Chapter II: Part 2

When, in July 1905, the summer flood in the Colorado began to subside, Chief Engineer Rockwood determined to fend off the main current, and lessen the pressure on the crevasse, by means of a jetty. Just opposite the intake was a bush-overgrown island, five eighths of a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide, which split the river into two channels. Across the western channel, from the head of the island to the bank, a semi-barrier was built, of piling, barbed wire and brush. This obstruction, it was thought, might check the flow into the western channel, cause a deposit of heavy silt, and eventually create a bar which would deflect the main current around the northern end of the island and thus carry it away from the mouth of the crevasse. The attempt was only partly successful. A bar was formed, but it did not completely close the channel, nor deflect the main current. There was still an opening, about one hundred and twenty five feet in width, through which the rush of water was so great that it could not be controlled. The attempt to deflect the main current into the eastern channel, by means of a jetty, was then abandoned.

Up to this time, the Southern Pacific Company had not taken part directly in the work of river control. After the failure of the jetty, however, in August 1905, President Randolph sent his assistant, Mr. H. T. Cory,[11] to the scene of operations, with instructions to confer with Chief Engineer Rockwood and ascertain what his views and intentions were. Mr. Rockwood, at that time, did not regard the situation as at all alarming. The flow through the crevasse, he said, was doing useful work in scouring out and deepening the main canal (the old Alamo barranca) and there was little danger that the whole river would go that way. He was not in favor of closing the enlarged intake altogether, because that would shut off the water supply of the Imperial Valley and cause more damage than was then being done by the river. The deeper part of the Salton Sink, he said, was a natural drainage basin, and as it was much below the zone of cultivation in the valley as a whole, the accumulation of water in it was not likely to do a great amount of damage.

“I told him,” Mr. Cory says, “that I thought the situation was serious, even granting all he said were true; that he would better shut the break right away, for while the water might be doing good work in enlarging the canal of the California Development Company, the situation was dangerous; that it was playing with fire.”

Throughout the month of August 1905, the intake continued to widen, with the caving away of its banks, and in September Mr. Harriman and President Randolph decided that another effort must be made either to close the break, or to regulate and control the flow of water through it. About the first of October, at the suggestion and under the supervision of Mr. E. S. Edinger, a Southern Pacific engineer, an attempt was made to close the channel west of the island by means of a six-hundred-foot barrier-dam of piling, brush-mattresses and sandbags. This dam, which was built in October and November at a cost of about $60,000, might perhaps have checked or lessened the flow through the crevasse if nothing unforeseen had happened; but on the 29th-30th of November a tremendous flood, carrying great masses of driftwood, came down the Gila and increased the discharge of the Colorado from 12,000 to 115,000 cubic feet per second. The dam could not withstand such pressure, and even before the peak of the flood was reached it went out altogether, leaving hardly a vestige behind. As a large part of the island was eroded and carried away at the same time, further operations in this locality were regarded as impracticable. The crevasse had then widened to six hundred feet, and nearly the whole of the river poured through it into the deepest part of the Sink, where there was already a lake with a surface area of one hundred and fifty square miles. The main line of the Southern Pacific, in many places, was almost awash, and the whole population of the Valley was alarmed by the prospect of being drowned out. If the break could not be closed and the river brought under control before the period of high water in the spring and summer of 1906, it seemed more than probable that sixty miles of the Southern Pacific track would be submerged; that the irrigation system of the California Development Company would be destroyed; and that the whole basin of the Imperial Valley would ultimately become a fresh-water lake.

The difficulty of dealing with this menacing situation was greatly increased by the necessity of furnishing an uninterrupted supply of water to the farmers of the valley while engineering operations were in progress. It would not do to shut the river out altogether, because that would leave without irrigation nearly two hundred square miles of cultivated land. The Colorado must be controlled, but not wholly excluded. Several methods of solving this problem were suggested, but the only two that seemed likely to succeed were advocated by Consulting Engineer Schuyler and Chief Engineer Rockwood. Mr. Schuyler proposed that a new steel-and-concrete head-gate be put in near Pilot Knob, where a solid rock foundation could be secured; that the four miles of silted channel be re-excavated and enlarged by a powerful steam dredge specially built for the purpose; and that the whole low-water flow of the river be then turned through this head-gate into the enlarged canal and thence into the Alamo barranca west of the break. By this means the settlers would be continuously supplied with water, while the crevasse-opening would be left dry enough to close with a permanent levee or dam. The whole work, it was thought, could be finished in three months, or at least before the coming of the next summer flood.

