The Arizona sentinel., 1910-11-10
POSSIBILITIES OF YUMA
 REGlOH lJAFATHOMED The Soil Simply harVeIaaS ia it's
 Pr0daGiiVeHasS &Hd tie Climate IS EntOxiCatiHgIy
 Sa!Gbri0aS
BY GEORGE N. BURTON. In los Angeles Times.

BY GEORGE N. BURTON.
 In Los Angeles Times.
 It is very far from a sen3i-mllenium since i three little open boats under the flag of Spain ! fest touched the waters of the western Ecrli- sphere and revealed the new world to the eyes O. Europeans. II is only little over 6 century since the United States of America ! sprang, so to speak. like Pallas Athene from the brain o: jovc, a completely armed ad- 1 dit.oa to the family Of nations. It is but ! little yer half century since California be- came part of these United States Of America, and less than generation since the settle Gnent of the Great Southwest began. In all tlle 125 years since the Republic was founded, also in the half ceE:ury since Cali f0rnia became one of the States Of the Union. and during every year of the last thirty, a re- aiizatiCn ftiIe vast riches Of the American continent, of the territory Of tine Unified states and of thts Great Southwest has been iuore and more astonishing tO the minds Of men. One wOUlG suppose that by today we knew pretty thoroughly what the undevclop- ed resources of the Great Southwest might reasonably he expected to become. We have net reached the depths Of this great ocean of wealth with our plummet line yet.
 In @ residence of forty years on the Coast tie writer thought he knew a little about what there is on tEe Coast, and as most Of these years Lave been spent in and around Los Angeles he naturally had little con- ceit that he was pretty well acquainted with tne Great Southwest. Last week a trip to the Colorado River bottoms. below Yuma made hlm feel as a temderfoot who had come in on h r,,l region aud it's possibilities are pretty well known to a great many readers Of The Times by the stories published, if not by the demon 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 the Gila and Colorado Rivers. It is twelve miles from Yuma down the river to the Mexican bounGry line on the Arizona side of the river At one point just below Yuma, the iDterna- tional boundry line runs up along the river which there takes a 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, at least twice as high they do now, rains were very freduert and came down in torrcntial volumes all along these mountain ridges. The Colorado River in these past ages 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 he country on both sides of where the river now runs. As the erosion cf winds and storms, landslides and 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 ali deposited in what are now the sinks Of the Colorado.
 AS the mountain tops were worn down, the rains became less frequent and less iD 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 tlIe great inland lake. Tlis geogical process went on from age to age to our time, leaving inc Colorado at Yuma a stream al bout half a mile wide and being at the present time about twenty feet deep ia the deepest portion.
 It is not necessary 10 remind Californians that the Spanish missionaries and explorers called this river he Colorado because of the reddish color of it's waters. 1t is :hc Colorado up in the Grand Canyon in Arizona and 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 Ofits flow was silt and only ninety per cent water.