The Arizona sentinel., 1910-11-17
POSSIBILITIES 0F YUMA
 REGION ljNFATHOMED The Soil Simply Marvellous in ifs
 PrOduCtivaneSS And the Climate is Eat0xiCati1giy
 SaiubriOuS
BY GEORGE N. BU RrON. In I.oS Angeles Times.

IL is very far from a semi-millenium since three little open boats under the flag of Spain fl rst touched the waters Of the western hemi- sphere and revealed the new world to the eyes a. Europeans. Ii Is only a little over Q century since the United States Of America spTaDg, so to speak. ike Pallas Atheue from thc brain Of love, a completely armed ad- Gition to tEe family Of nations it is but little yer half a century since California be- came part Of these United States of America and less than a generation since the settle ment of the Great Southwest began,
 In all the l25 years since the Republic was founded, also in the half century since Cali GOrnia became one of the States Of the Union. and during every year of the last thirty, 8 re- aii2ation ofthe vast riches Of the American continent, of the territory of the United States and of this Great Southwest has been ;Jlore aud IpGTe astonishing 10 the minds Of men. One wOud suppose that by today we knew pretty thoroughly what the undevelop- ed resources of the Great Southwest might reasonably be expected to become. We have not reached the depths of this great ocean of wealth with OUT pummet line yet.
 3 Tn a residence fforty years on the Coast the writer thought he knew a little about what jhe-c is on the Coast, and as most of these years nave been spent in and around Los Angeles, hs naturally had a little con- ceit that !!e was pretty well acquainted with the Great Southwest. Last week trip to the Colorado River bottoms. below Yuma made him feel as a tenderf0ot who had come in on the last train. New to him, this wonderful region and it's possibilities are pretty well known to 9 great many readers Of The Times by the stories published, if not by the Genon- stration of their own eyes.
 Yuma lies on the map just twelve miles from where the government is putting in the great Laguna dam, at the confluence of inc Gila and Colorado Rivers. It is twelve miles from Yuma down the river to the Mexican bounG:y line on the Arizona side Of the river At one point. just below Yuma. the inteTna- tional boundry line runs up along the river which there takes westerly trend and from Yuma to Mexico is only few miles.
 ONCE A MIGHTY STREAM
 Ages ago when the mountain ranges of Arizona and California lowered toward the stars, al least twice as high as they do now, rains were very freduent and came down in torrcntial volumes all along these mountain
 
 was mighty stream, sweeping down debris in tons every second Of it's flow. The Cobra do sink was at that time great inland sea, which spread over the country on both sides Of where the river now runs. As the erosion of winds and storms, landsldes aud glaciers wore down the mountain ridges year by year, the great river carried down a vast amount of silt, erosion. from the rocks full of phos: phates, times and dIsintergrated granites, as well as the vegetation along Its banks; and this was all deposited in what are now the sinks of the Colorado.
 A the mountain tops were worn down, the rains became less frequent and less iu volume but the erosion of rocks and river banks, the trees and vegetable mould torn from the banks still came down and settled into the bottom Of the great inland lake, This geOgical process went on from age to age to our time, leaving the Colorado at Yuma stream al bout half mile wide and being at the present time about twenty feet deep in the deepest portion.
 1t is not necessary to remind CalifOrniaDs that the Spanish missionaries and explorers called this river the Colorado because Of the reddish color Cfits waters. It is tEe Colorado up in the Grand Canyon in Arizona and down past The Needles. But at this time of the year. after passing the mouth of the Gila, instead of the red river it becomes the brown river. It actually looks today as if ten per cent of its flow was silt and only ninety per cent water.