Chief Engineer Rockwood’s plan also involved the building of a new head-gate, but he proposed to locate it on the northern side of the intake, and to carry the whole low-water flow of the river through it by means of an excavated by-pass. This, too, would keep the settlers supplied with water and leave the crevasse-opening dry while it was being closed. The chief objection to the latter plan was that the head-gate would necessarily be of wood, and would have to stand on a treacherous foundation of easily eroded silt which might possibly be undermined. Late in November, after full consideration, President Randolph decided to try both plans and to work on them simultaneously. Contracts for the structural steel and iron work for the concrete head-gate were let in Los Angeles; the machinery for the 850-ton floating dredge “Delta” was ordered in San Francisco; materials for the Rockwood head-gate were collected on the northern side of the intake, and work was pushed on all of these structures with the greatest possible energy throughout the winter. In spite, however, of all efforts, none of them could be finished in the allotted time. The steel-and-concrete head-gate was not completed until the 28th of June; the dredge “Delta,” owing to the partial destruction of San Francisco, was not ready until the following November, and even the Rockwood gate, on which alternate shifts of men had worked night and day, was not in working order until the 18th of April. Meanwhile, the summer flood of 1906 had begun, with a discharge of 32,200 cubic feet per second through the crevasse. This flow would have exceeded the capacity of the Rockwood gate, even if it had been possible to turn the river through the by-pass that led to it, and the attempt to bring the Colorado under control was again temporarily abandoned.

Then a long series of misfortunes and catastrophes followed, one after another. On the 18th of April, 1906, San Francisco was partially destroyed by earthquake and fire, and Mr. Harriman hurried to the scene of the disaster for the purpose of affording help. President Randolph soon joined him there, and, at the first opportunity, described to him the almost desperate state of affairs in the Colorado delta. The California Development Company had used up the $200,000 loaned to it by the Southern Pacific the previous year; the river was still uncontrolled, and the impending flood threatened to inundate the Valley and deprive 12,000 people of their property and homes. Mr. Harriman was not a man to be daunted or “rattled” by a sudden and menacing emergency. “There, in the bustle and confusion of temporary offices, with the ruins of San Francisco still smoking, with the facilities of his roads taxed to the utmost in carrying people away from the stricken city, with the wonderful railway system which constituted his life work crippled to an unknown extent, and with the financial demands resulting from the disaster impossible to determine,” he consented to advance an additional sum of $250,000 for controlling the Colorado River and protecting the Imperial Valley. “It has always seemed to me,” writes Mr. Cory, “that this was really the most remarkable thing in the whole series of extraordinary happenings.”

With the promise of this additional sum of $250,000, President Randolph returned to the Imperial Valley to take up again the fight with the runaway river. The flood, at that time, was steadily rising; the width of the crevasse had increased to a quarter of a mile, and the Colorado was pouring into the Salton basin more than four billion cubic feet of water every twenty four hours.

On the 19th of April, 1906, the day after the San Francisco earthquake, Mr. C. R. Rockwood, who had been the chief engineer of the California Development Company for about four years, tendered his resignation, and Mr. H. T. Cory, President Randolph’s assistant, was appointed in his place. The Southern Pacific Company then assumed full control and direction of defensive operations, and all subsequent work was planned and executed by its engineers, with the powerful support of Mr. Harriman and his great railway system.

The task set before Messrs. Randolph, Cory, Hind and Clarke was one that might well have daunted even engineers of their great ability and experience. As the summer flood approached its maximum, in the latter part of June, the crevasse widened to more than half a mile, and the whole river, rushing through the break, spread out over an area eight or ten miles in width, and then, collecting in separate streams as it ran down the slope of the basin, discharged at last into the Salton Sea through the flooded channel of the New River barranca. Thousands of acres of land, covered with growing crops, were inundated, and thousands of acres more were so eroded and furrowed by the torrential streams that they never could be cultivated again. The works of the New Liverpool Salt Company were buried under sixty feet of water; the towns of Calexico and Mexicali were partially destroyed, and in many places the tracks of the Inter-California Railroad (a branch of the Southern Pacific) and the Holtville Interurban were deeply submerged or wholly carried away. The wooden flumes which carried the irrigating water over the New River barranca were swept down into the Salton Sea, and 30,000 acres of cultivated land in the western part of the Valley became dry, barren and uninhabitable. At the height of the flood, the Colorado discharged through the crevasse more than 75,000 cubic feet of water per second, or six billion cubic feet every twenty four hours, while the Salton Sea, into which this immense volume of water was poured, rose at the rate of seven inches per day over an area of four hundred square miles. The main line of the Southern Pacific was soon inundated, and five times in the course of the summer the company had to move its track to higher ground.

The most dangerous and alarming feature of the situation was the “cutting back” of the torrents into which the flood-water collected as it rushed down the delta slope toward the Salton Sea. The fine silt of which the soil was composed washed out like powdered sugar, and wherever there happened to be a strong current, the flow soon produced a miniature rapid. The rapid then became a cascade, the cascade grew into a fall, and the fall finally developed into a roaring cataract, which “cut back,” upstream, at the rate sometimes of four thousand feet a day, widening as it receded, and leaving below it a deep gorge with almost perpendicular walls. Some of the gorges eroded in the light friable silt by these receding waterfalls were fifty to eighty feet deep and more than a thousand feet across. It was estimated that the channels thus formed during the floods of 1906 had an aggregate length of more than forty miles, and that the solid matter scoured out of them and carried down into the Salton Sea was nearly four times as great as the whole amount excavated in the digging of the Panama Canal. But the damage actually done by these receding waterfalls was unimportant in comparison with the damage that they threatened to do. If one of them should “cut back” far enough to break into the irrigation system of the California Development Company, all the water in the latter’s canals and ditches would instantly flow down into the deep gorge below the cataract, and bring about a disaster almost unprecedented in history. The twelve thousand settlers in the desert oasis were wholly dependent upon the irrigation system for their supply of drinking water, and if that supply should be cut off, they would be compelled by thirst either to camp around the margin of the Salton Sea, which was ten or fifteen miles away from most of them, or else get out of the valley within forty eight hours in a wild precipitate stampede. Paradoxical as it may seem, the danger of being driven out by lack of water was even greater and more immediate than the danger of being drowned out by the rising flood.

