Bisbee daily review., 1912-09-22
RECLAM|NG DESERT
 IN THE SOUTHWEST
Problem of Western America Is Being Successfully
 Worked Out

One of the great problems of West ern America has been that of reclaim ing the desert In order to make the land, wonderfully rich in every oth- CT respect. produce in paying quantl, ties water is necessary.
 Irrigation was undertaken by the Indians hundreds of years before Col umbus discovered America, as the fam ous Spanish explorer. Don Francisco Vasquez Coronado. and his brave con Quistadores found on their trip to New Mexico in l54O. They came across crude irrigation ditches con yeying water from the Rio Grande 70 little plots of land upon which the Indian women raised sufficient crops 10 appease the hunger of their braves. Many of those same ditehes. though extended. are still in use. more ade- quate system not having been devised. although nearly four hundred years have elapsed since their discovery
 The great increase in the popula- tion Of the United States during the last fifty years. says John Dugger in Golfers Weekly, has forced the peo- pie westward into the arid regions. making it necessary to inrease the agricultural area. and in order to do this some means of retaining the desert has had to be discovered.
 Upon investigation many areas were found where water could be stored or diverted. and thus made to reclaim thousands upon thousands of acres of barren waste. but the expense of do- ing this was found to be beyond the pockets of the average land owners and capital could only be interested m very few cases.
 The United States government was finally appealed to, and the present reclamation service was established under the department of the interior The service has been active for about ten years and during that time has succeeded in bringing into bearing thousands of acres of what was once quite worthless desert
 Projects have been completed in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, California, New Mexico, Arizona and many other western states and the appropriations thus far from congress for the work have been more than S30, 000, ,000, all of which will eventually be returned. Those owning, land which has been re- claimed by the government have agreed to pay for the delivery Of water thereon at the rate of around S35 an acre, same to be due in ten or more equal annual instalments, the first to be made upon completion of the project. The largest dam thus far completed is the Roosevelt daR1 in the Salt River valley, Arizona. It ir- rigates some 200, ,000 acres of land and cost sS, ,OO0. .OOO.
 The largest task yet undertaken by the reclamation service is the Engle or Elephant Butte project in the low CT Rio Grande valley Of New Mexico. The construction of this plant has been under way since November. 1910. l It will be completed in 1917 and will be the largest and most expensive IT, rigation system in the world The cost will be more than S10,O00 900. ! of which $9.000,0O0 has already been appropriated hy congress. The dam is being constructed by Tubble con crete, 100000 cubic yards being cal culated by the reclamation engineers as the amount necessary. One end of the great wall of concrete will be anchored to the Elephant Butte, from which the project takes its name. and AlC OkhtE cElh HI SAtEttA iiitO a mountain Of rock.
 The Rio Grande is being diverted through huge concrete Hume so that the foundation work may be carried on without interference. The founda- ton. ], ,O0O feet long and 200 feet wide, is being laid 55 feet below the river bed. The dam will be 265 feet high above the foundation and 1.4S0 feet long on top It will slope up gradually from the base and a driveway 20 feet wide will extend between parapet walls across the entire length. This artificial mountain Of concrete placed in the channel Of the Rio Grande will make the largest artihcal body of water in the world, total of 2.760.- O00 acre feet of stored water. enough to submerge the entire state Of Rhode Island more than three feet.
 The lake will cover 41 ,2S0 acres of ground from 200 feet to 10 feet deep. and will be forty miles long and from one to ten miles wide. It will never go dry. and will irrigate 1s0.000 acres of land in New Mexico, Texas and old Mexico. extending from the dam site, 125 miles north of Fl Paso. down the Rio Grande valley. a dis tance of 160 miles. Separate diver sion dams and canal systems will be