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Show BANANAS ON PIKE'S PEAK 211 crsp dams. The greatest known coal deposits in the world were in the Upper Basin. Brower's testimony inspired both Anderson and Millikin to make lengthy speeches, large parts of which were not relative to the subject, but Watkins remained silent.* The conservationists had been rushed as fast as pos- sible through Anderson's mill on Saturday, March 5, 1955, the last day of the Senate hearings, and they de- parted knowing, as had their counterparts from Cali- fornia, that they had been defeated. But there was a difference. The California spokesmen understood that nothing on earth could stop the crsp from being author- ized. The conservationists had reasons for entertaining hope, for the battle in the House was still to be fought, and there they had strong allies. One might have taken the larger part of the testimony given before the Senate committee, changed a few dates and presented it as testimony given before the House Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation. The names of the witnesses would have been the same in both cases. The House hearings began on March 9, 1955, and concluded on April 22 after more than a dozen sessions of tense and bitter debate, but the shouting, tumult and * It would be quite impossible to list all the individuals and organizations appealing to Congress to prevent the invasion of Dinosaur National Monument. Countless millions of Americans were represented by the protests. Very little support for Echo Park Dam came from outside the four states of the Upper Basin. From the other forty-four states, however, came an unprecedented flood of mail opposing it. No member of the Congress escaped the voices of the protestants, which came from sections of Brooklyn in which no tree grew, from whistle stops in the wilderness, the cottonfields of the South and the frozen reaches of the North. |