The changes in the topography of the Colorado delta brought about by the crevasse and the floods of 1906 were greater than any that had occurred there in the three preceding centuries of recorded history. In referring to them Mr. Cory says:

“The effect of this flood, in a geological way, was of extraordinary interest and very spectacular. In nine months, the runaway waters of the Colorado had eroded from the New and Alamo River channels and carried down into the Salton Sea a yardage almost four times as great as that of the entire Panama Canal. The combined length of the channels cut out was almost forty three miles, the average width being one thousand feet and the depth fifty feet. To this total of 400,000,000 to 450,000,000 cubic yards must be added almost ten per cent for side cañons, surface erosions etc. Very rarely, if ever before, has it been possible to see a geological agency effect in a few months a change which usually requires centuries.”

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The sill of the Chaffey gate proved to be too high for low stages of water, and a canal, at a lower level, was cut around the structure and closed every year with a brush-and-earth dam before the approach of the summer flood. G. K.

[10] Mr. Randolph was a distinguished civil engineer and railroad manager, who had been, at one time, superintendent of the Tucson division of the Southern Pacific under Mr. C. P. Huntington. After the latter’s death, he went to Los Angeles, where he built and managed Mr. H. E. Huntington’s interurban system of electric railways and where he made the acquaintance of Mr. Harriman. Finding that his health would not permit him to live in the climate of Los Angeles, he returned in 1904 to Arizona, where he was appointed president of the Arizona Eastern Railroad Company and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company of Mexico--Harriman lines. Mr. Randolph, at that time, was regarded as one of the ablest civil engineers in the United States, and he had already had much experience in dealing with river-control problems in the South. He was also one of Mr. Harriman’s most trusted counsellors, and it was upon his recommendation that the Southern Pacific Company’s lines were extended into Mexico.

[11] Mr. Cory was a talented civil engineer who had left his professorial chair in the engineering department of the University of Cincinnati to enter the service of the Southern Pacific Railroad system. Just prior to this time--in May 1905--he had been appointed assistant to President Randolph, with headquarters at Tucson.

THE SAVING OF THE VALLEY

When the Southern Pacific engineers undertook to avert the peril that menaced the Imperial Valley in the summer of 1906, they found little in recorded history to help or guide them. Inundations, of course, had often occurred before, on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, in the valley of “China’s Sorrow,” and in many other parts of the world; but these floods were merely overflows on a relatively flat surface. The cosmical plunge of a great river into the dried-up basin of an ancient sea was an unprecedented phenomenon, and one which raised engineering problems that were wholly new. Nobody had ever before tried to control a rush of 360,000,000 cubic feet of water per hour, down a four-hundred-foot slope of easily eroded silt, into a basin big enough to hold Long Island Sound. There was nothing in the past experience of the world that could suggest a practicable method of dealing with such conditions. Neither was much help to be obtained from the advice of hydraulic experts. Of the forty or fifty eminent engineers who visited the Colorado delta in 1905 and 1906, hardly any two agreed upon a definite plan of defensive work, while almost everyone found something objectionable in the measures suggested by others. All admitted, however, that “the situation was a desperate one;” that it was “without engineering parallel;” and that “there seemed to be only a fighting chance of controlling the river.”

Mr. Harriman, who believed and who once said that “nothing is impossible,” never doubted that the control of the Colorado River was within human power and human resources. In building the Lucin cut-off across the Great Salt Lake of Utah he had successfully carried through one “impossible” enterprise, and he did not hesitate to undertake another. Inspired by his invincible courage, President Randolph and his engineers set about their herculean task.

In preparing for a fifth attempt to bring the Colorado under control, they determined to modify the plan of operations previously followed by substituting rock for the materials that had before been used in the construction of dams. Practical experience had shown that piling, brush, sandbags and earth could not be made to support the pressure of the river in full flood, while a series of rock-fill barrier dams, of sufficient width and height, might be strong enough to stand even a flood discharge of 115,000 cubic feet of water per second. In making this change of plan, Mr. Randolph acted on his own judgment and in direct opposition to the views and advice of experts who were acquainted with the situation. Almost all of the engineers who had visited the break, including many of national and international reputation, regarded a rock-fill barrier dam as wholly unworthy of consideration, for at least two reasons. First, the rock would probably sink into the soft silt bottom, and keep on going down indefinitely. It might perhaps be supported by a strong brush-mattress foundation, but even then, the mattress would be likely to break under the weight of the load and thus fail to answer its purpose. Second, the water going over a rock-fill dam, while it was in course of construction, would almost certainly wash away some one rock at the top. This, by increasing the overflow at that point, would dislodge more rocks, and finally create a breach that could not be closed. President Randolph who had used brush-mattresses and rock-fill dams on the Tombigbee River in Alabama many years before, fully considered these objections but did not find them convincing and steadfastly adhered to his own plan.

