The Arizona sentinel., 1905-12-27
THE COLORADO RIVER
How 1t Is Being Diverted to Yuma County'S Great Benefit.

Christmas number of the Ari- zona Republican contains a rath- CT brief but most comprehensive article Of Yuma and Yuma coun- ty, from which we quote the fol lowing:
 Gateway to the Southwest, Key to the Valley of the Ameri- can Nile" is the manner in which the modest resident of Yuma headlines his description of the advantages of his home locality. And it's so. For years Yuma has struggled under the malign spread of the ancient blanket story. Now the weath- CT bureau has found many places much hotter in western localities that smugly have arrogated su perior climatic attractions to themselves, and Yuma is becom- ing known not for heat, but for the probability that lies ahead that soon will she become one of the garden spots of the world. One of the greatest rivers on earth flows past her gates and back of her are scores of thous- and of acres of rich land, need ing only the touch of water to become fruitful in the highest degree. The climate is hot in summer though of the kind that brings no sunstrokes and the heat coupled with the lack of winter frosts, enables the farm CT to grow in perfection almost every fruit that eau be found in the tropic and semi-tropic zones.
 That Yuma has more than mere hope on which to base dreams of a great future is shown by the fact that hundreds of men, driven even by night under the electric lights, are toiling upon the construction of a gov ernment dam across the Cobra do, twelve miles above the city. Officially it is the Laguna dam. A part of it's construction is charged against the California side of the river, where at the start, it will irrigate about 15, 900 acres, largely to the benefit of the Yuma Indian tribe. If the government ever takes over the Imperial project, ol the lower border of California, it is possi- ble that one of the largest canals ever known will lead away from the California end of the dam. But as far as now known, the main attribute of the structure wall be the diversion of water for the irrigation of 73, 100 acres lying around Yuma, Ariz. These lands will be called upon to. re- pay the government their part of the cost of construction, but their value will be so much. in- creased, that the burden is ex- pected to be a light one-less than $40 an acre.
 There is no expectation of making the Laguna dam a stor- age enterprise. The river takes care of that itself, for it's flow fed by the melting snows from the mountains of Colorado, is greatest in summer, the time of greatest need. The dam will simply divert. Bedrock is an unknown quantity, impractical Lle to reach. So the construc- tion will be a weir, similar to three that have proved effective across the Nile, in Egypt. It will back the water for ten miles, though the water depth at the weir will be only ten feet. Safe ty will be assured by the use of sheet piling, and the building of steel and masonry walls across the river between the natural rock abutments. The dam will be only nineteen feet in extreme height above the river bed, but will be mile long-to be exact, 5,470 feet. The main canal on the Arizona side will be fifty feet in width, with a depth of eight feet. Though the Cobra do is, next to the Gila, the mud diest- stream in the southwest. it is believed that the government engineers have found a practic- able plan for ridding the water of most of the silt held in solu-