Arizona republican., 1906-12-14
THE SALT RIVER AGAIN
 COMES INTO ITS OWN
The GiIa Filled With Flood and Gen. erosity Restores Mile Which Was Pitched From the Salado Sixteen Years Ago.

If the late flood in the Gila was a destroyer. it was also a restorer. It gave back to the Salt mile of length that had belonged 10 it from the earli- est times or within the recollection of the Indians. That is. it moved the june tiOn a mile further west to a point di- rectly north of the Initial Monument. where it always was until the great floods of 1890. when the Walnut Grove dam went out That disaster though. had nOtbing to do with the partnership affairs of the Salt and Gila for the Hasayampa flows into the Gila far be- low the junction. But at that time there were floods in the Salt and all the northern rivers. They came down the Salt with such force and volume that they cut away the southern bank of the Salt and made straight for the Gila. which was struck at a point where it skirts the eastern base of the mountain on which the monument has been placed.
 George E. Brown, supervisor Of the agricultural affairs or the Indians. re- turned day before yesterday from the region where this strange transforma- ton has taken place. The Indians told him that the flood in the GiIa was the highest they ever saw. and MT. Brown saw where it covered great areas of arrow weed and mesquite which had i probably been inundated for the first time. The crest of the flood in the Salt passed about twenty four hours ahead of it. He surmises that If they had reached that point together they might have swept the mountain of the Monument away.
 Mir. Brown saw along the banks of the Gila so much debris that he sup posed not a bridge remained across the river in it's whole length. At a dis taace of a mile from the water there was a huge timber thirty-six feet in length, two feet wide and a foot thick. The river was still high when he left it.
 The heaviest sufferers from the flood in the Salt were the Indians on the lower reservation. for they have been left without a head of the Indian Ditch and it will take every able bodied h. dian on the reservation steadily work ing two weeks to make another head.
 The water for the Indian Ditch was taken from a body of water known as LAt ZuL4bd slDu-Al AAAAD W l44AA d letA bA one of the southern branches Of the Salt emptied.
 The flood poured Into that slough. filling it for it's whole length of mile with mud. sand and debris and which it had created a dam for itself il swept off to the north from a point near the upper end of the slough and Joined the main body of the river.
 Now. in order 10 get a head the Indians will have either to dig canal through the slough or a canal of the same length. fully mile on the north side of it until they strike the new channel of the southern branch.
 Billy Moore who came in from his ranch near Mount Reno yesterday, said that he was surprised that the flood was no more devastating than it turn ed out to be. for he had never seen such rain as fell in his part of the country. He rode into the storm Of snow and rain and finally came to stop. The rain continued without the slightest intermission for forty-eight hours. and then it spent another twelve hours in quitting A foot of snow on the water shed or Tonto creek was melted and that stream grew the big gest ne had ever seen it. It swept over fields of grain far above the previou3 high water mark. But the flood in the Verde was not extremely high. as 1t had been u,sor,e,2 10 be.