The preparations made for the summer’s work were far more thorough and comprehensive than any that had ever been made before. Realizing the importance of adequate transportation, President Randolph and his engineers immediately began the construction of a branch railroad from the main line of the Southern Pacific to the scene of operations at the crevasse, with ample sidings and terminal facilities at both ends. Then they borrowed from the Union Pacific three hundred of the mammoth side-dump cars known as “battleships,” which had been used in the construction of the Lucin cut-off, and which had a carrying capacity of fifty or sixty tons each. The California Development Company had three light-draught steamers and a number of barges that could be used on the river, and the Southern Pacific Company furnished complete work-trains, from time to time, until a maximum of ten was reached. The next requisite was material for levees and dams, and this they secured by drawing upon all the rock quarries within a radius of four hundred miles, and by opening a new one, with a face of six hundred feet and a height of forty feet, on the granite ledge at Andrade near the concrete head-gate. Clay they obtained from a deposit just north of the Mexican boundary, and gravel they hauled from the Southern Pacific Company’s “Mammoth Gravel Pit,” which was situated on the main line about forty miles west of the crevasse spur. From Los Angeles they brought 1100 ninety-foot piles, 19,000 feet of heavy timbers for railway trestles, and forty miles of steel cable to be used in the weaving of brush-mattresses. The Southern Pacific Company furnished pile-drivers, steam shovels for the granite quarry and gravel pit, several carloads of repair parts, and a large quantity of stores and materials of various kinds. It also detailed for service on the spur railroad and at the crevasse as many engineers, mechanics and skilled workmen as were needed. The chief reason, Mr. Cory says, “for having the railroad company supply so great a quantity of labor, equipment and supplies, was that it afforded an opportunity to assemble quickly a thoroughly organized and efficient force of men; the advantage of obtaining material and supplies through the purchasing department of the Harriman systems; immediate shipment of repair parts not kept on hand; and the ability to increase or decrease rapidly the force and equipment without confusion.”

The requisite most difficult to obtain, in sufficient amount, was unskilled labor. An attempt was made to get five hundred peons from central Mexico; but it did not succeed, and Mr. Cory was finally compelled to mobilize all the Indian tribes in that part of the Southwest--Pimas, Papagoes, Maricopas and Yumas from Arizona and Cocopahs and Diegueños from Mexico. These Indians fraternized and got along together amicably, and constituted with their families a separate camp of about two thousand people. The rest of the laborers were Mexicans from the vicinity, and drifting adventurers from all parts of the United States who were attracted to the place by the novelty of the work and the publicity given to it in the newspapers. Arrangements were made with the Mexican authorities to put the whole region under martial law and to send a force of rurales with a military commandant to police the camps.

Active work began on the 6th of August, 1906, when the summer flood had fallen enough to reduce the flow through the crevasse to about 24,000 cubic feet per second. By that time the receding water had left exposed extensive sand-bars on both sides of the river, which narrowed the channel to 600 or 700 feet, and President Randolph’s plan was to dam this channel sufficiently to throw all or most of the water through the by-pass and the Rockwood head-gate, and then permanently to close the break. As it was deemed essential to blanket the bed of the river with a woven brush-mattress, to prevent bottom erosion and to make a foundation for the rock, two shifts of men were set at this work. In twenty days and nights, they constructed, with baling-wire, steel cable and two thousand cords of brush, about 13,000 square feet of mattress, which was enough to cover the bed of the river from shore to shore with a double thickness of blanketing about one hundred feet in width. When this covering had been completed and sunk, a railway trestle ten feet wide was built across the crevasse, and on the 14th of September work-trains of “battleships” began running across it and dumping rock on to the mattress at the bottom of the stream. Meanwhile, the by-pass to the Rockwood head-gate was completed and enlarged, and in less than two weeks the dam was high enough to close the crevasse in part and thus divert water through the by-pass and gate. On the 10th of October, nearly 13,000 cubic feet of water per second was passing through the gate, while only one-tenth of that amount was flowing over the dam. The gate, however, under the pressure to which it was subjected, both by the water and by great masses of accumulated driftwood, began to show signs of weakness, and at two o’clock on the following day two-thirds of it gave way, went out, and floated down stream. The by-pass then became the main river, while the top of the diversion dam was left practically dry. Thus ended, in almost complete failure, the fifth attempt to control the Colorado. The river had been barred in one channel, but it burst through another, carrying with it a 200-foot head-gate which represented four months of labor and an expenditure of $122,000.

Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific engineers were disappointed but not disheartened. The steel-and-concrete head-gate at Andrade had been ready for use since June, and powerful dredges were set at work clearing out and enlarging the four miles of silted-up canal south of it, so that water might be furnished to the Imperial Valley by that route while another attempt was being made to close completely both the Rockwood by-pass and the original intake.

