Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1912-06-06
THE S|PHON TUNNEL
 |S VISITED BY MANY
TUBE FORTY FEET BELOW THE RIVER BED IS SCENE OF LARGE CROWD ON SUNDAY.

For the first time in history human beings went from Yuma, Arizona, to the California side of the Colorado river through a 900 foot tunnel forty feet beneath the river bed, while as guests of Project Engineer F. l.. Sel lew of the Yuma Project.
 As announced in Saturdays Exam iner all who cared to avail themselves of the opportunity were welcome and not less than 200 accepted the invita- tion to become temporary sand hogs, as the workers under the ground are known. Not all went through the en- tire distance to the California side but ] goodly number did Among them were many ladies who just wanted to say that they had been across.
 Early in the day not much water was in evidence in the tunnel, but the continual seepage of small leaks GOV cred the floor of the tunnel as the day wore on, and at night visitors had to wade and quite a few ladies were seen going home last evening hold ing their dresses above their ankles, as evidence that they had visited the worlds greatest irrigation SiphOn.
 Six years Yumaites nave awaited this event. Six long years of depriv- ation, actual want, waiting for the water to irrigate their faorms in the rich Yuma Valley. For six years wom- en, unused to hardships braved side by side with their husbands, the rig DTS of pioneer life. These people, all of them, love the very soil as a mother and never once has their faith falter- ed in the ultimate reclamation of the rich fertile lands of the Yuma Val ley.
 Daily for the past few years, Uncle Sam has sent out small armies of men and horses building the canals, blaz- ing the trail, for the life-giving wat CTS of the Colorado. The Laguna dam, which has so successfully irri- gated and reclaimed the San Pascual Valley across from Yuma, known as the Yuma Indian reservation, for the past two years, has been connected with an intake on the California siIe of the Colorado river by a mammoth canal, sufficiently large to supply the whole Yuma Valley with water in un- limited quantities. Upon reaching the intake the water falls into the shat of the Siphon a distance of eighty feet and is conducted through the Siphon forty feet below the bed of the river to the outlet on the Arizona side.
 Bubbling up through the shaft of the outlet on the Arizona bank, the big canal will carry the silt-laden stream to the thousands of rich acres in the valley below. By a system of smaller canals and laterals every aci C will be irrigated, even to the interna tional boundary line twenty-six miles away.
 What this unlimited supply of Wat CT will mean to Yuma is not suDro- sition, nor is it an experiment. That part of the Valley which has been crl- tivated has demonstrated beyond a doubt the agricultural, horticultural and viticultural possibilities of Yuma Valley.
 The construction of this siphon has been going on for the past two years | and is a marvel of engineering gen. ious.
 The Siphon is fourteen feet insi1e | and the walls of concrete l are two feet in thickness. After sev- eral weeks of cleaning up the tun- nel and shafts on the California and Arizona banks, respectively, and add ing the finishing touches, the great l Yuma Siphon will be dedicated.
 A celebration in keeping with this important event will be arranged for early fail, and excursions will be ad- 1ertised from all points of the con- pass, to visit the great Yuma project