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Show Record early spring it is usually low until along in May, and in June 615 usually we have the highest water. During May and June the water flow is pretty steady. In July it goes down. I have seen the San Juan River dry. I have been down in the river bed twice when it was dry. Twice I have made a solid dam across it and turned it all in our irrigating ditch at Bluff. The ditch was 5 feet wide, I guess. The water turned in it was 8 inches deep. I have been on 616 the river bed on horseback and on foot when it was dry. I went up the river canyon on the mouth of John's Canyon to the bridge. Another time I went up above Bluff to the Colorado State line. We camped about 7 miles above Bluff and had to dig for water in the bed of the river. There was water in pools, around rocks and cottonwood stumps. We had to dig for water that trip, about a week, and then the water came down. We do not have days during 617 every year when the river is practically dry. It is a warm country. We go bathing a great deal in the river. I have done so all my life. Along in August usually the river goes down to 18 inches or 2 feet deep, and you have to hunt a place where it is confined to get water enough to bathe in. That is the condition from Bluff to the Colorado River. At the bridge at Goodrich the river is 64 feet wide, confined in solid rock walls, and in the last week of 618 August, I could not get enough water to swim in. The bad high 619 water comes in the fall of the year when the rains come. You might be sitting on the bridge at Goodrich and the water would be natural river water. All at once it will turn red if it is draining a red shale section on one of the dry washes. It will probably rise from that flood a foot or two. In a big flood it will rise 5 or 6 feet. It may remain there only a half hour or an hour and then go down again. Generally we have that condition year after year during the months of August and September, but I could not say it was always such. The biggest flood that they ever had there was in October that I know of. That is the one we talk about as the big flood. That is not a common occurance. That is the only one I ever 620 knew of. |