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Show DOLLARS INTO DUST 245 did not include woodlands, pastures or government- owned lands. It included only good farm land which soil experts said could be brought into full production at a cost of $15 to $150 an acre. Documented and authenticated by the Soil Conserva- tion service, Terrell's findings were given to Congress and the nation's press by Rep. Hosmer. The crsp, Hosmer pointed out, would cost $5,000 an acre "to irri- gate relatively poor land at high altitudes." 303 In December 1955, it was bitterly cold in the high desert country adjacent to the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. For several days a helicopter winged over the high barren reaches and into the immense canyons of the Colorado River. It settled down several times on the site beside the stream, under cliffs more than a thousand feet in height, where the Reclamation Bureau was proposing to construct the gigantic Glen Canyon Dam. On each trip to the dam site a number of gunny sacks were filled with samples of the rocks on which the $421 million dam would stand. Each evening the helicopter settled down before a motel at isolated Marble Canyon. There several men would hold a conference, make notes, and experiments would be conducted with the rock samples. Gathered about the table in the motel room on these occasions were Rep. Hosmer, geologists Harold W. Hoots and Peter H. Gardett, the author of this book, and Ossie Glover, a professional cameraman. A few days after the first of the year, the report of Dr. Hoots was presented to Congress by Rep. Hosmer. It contained the startling information that adjoining the proposed Glen Canyon reservoir there were two under- ground basins capable of holding 350 million acre-feet |
