Arizona republican., 1906-01-07
WAFER MEASURING
 AMID HARDSHIPS
Experiences of a Reclamation Officer
 in Northern Arizona.

Howard $. Reed. an engineer of the reclamation service. who has been em- ployed for sometime in the hydrogra- phic ork of the service, looking after stream measurements, etc, returned yesterday morning from an expedition in northern Arizona covering a little over two months. On one occasion he went as far east as Gallup, N. M. His work has been mainly in the field and at this season of the year, in this par ticular year, in that particular part of the country, field work is more than ordinarily strenuous.
 The specific and primary object for which MT. Reed went north, though he had number of other things to at- tend to, was the installation of an au- tOmatic self recording water stage re gister on Chevelon fork of the Little Colorado river above Winslow. He achieved his purpose a couple of times
 before he got out of the country, for he had hardly got his instrument placed the first time before the unpre- cedented flood of Nov. 27, came rushing down the canyon and washed away so much Of tha mechanism as to destroy | it's usefulness. Then he sent imme- diately for another which he installed | before coming back to Phoenix.
 The point selected for this stream
 measurement is a particularly good one and the work was done with more than
 usual care, but the injury was done by a flood which may not again be parallelled for a generation. The in
 strument is a clock device and is plac- ed at the top of a perpendicular rec tangular wooden shaft of heavy lumber
 the shaft being twenty seven feet high, above the creek bed. The shaft was ex-
 cavated in the side of the solid rock canyon wall, to which it was secured
 by iron bands sunk into the rock and
 held there by cement This structure
 held fast notwithstanding the flood and
 within the shaft is float resting on
 the surface of the water. the level of
 which is the same as that of the creek
 with which the shaft is connected by
 horizontal shaft or pipe of the same di- fnensions, at the creek level. The float as it raises or lowers records the height
 of the water automatically, with
 fountain pen, the cylinder of the ma
 chine being constantly turned by the
 clock.
 MT. Reed felt certain that the creek
 which only had a few inches of water l in it when he built his construction
 would never attain height of twenty | seven feet at that point and there were
 no indications that it had ever been so | high before. But hardly had he placed | his instrument when the flood came | and judging from the surrounding wa | ter marks on the canyon wall it was | twenty mine feet high, which gives an
 idea of the immense amount of water an Arizona dry wash can carry when | the conditions are right. He got an | other instrument which he put in place and which is now doing the work de- signed. This work was very largely blasting in solid rock and took himself
 and the men in his employ some weeks
 to finish up.
 The rest of his time was devoted to looking over that entire region from a | Photographic standpoint. having in | mind always, storage and reclamation possibilities. This work took him all | over the Little Colorado country and | into New Mexico. He reports another ! incident that gives an idea of the Wa | ter that falls from time to time on that l high plateau. Clear creek is another 1 stream, when it has water in it and can be called a stream, running be- | tween Winslow and the Chevelon Fork.
 A number of men in the employ of the | Clear Creek Irrigation company were
 working on a dam site three miles | below the Santa Fe pump house on Clear creek when this flood came. Af-