An inspection of the rock-fill dam, which had been left exposed by the diversion of the river, showed that the objections made to a structure of this kind were not well founded. The brush-mattress had not been broken by the weight of the rocks; the rocks themselves had not sunk out of sight in the soft silt of the bottom, and the dam had not been breached or seriously injured. It leaked a little, but its good condition in other respects suggested the possibility of quickly closing the by-pass and the intake with rock barriers of this type. Additional trestles were built across both waterways; ten trains of flat cars and “battleships” were set at work bringing rock from three or four different quarries, and the laboring force was increased to about a thousand men with seven hundred horses and mules. Operations were pushed night and day, and in a little more than three weeks, high rock-fill dams were built across both intake and by-pass, and were connected by massive levees so as to make a continuous barrier about half a mile in length. Leakage through the dams was stopped by facing them with gravel and clay, forced into the interstices and puddled with streams of water from powerful pumps, and the levees at both ends were connected with those that had previously been built up and down the river by the California Development Company. In the course of the work there were used, first and last, about three thousand carloads of rock, gravel and clay, while 400,000 cubic yards of earth were moved by dredges and teams.

On the 4th of November, a little more than two years after the cutting of the lower Mexican intake, the crevasse into which it had grown was closed, and the river was forced back into its ancient bed. The danger had apparently been averted and the Imperial Valley was safe; but where a treacherous river like the Colorado is concerned, danger is never over and safety can be secured only by incessant watchfulness and continual labor. On the 7th of December, another sudden flood came down the Gila and increased the discharge of the Colorado from 9000 to about 45,000 cubic feet per second. The rock-fill dam of the Southern Pacific engineers stood fast; but, about midnight, a reconstructed earthen levee of the California Development Company, twelve or fifteen hundred feet further south, was undermined, began to leak, and finally gave way. The breach at first was small; but it was so rapidly deepened and widened by erosion and caving that it soon became a crevasse, and in less than three days the whole river was pouring through a break a thousand feet wide and again rushing down the slope of the basin to the Salton Sea.

This new crevasse, taken in connection with the history and the experience of the two preceding years, showed conclusively: 1, that the tendency of the Colorado to flow into the Salton Sink was increasing rather than diminishing; 2, that floods of from 180,000,000 to 360,000,000 cubic feet of water per hour were liable to occur at almost any season of the year; 3, that the defensive dikes of the California Development Company were everywhere inadequate or untrustworthy; and 4, that in order to afford certain protection to the Imperial Valley, it would be necessary not only to close the new break, but to build a stronger, higher and more massive levee along the west bank of the river for a distance of at least twenty miles.

These considerations raised of course the question whether it was worth while for the Southern Pacific Company to continue this work, upon which it had already spent about $1,500,000. The interests chiefly imperilled were those of the national Government. It owned all the irrigable land along the lower Colorado, including even that upon which the Imperial Valley settlers had filed.[12] It was then constructing an immense dam at Potholes, twelve miles above Yuma, upon which it had already expended about $1,000,000 (the Laguna dam) and with the water to be impounded thereby it expected to irrigate and reclaim about 90,000 acres of fertile land in Arizona and Southern California. If the uncontrolled river should continue to “cut back,” by means of its receding waterfalls, it not only would destroy the Laguna dam, and the irrigation works upon which the Imperial Valley depended for its very existence, but would eventually turn the whole bed of the lower Colorado into a gorge, out of which water for irrigation purposes could never be taken. This would make valueless more than two thousand square miles of potentially fertile land, which, if intensively cultivated, would support a quarter of a million people.

The interests of the Southern Pacific Company, on the other hand, were comparatively unimportant. The traffic of the Imperial Valley, at that time, amounted to perhaps $1,200,000 a year, from which the railroad derived a revenue of only $20,000 or $30,000 for freight transportation.[13] This, in its relation to the whole business of the company, was so insignificant as hardly to be worth consideration. The flooding of the valley, moreover, could not injure the road much more than it had already been injured. A section of new line, about sixty miles in length, had been surveyed and graded, and the ties and rails for it were on the ground. At an additional cost therefore of only $50,000 or $60,000, the imperilled part of the track could be moved to a higher location where the rising waters of the Salton Sea could not reach it.

President Randolph, after full investigation reported the existing state of affairs to Mr. Harriman by telegraph, and informed him that while the original break might be closed at a cost of from $300,000 to $350,000, permanent control of the river would require about twenty miles of muck-ditching[14] and levee reconstruction, and that if he (Mr. Harriman) decided to proceed with the work, he might have to spend $1,500,000 more. In view of this possibility, Mr. Randolph suggested that the Government, or the State of California, be called upon to render aid.

Mr. Harriman, who had implicit confidence in the sound business judgment as well as the engineering ability of Mr. Epes Randolph, accepted the latter’s view of the situation. He did not doubt that the Colorado River might ultimately be controlled; but as the expense would be very great, and as the chief interests imperilled were those of the nation, he did not think that the Southern Pacific Company, of which he was President, was equitably or morally bound to do the work alone and at its own expense. In a long telegram to President Roosevelt, dated New York December 13th, he fully set forth the state of affairs, but did not comment upon it further than by saying: “In view of the above, it does not seem fair that we should be called to do more than join in to help the settlers.”

