Library of Congress
An Early Effort to Corral the Colorado
By Michael A . Martorelli
After several heavy rainfalls in the winter of 1904 – 1905 , the Colorado River surged violently through a breach in a privately built canal meant to channel its water to a rich agricultural region in Southern California that an entrepreneur had just recently christened The Imperial Valley . Instead of gently irrigating that area , the uncontrolled flow of water almost destroyed it . The Southern Pacific Railroad Company spent more than $ 3 million over 18 months to seal the breach and allow the irrigating waters to flow as before . This incident convinced most observers that further attempts to divert the flow of the Colorado to meet any community ’ s desires should only be planned and executed by the federal government .
Welding of the 30-foot diameter penstocks on the Hoover ( nee Boulder ) Dam , 1934 .
President Theodore Roosevelt recognized both the need to exploit the Colorado ’ s ability to distribute water to meet various communities ’ needs , and the federal government ’ s role in that effort . Even before the breach in the canal was finally sealed in February 1907 , he asked Congress to authorize the construction of a series of dams and distribution systems to divert portions of the river to specific places . The Hoover ( nee Boulder ) Dam , the first of more than a dozen structures aimed at corralling the power and flow of the long-untamed Colorado River , became operational in 1936 .
As early as 1902 , engineers of the Department of the Interior ’ s US Geological Survey determined that damming the Colorado and channeling its water to the West ’ s arid regions would be the only way to sustain and enhance that vast territory ’ s development . Prior to the flooding noted above , the Alamo Canal that ran from Yuma , Arizona through Los Algodones , Mexico to Imperial County , California had indeed enabled some of the Colorado ’ s water to irrigate the farmlands of Southern California . In 1910 , another flood damaged the Imperial Valley , leading President William Howard Taft ’ s administration to build an emergency levee to channel water through the repaired but still inadequate Alamo . Farming interests in the region asked the Department of the Interior ’ s Reclamation Service to build a stronger “ All American Canal ” to run solely through Arizona and California . They barely acknowledged that five other Southwestern states also needed the water of the Colorado to sustain their own continued development .
In 1903 , the Reclamation Service began building dams to help irrigate areas of Montana , Wyoming , Nevada , Colorado and Arizona . In 1915 , it completed work on the Yuma Project , which involved the construction of the first dam on the Colorado ( the Laguna Diversion Dam ), as well as related canals , drains and levees . Located 13 miles north of Yuma , Arizona , that
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