The Parker post., 1913-12-20
FOR
WHOLE STATE
RALPH CAMERON, COL. EPE S
RANDOLPH AND EUGENE S.
IVES LAUNCHING BIG POWER
PROJECT ON COLORADO.

The commercial practicability OF
furnishing cheap power to all Ari
nona from a dam in the Grand Can
yon of the Colorado will be known
in four months to Col. Epes Ran
dolph, associated with Ralph H
Cameron, who has held rights fol-
years, says the Arizona Democrat. Eu
gene S. Ives of Tucson also has an
interest in the project.
Col. Randolph has engineers now
at work to show clearly, as it must
be shown, whether or not it is worth
while for capital to make the great
venture. He said in Tucson Sat
urday, that he would be ready in
four months, perhaps less, either to
go ahead or to give the matter up.
Ralph H. Cameron has furnished
the rights he has held almost since a
boy near the famous Ell Tovar hotel
on the Hermit Rim road. Col Ran
dolph furnishes the engineering and
| judgment and Ives the legal skill
necessary to steer so gigantic an
undertaking.
'It is my guess that it can be done
and done profitably," said Col. Ran
dolph. 81 am in a position by rea-
son of my engineering knowledge to
make a better guess than the ma
jority of people and we must know.
''The plan is to develop very
large amount of energy and sell it
to the public service corporations at
very much lower figure than they
are able to make it themselves and
in addition to sell to landowners
throughout the state, not using pow
er, at a price at which they can af-
| ford to pump water and to cultivate
profitably lands which are now des-
| ert.
ested is a guarantee that the pro-
posal to build dam in the might
est of chasms is at last being seri-
| ously considered.
Col. Epes Randolph is president
of the Southern Pacific of Mexico,
and of the Arizona Eastern. Ives
is acknowledged to be one of the
shrewdest and most capable law
| yers in the state, Cameron was ter
ritorial representative in congress
| for Arizona.
| So tremendous are the terms that
must be used to describe the build
ing of such a dam and the volume
of energy that would be generated
that it sounds like a fairy tale. The
imagination may be trusted to pic
ture the capital required to build it
and to construct electric power lines
hundreds of miles over the state
1t is the waters of the Colorado
river at the bottom of the canyon, a
mile from the surface of the plateau,
that it is proposed to harness. At
the top, in many places, the canyon
is more than Is miles wide, but at
the bottom, where the stream flows,
it is very narrow.
Dwarfed by such prodigious noun
tain shores, which rise Immediately
from the water at an angle that
would deney footing to a mountain
sheep, it. is not easy to estimate
confidently the width and volume o
the river. Choked by the stubborn
granite at this point, it's width is
probably between $50 and 800 feet
It's velocity $50 miles an hour and
it's volume and turmoil equal to the
Whirlpool Rapids of Niagara. It's
rise in time of heavy rains is rapid
and appalling, for the walls shed
almost instantly all the water that
falls on them. Drift is lodged in
the crevices 80 feet overhead.
For only few hundred yards is
perhaps the greater for that reason.
ISSUING as from mountain
side; it slides with oily smoothness
for a space and suddenly breaks into
violent waves that comb back against
the current. The river is
laden with drift (huge tree trunks) ,
which it tosses like chips in it's ter
rible play.