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Show 18 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER prophet, Lieutenant J. C. Ives, took a small govern- ment steamboat some four hundred miles up the lower Colorado from the Gulf of California. He reported to the War Department: The region is altogether valueless ... It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River along the greater portion of its lone and majestic way shall be for- ever unvisited and unmolested. The inaccuracy of this prediction had long been manifested when S. 1175 was introduced in Congress. On the lower Colorado stood Hoover Dam, tallest in the world; Davis Dam, Parker Dam, Imperial Dam and other monuments to American engineering genius. Across the "lone and majestic" Colorado, the greatest migration in all the world's history was moving toward the Pacific Coast. In Southern California alone, four million people lived in areas depending upon water from the river, several hundred miles from them. In six other states of the Colorado River basin other hundreds of thousands of persons were equally de- pendent upon the water of the Colorado system. In a state of nature few American rivers were more violent, more unpredictable, more devastating in both drouth and flood times than the Colorado. It was imperative that the early developers and leaders of the basin states should seek to reach an agreement for the use and division of its waters. Without such an agree- ment all progress would be legally menaced and all investments would be insecure. Control of the river's ravaging floods had to be achieved, and that meant the building of great dams costing millions of dollars. Dependable and indestructible diversion systems were necessary if the rich but arid lands were to be cultivated |