The following telegraphic correspondence then ensued:

Washington, December 15, 1906.

MR. E. H. HARRIMAN,
New York.

Referring to your telegram of December 13, I assume you are planning to continue work immediately on closing break in Colorado River. I should be fully informed as to how far you intend to proceed in the matter.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

New York, December 19, 1906.

THE PRESIDENT,
Washington.

Further referring to your telegram of the 15th inst. our engineers advise that closing the break and restoring the levees can be most quickly and cheaply done, if the work is undertaken immediately, at a cost of $300,000 to $350,000. The Southern Pacific Company, having been at an expense of about $2,000,000 already, does not feel warranted in assuming this responsibility and the additional expenditure which is likely to follow to make the work permanent, besides the expenditure which the company is already undergoing to put its tracks above danger line. We are willing to coöperate with the Government, contributing train service, use of tracks and switches, use of rock quarries, train crews etc., and the California Development Company will contribute its engineers and organization, the whole work to be done under the Reclamation Service. Can you bring this about?

E. H. HARRIMAN.

Washington, December 20, 1906.

E. H. HARRIMAN,
New York.

Replying to yours of 19th, Reclamation Service cannot enter upon work without authority of Congress and suitable convention with Mexico. Congress adjourns today for holidays. Impossible to secure action at present. It is incumbent upon you to close break again. Question of future permanent maintenance can then be taken up. Reclamation engineers available for consultation. That is all the aid that there is in the power of the Government to render, and it seems to me clear that it is the imperative duty of the California Development Company to close this break at once.

The danger is ultimately due only to the action of that company in the past in making heading completed in October, 1904, in Mexican territory. The present crisis can at this moment only be met by the action of the company which is ultimately responsible for it, and that action should be taken without an hour’s delay. Through the Department of State I am endeavoring to secure such action by the Mexican Government as will enable Congress in its turn to act. But at present Congress can do nothing without such action by the Mexican Government.

This is a matter of such vital importance that I wish to repeat that there is not the slightest excuse for the California Development Company waiting an hour for the action of the Government. It is its duty to meet the present danger immediately, and then this Government will take up with it, as it has already taken up with Mexico, the question of providing in permanent shape against the recurrence of the danger.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Seldom, if ever before, in our country, had material and financial interests of such tremendous importance been dependent upon the decision of a single man. If Mr. Harriman should order a continuance of the work, he would put at hazard a million and a half dollars of his own money, or the money of the Southern Pacific stockholders, in addition to the million and a half or two millions already spent. He would have to do this, moreover, mainly for the benefit of the Imperial Valley and the nation, without any assurance of reimbursement or compensation, and without any certainty of success. If, on the other hand, he should decline to sink any more capital in the effort to retrieve a disaster for which neither he nor the Southern Pacific Company was in the slightest degree responsible, the Laguna dam and the Imperial Valley would both be destroyed; twelve thousand ruined and impoverished people would be driven out into the desert, and 1,600,000 acres of Government land would be lost to the nation forever.

Mr. Harriman, at that time, was being prosecuted by the Interstate Commerce Commission as presumably a malefactor, and President Roosevelt, only a few weeks before, had characterized him as an “undesirable citizen;” but in the supreme test of character to which he was subjected, he showed magnanimity, courage and public spirit. On the same day that he received the President’s telegram of December 20th, he replied in the following words:

“You seem to be under the impression that the California Development Company is a Southern Pacific enterprise. This is erroneous. It had nothing to do with its work, or the opening of the canal. We are not interested in its stock and in no way control it. We have loaned it some money to assist in dealing with the situation. What the Southern Pacific has done was for the protection of the settlers as well as of its own tracks, but we have determined to remove the tracks onto high ground anyway. However, in view of your message, I am giving authority to the Southern Pacific officers in the West to proceed at once with efforts to repair the break, trusting that the Government, as soon as you can procure the necessary Congressional action, will assist us with the burden.”

The contention of the Government was that inasmuch as the Southern Pacific Company loaned $200,000 to the California Development Company in June, 1905, and assumed temporary control of the latter’s affairs for the purpose of safeguarding its loan, the lending company thereby made itself responsible for all the unforeseen consequences of a ditch dug by the borrowing company almost a year earlier. This contention will not bear a moment’s scrutiny. The Southern Pacific Company did not, at any time, own any of the Development Company’s stock. The shares pledged as collateral for the loan were in the hands of a trustee. The Southern Pacific Company did not even elect the president and three directors of the Development Company. They were elected by the latter’s stockholders under the terms of the loan agreement.[15] The Southern Pacific was a creditor of the Development Company, but in no sense a “successor in interest” by virtue of ownership.

