interested in the editorial in your Fridays issue on the subject of seaport in that locality in connection with the navigation of the Colorado.
 Having also completed the navigation of the Colorado river from it's head to it's mouth perhaps it will not be amiss to give you some information upon the subject on which you write.
 It is rather curious fact that the portion of our country least known today to the general public, that is, the Colorado river of the West and it's sur roundings, was discovered and largely explored eighty years and more before the Pilgrims landed in New England.
 The Spaniards explored the section of which you write from 1536 to l540. And yet in that valley, over 600 miles in length from the lower end of the Grand canyon to the mouth of the river, valley many miles wide, rich in immense tracts of productive agricultural lands, rich in almost unlimited quantities of gold, silver, copper, lead, salt and other natural products, there are not living today 800 white people, outside of the town of Yuma, if we except the soldiers stationed at Fort Mojave.
 What is the reason of this?
 You say that this Colorado valley and it's tributaries are capable of supporting 1000, 900 inhabitants. That is stating it very mildly. You can safely double that estimate.
 You seem to think that the establish ment of seaport at the mouth of the river under American control would speedily bring in this l,0O0, 900 of people.
 BEGINNING OF NAVIGATION.
 Nearly twenty years ago this portion of the river was first opened to naviga- ton for large steamboats, and my genial friend, Captain Jack Mellon, took the first steamboat some 575 miles up to the mouth of the Rio Virgin. At that time it was the only means of com munication between the outer world and the interior of Arizona, California, Western New Mexico and Lower Nevada.
 All supplies were sent by sea from San Francisco, and up the river by boat. Hundreds of teams then hauled these supplies from Yuma, Ehrenberg and Calville into the interior. These were at that time prosperous towns.
 Since then the Southern Pacific and Atlantic X Pacific railroads have crossed the Colorado, and today Calville is absolutely deserted. Ehrenberg is a mass of ruins and Yuma is but the shadow of it's former self. The interior mining towns get their supplies direct from the railroads. Captain Jack Mellon is still on the river, but his two steamboats-nine-tenths of the time-are tied up to the wharves at Yuma, and yet the river is as free for his navigation through Mexico as ever it was.
 How then will you get your 1000, 900 inhabitants into this great and rich country?
 The agricultural possibilities of the Lower Colorado and it's tributary valleys are beyond anything you have ever dreamed of.
 At the mouth of the Rio Virgin on the Colorado we walked through vineyards stocked with all kinds of native and European grapes, and through orchards of peaches, plums, pears and nectarines, Hines, pOmegranates, figs and almonds.
 Wheat and other small grains were all harvested in the lower valley early in May, and it would astonish some of our boasted agriculturists of Colorado to see the rich products and orchards in full fruit, that two years work by broken down consumptive has brought out of the cactus plains near Yuma. One of the most extensive and successful orange-growers of Riverside, California, told me recently that many portions of the valleys of the Colorado, Gila and Salt rivers were far superior land for oranges to any on the California coast. He and some San Francisco gentlemen are planting large groves in that section this year.
 AND YET.
 And yet could show you a little way up on the Colorado fine farms once highly cultivated with fine irrigation systems, abandoned and grown up ip weeds and cactus, for the want of a market for their surplus products.
 It will hardly be disputed in Colorado that the best market for rich agricult.