The Florence tribune., 1899-07-29
 WATER WANTED. WHILE BILLIONS OF GALLONS RUN
 TO WASTE. What Recent Government Investigations Disclose in Regard to Irrigation
 Possibilities in Arizona. Good Indians and Industrious White Men Who Are Practically Destitute
 for Lack of Water. An ExeeptionaHy Favorable Opportunity to Inaugurats the mueh-taIked- ofsystem ofFsaeral Irrl-
 gatlon.
[From the Los Angeles Times. July 1O.l


 J. B. Lippincott. the representative in Los Angeles of the Photographic Office of the United States Geographical Survey. fur nishes The Times the following irrigation possibilities in Arizona:
 The Gila River Indian reservation is situated about eighteen miles south of Phoe- nix, and extends along the Gila River for a distance of nearly fifty miles. Here are located the Pima and Maricopa Indians to the number of nearly five thousand. These Indians are known throughout the Terri tory as good Indians They have always been peaceful in their habits, and agricul- tural or pastoral in their pursuits. They are now cultivating the lands where the prehistoric races built the now-ruined Casa Grande and its neighboring canals. Irriga- tion has been practiced in this valley from prehistoric times. Many ancient ditches can be traced across the plain. showing evidences of engineering skill. and testifying to the fact that large volumes of water were at one time carried.
 The Pimas and Maricopas have been, until recently, a self-sustaining nation. They raise their crops of grain and corn with skill equal to that of the whites. The settlers, seeing t he results which the In- dians have produced, through the operation of the desert land act, brought under culti- vation much land in the valley of the Gila, adjacent to this reservation. and have built extensive canals between Florence and the railr oad station of Casa Grande. Under the provision of the United States law. all land bought under the desert-Iand act must be made productive by the application of water. In order to comply with the provis- ions of this law. the settler was compelled to make diversions from the Gila River at points above the Indian reservation. Other lands were taken up under similar condi- tious on the upper portion Of the tSiia River These diversions by the whites quickly de- prived the Indians of their water supply, and for the past Eve years they have been left on thedesert without dater for their crops and scarcely enough for their horses They are put In the position of either having to steal, starve or be fed as public wards, and the government has been forced to issue rations to them and feed them as it does the soldiers. Numerous court decisions have been rendered establishing beyond con- troyersy the fact that the Indian has the prior and the better right to the water, but the whites have maintained their water supply despite the dictates of the court. The development of this newer civilization has become so extensive that to cut off it's water supply would mean the desolation of many thousands of acres of fine farms and orchards. Evidently, the situation is diffi- cult one. and the Indian Bureau is hard pressed for proper answer.
 "In 1896 an allotment of SS500 was made fromthe appropriation for the Indian Office for preliminary investigation of the avail able water supply for these Indians. Mir. Newell was instructed to make this investi- gation by the Secretary of the Interior, end he delegated Arthur P. Davis to take the matter up in the field The surveys were necessarily of preliminary nature, but the storage possibility of the Gila River was fully demonstrated. It was shown that this. stream drained about fifteen thousand square miles of the high plateau and noun tain region of Eastern Arizona, and that the river Is remarkable for it's exceedingly light grade. Consequently. the storage possibili- ties of the stream are great. Recommenda- tions were made by Mir. Davis calling for further and more accurate surveys, and in the spring of 1898 Congress passed second appropriation of s20.OOO for the completion of this investigation. The photographic de- partment of the Geological Survey was again delegated as the proper office to cor duct these surveys.
 Tie Gsiin River derives Its source from | the White Mountains in western New EsSicc and eastern Arizona, which rise to elevations of from ten to twelve thousand feet. At the point where 1t issues from it's mountainous basin, there are over twelve thousand square miles draining through its canous, l The basin has been extensively explored and three large reservoir sites located and surveyed. The capacity of these reservoir sites has been determined and filings have been made under the United States laws for their segregation from the public domain At point known as the Buttes a dam l5t feet in height above the bed of the stream will store enough water to cover IT., ,0OO acres one feet deep, or, as it is technically ex. pressed, TABOO acre feet. dam at thi. point would be approximately 300 feet long at the bed of the stream and 800 feet at itl crest. At Riverside, Ariz., it was found tha' Q dam s5efeet long at it's base, and approxi mately eOQ feet long on top will store mucf l this site being still incomplete. At Sa1 Carlos. on the Apache Reservation, the riyel passes through Q narrow gorge 100 fee wide, and dam at this point l50 feet higl would be but 200 feet long at the crest. sucl dam would store s61, 900 acres one foot deep
 Extensive explorations have been made t, determine the depth of bed rock at each on of these dam sites. At the Buttes the be' rock is disappointingly deep, the depth ranging in the center of the channel from tol l24 feet beneath the surface of the stream At Riverside the maximum depth on tn axis of the dam is, approximately seventy live feet while at San Carlos the depth t
 bed rock is believed to be substantially les than at either of the other dam sites.
 The records of the How of the Gila Rive have been kept at the Buttes for . nunabe