The lower Mexican intake, which admitted the river to the Valley and caused the disaster, was dug long before the Southern Pacific Company had any control whatever over the Development Company, and it would be a violation of the most elementary principles of equity if a lender were held responsible for all previous transactions of a borrower, merely because the latter had voluntarily agreed to share control of his business in order to obtain the loan. If a farmer goes to a bank, gives a mortgage on his farm as security for a loan, and agrees that a representative of the bank shall supervise his agricultural operations until the loan is repaid, the bank does not become responsible for a dam across a stream on the farmer’s property built by the farmer himself a year before he had any relations with the bank. The bank might be responsible for a dam built under the direction of its representative, but not for a dam built by the farmer a year before such representative was appointed.

When President Roosevelt received Mr. Harriman’s telegram of December 20th, saying that orders had been given to proceed with the work, he replied in the following words:

“Am delighted to receive your telegram. Have at once directed the Reclamation Service to get into touch with you, so that as soon as Congress reassembles I can recommend legislation which will provide against a repetition of the disaster and make provision for the equitable distribution of the burden.”

While the negotiations between President Roosevelt and Mr. Harriman were in progress, the river-fighting organization on the lower Colorado was kept intact. The rock quarry at Andrade was further developed; sidings just across the Mexican boundary were lengthened to seven thousand feet, and material and equipment of all possible kinds which might be needed were gathered and held in readiness. When, therefore, on the 20th of December, an order was received from Mr. Harriman to go ahead and close the break, President Randolph, backed by all the resources of the Southern Pacific, began a last supreme effort to control the river and save the Imperial Valley. The crevasse, at that time, was 1100 feet wide, with a maximum depth of forty feet, and the whole current of the Colorado was rushing through it and discharging into the basin of the Sink about 160,000,000 cubic feet of water every hour. There was not time enough for the construction of another brush-mattress, so the Southern Pacific engineers determined to build two railway trestles of ninety-foot piles across the break, and then, with a thousand flat cars and “battleships,” bring rocks and dump them into the river faster than they could possibly be swallowed up by the silt or carried down stream. Three times, within a month, the ninety-foot piles were ripped out and swept away and the trestles partly or wholly destroyed; but the pile-drivers kept at work, and on the 27th of January the first trestle was finished for the fourth time and the dumping of rock from it began.

Mr. F. H. Newell, Director of the U. S. Reclamation Service, in a description of the final closure of the crevasse, says:

“The stones used were as large as could be handled or pushed from the flat cars by a gang of men, or by as many men as could get around a stone. In some cases the pieces were so large that it was necessary to break them by what are called ‘pop-shots’ of dynamite laid upon the stone while it rested on the cars. In this way the stones were broken and then could be readily thrown overboard by hand. The scene at the closure of the break was exciting. Train after train with heavy locomotives came to the place and the stones, large and small, were pushed off by hundreds of workmen as rapidly as the cars could be placed. While waiting to get out upon the trestle the larger stones were broken by ‘pop-shots,’ and the noise sounded like artillery in action. Added to the roar of the waters were the whistle signals, the orders to the men, and the bustle of an army working day and night to keep ahead of the rapid cutting of the stream.

“As the rock heap rose gradually, it checked the river, causing it also to rise higher and higher and to cascade over the pile of stone. Riffles were caused, and an undercutting of the lower slope of the rock heap allowed it to settle and the stones to roll down stream. All of this undercutting and settling had to be made up and overcome by the rapid dumping of other large stones.”

“It was necessary to raise the river bodily about eleven feet. As the water rose and became ponded on the upper side of the rock heap, train load after train load of small stone and gravel from the nearby hills was dumped to fill the spaces between the large rocks. Finally, after days and nights of struggle, the water was raised to a point where it began to flow down its former channel and less and less to pass over the rock heap. Then finer material was added and rapidly piled up on the accumulated rock mass. At first, a large amount of water passed through, and steps were taken as rapidly as possible to close the openings by dumping sand and gravel, finishing this work by hydraulicking silt or mud over the area and washing this in with a hose. By thus piling up finer and finer material and distributing it, the seepage or percolation through the mass was quickly checked and the barrier became effective.” (“The Salton Sea,” by F. H. Newell, Director of the U. S. Reclamation Service; Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1907, p. 331.)

The crevasse was closed and the river forced into its old bed on the 10th of February 1907, fifty two days after President Roosevelt appealed to Mr. Harriman, and fifteen days after the first “battleship” load of rock was dumped from the first completed trestle. In order, however, that this gigantic work might be accomplished, the transportation of commercial freight on the western part of the transcontinental railroad had to be temporarily abandoned. In testifying before a House committee, about a year later, Chief Engineer Cory said:

“For three weeks, two divisions of the Southern Pacific system, embracing about twelve hundred miles of main line, were practically tied up because of our demands for equipment and facilities. We had a thousand flat cars exclusively in our service, and shipping from Los Angeles’ seaport--San Pedro--was practically abandoned for two weeks until we returned a considerable portion of the equipment. It was simply a case of putting rock into that break faster than the river could take it away.... In fifteen days after we got the trestle across and dumped the first carload of rock we had the river stopped. In that time I suppose we handled rock faster than it was ever handled before.... We hauled it from Patagonia, Arizona, four hundred and eighty five miles, over two mountain passes; from Tacna, sixty miles to the east; from three other quarries--one on the Santa Fé, one on the Salt Lake road, and one on the Southern Pacific--all near Colton, two hundred miles to the west, and over the San Gorgonio Pass.... We brought in about three thousand flat cars loaded with rock from these immense distances, and we put in, all together, about 80,000 cubic yards of rock in fifteen days.”

