| OCR Text |
Show Record well confined and that is the situation today. The condition on the river around Bluff and on down to Sand Island Flat has changed a great deal since I first saw it in 1880. Sand Island Flat is where the river spreads out a great deal and where the sand occurs. When I first saw the river the channel was confined to that stretch, whereas now it is not. 451 I saw the river once when it was dry. That was about 1880. I recall one occasion when I crossed at Bluff when it was about one foot deep. That is the lowest I think I have seen it. I recall another occasion when I crossed at Sand Island about 5 miles below Bluff. It was about one foot deep there at the lowest, but as a rule it was up and down. I struck it at some extremely low water mark when it was as shallow as that, and only on one occasion. I saw it on another occasion at the wash just above Chinle Creek and the lowest I ever saw it there was about 452 a foot. The minimum depths I have given were curing the low water season. I have never observed any similar depths at any point on the river other than those I have mentioned and they covered my observations of the most extreme conditions during the period from 1880, when I first saw the river, down to date. Even at low water, practically all of the time, during every day of every year of low water during the 40 off years I have been familiar with the river, the depth of the river at Chinle Creek would be 2 or 3 feet 453 deep. I have been there every year. For the last 23 years I have not been on the river. I went up above about 25 miles North of Bluff. For the 20 odd years before that I was around where I could see the river occasionally up and down. This wash that I have spoken of at Chinle Creek is about 15 miles below Bluff and 454 I was there only when I was freighting at that place. During low water the average depth of the channel of the San Juan River as I observed it would be 2 or 3 feet where the river is fonfined. In other places it spreads all over, maybe a half mile, and it would not be so deep there, but where the river is in its natural channel it would average 2 or 3 feet deep, from 1 to 3 feet deep. |
