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Show Record the lowest stage of the river. 4405 Any high water time in the San Juan River would swim a horse at any point I have seen. When the spring high water is on, the real high water season, there is a very large volume of water 4406 in the river. I have possibly crossed the San Juan River in most every month of the year. There may be a few times in high water that we wouldn't cross for a month or so, possibly a couple of months. The matter of swimming a river is not a difficult or unusual feat for cattle men. In taking animals across when it is not low water, we proceed by getting some animals that will lead off and then cause the others to follow. Frequently as boys we would cross on horseback for the pleasure of it. We would merely sit on 4407 the horse and let him do the swimming. You would never cross the river in wagons unless it was fordable and then we would just drive into it, but on certain fords where the river was wide. Below Bluff they used to ford with wagons at San Island and at the mouth of Comb Wash on the road to Gable Camp. I do not recall any other places below Bluff. I have known of floods caused by cloud- bursts or very heavy rains, coming down the side canyons into the San Juan. Such floods are not of yearly occurrence. I only know of two floods, that is, what we call floods in that country, but they did not occur in the same year. I consider it a flood where the river overflows its banks and comes up on the benches of higher ground where the people are farming. I have only known of two occasions when that has happened. The ordinary form of rain there in the summer is not in the form of cloud- bursts. I think the cause of the floods in that country is from the heavy rain in higher country that the river rains. I left Bluff in 1903 or 1904 and went to Monticello and have lived there since. I am acquainted with the country between Monticello and LaSal and from there on west to the Colorado River. That is the country we call Dry Valley. It is an open, sandy loam |