But the work of the Southern Pacific engineers was not confined solely to the closing of the crevasse. In order to prevent a future break in some other part of the irrigation company’s defensive system, they were compelled to extend their branch railway, and to build or reinforce levees all up and down the river. Describing this work soon after its completion in 1907, the Director of the U. S. Reclamation Service said:

“There now extends from the head works in the United States along the river, between it and the canal, a double row of dikes, the outer one being occupied by a railroad. These extend in an unbroken line for a dozen miles near the river and shut it off from the lowlands to the west. The river side of this dike is protected by a thick layer of gravel, and the railroad affords immediate access to all parts, so that if menaced by the cutting of the banks it will be possible to bring men and materials to check the floods from encroachment upon the dike itself. Secondary dikes or cross levees run from the main structure to certain subsidiary works, so that if the outer main dike is broken or water flows through, this will be ponded, for a while at least, against the inner line of defense, thus affording time to assemble the necessary equipment to fight another intrusion.”

In closing the second crevasse and completing the so-called “Hind-Clarke” dam[16] there were used 1200 ninety-foot piles; 16,000 feet of eight-by-seventeen-inch pine stringers, and 5765 carloads of rock, gravel and clay. In reconstructing and extending the levee system nearly 900,000 cubic yards of earth were excavated or placed in embankments, while 5285 carloads of gravel for blanketing were brought from the Mammoth Gravel Pit, forty miles west of the river on the main line. The total cost of the defensive work done after President Roosevelt made his appeal to Mr. Harriman was about $1,600,000, and this added to the cost of previous operations made a total of approximately $3,100,000 expended in the effort to control the Colorado and keep it out of the Imperial Valley. But the work was thoroughly and effectively done. The river has never broken through the Southern Pacific defences, although since the final closing of the second crevasse in 1907 there have been two floods in which the discharge of water has exceeded 140,000 cubic feet per second, or twelve billion cubic feet every twenty four hours.

The great service thus rendered by Mr. Harriman to the people of the Imperial Valley and to the nation has never been set forth more clearly, perhaps, than it was in the message sent by President Roosevelt to the Congress on the 12th of January 1907, while the work of closing the second crevasse was in progress. In that historic paper he said:

“The governor of the State of California and individuals and communities in southern California have made urgent appeals to me to take steps to save the lands and settlements in the sink, or depression, known as the Imperial Valley, or Salton Sink region, from threatened destruction by the overflow of Colorado River. The situation appears so serious and urgent that I now refer the matter to the Congress for its consideration....

“By means of the facilities available to the Southern Pacific Company, the break in the west bank of the Colorado River was closed on November 4, 1906. A month later, however, a sudden rise in the river undermined the poorly constructed levees immediately south of the former break, and the water again resumed its course into the Salton Sea.

“The results have been highly alarming, as it appears that if the water is not checked it will cut a very deep channel which, progressing upstream in a series of cataracts, will result in conditions such that the water cannot be diverted by gravity into the canals already built in the Imperial Valley. If the break is not closed before the coming spring flood of 1907, it appears highly probable that all of the property values created in this valley will be wiped out, including farms and towns, as well as the revenues derived by the Southern Pacific Company. Ultimately the channel will be deepened in the main stream itself, up to and beyond the town of Yuma, destroying the homes and farms there, the great railroad bridge, and the Government works at Laguna dam above Yuma....

“If the river is not put back and permanently maintained in its natural bed, the progressive back-cutting, in the course of one or two years, will extend upstream to Yuma, as before stated, and finally to the Laguna dam, now being built by the Government, thus wiping out millions of dollars of property belonging to the Government and to citizens. Continuing farther, it will deprive all the valley lands along the Colorado River of the possibility of obtaining necessary supply of water by gravity canals.

“The great Yuma bridge will go out, and approximately 700,000 acres of land as fertile as the Nile Valley will be left in a desert condition. What this means may be understood when we remember that the entire producing area of southern California is about 250,000 acres. A most conservative estimate after full development must place the gross product from this land at not less than $100 per acre per year, every ten acres of which will support a family when under intense cultivation. If the break in the Colorado is not permanently controlled, the financial loss to the United States will be great. The entire irrigable area which will be either submerged or deprived of water, in the Imperial Valley and along the Colorado River, is capable of adding to the permanent population of Arizona and California at least 350,000 people, and probably 500,000. Much of the land will be worth from $500 to $1500 per acre to individual owners, or a total of from $350,000,000 to $700,000,000....

“The point to be especially emphasized is that prompt action must be taken, if any; otherwise the conditions may become so extreme as to be impracticable of remedy.... It is probable now that with an expenditure of $2,000,000 the river can be restored to its former channel and held there indefinitely; but if this action is not taken immediately, several times this sum may be required to restore it, and possibly it cannot be restored unless enormous sums are expended.” (House Report No. 1936, 61st Congress, 3rd Session, pp. 153-157.)

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