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Chapter 7: Yuma Valley Travails
- University of Nevada Press
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The Yuma Valley presented a set of problems for the Reclamation Service different from those found in the Indian and Bard units across the river. The majority of land in the valley had already been filed upon and was in the process of being transferred to private ownership when the Yuma Project was approved. It was widely assumed when the federal reclamation law was implemented that the Reclamation Service would focus its efforts on bringing unsettled public lands under irrigation, but there were many instances when the greatest opportunities for the development and settlement of a federal irrigation project were afforded by areas composed of a combination of public and private lands. In fact, there was a considerable amount of private land included in nearly all early irrigation projects. The Yuma Project was no exception. Both the Imperial and the Yuma valleys represented areas largely in private ownership within the general purview of the Yuma Project. Although federal attempts to embrace the Imperial Valley were unsuccessful, the Yuma Valley was more critical to the immediate success of the project. The area encompassed by the Indian and Bard units included approximately fifteen thousand acres of irrigable land, whereas the Yuma Valley included more than three times that amount. Without the endorsement of Yuma Valley settlers, the development of the Yuma Project would not have been feasible. After the Yuma Project’s approval, a sense of optimism swept over the Yuma Valley. Valley residents believed that federal intervention in the development of irrigation would bring an end to the difficulties that they had theretofore struggled with in their attempts to bring the valley under irrigation . But their enthusiasm soon turned to disappointment as an extraordinary series of problems befell the region in the early years of federal involvement . Initially, the settlers of the Yuma Valley began to clear and level their land and plant crops, anticipating that good prices would be paid for farm produce during the construction phase of the project.1 But the floods on the Colorado River below the Gila confluence in the spring and early summer i7 j Yuma Valley Travails of 1905, which inundated a large portion of the Yuma Valley, squelched this activity by swamping settlers’ houses, drowning out their crops and covering fields with a thick deposit of silt, and rendering the two gravity canal systems in the valley useless. Only the Farmers Pump Canal, which covered the higher east-side lands in the Yuma Valley, was able to continue to deliver water to those parcels that were not flooded. In a very short period of time the fruits of the labor of Yuma Valley farmers were destroyed, impoverishing many of them (fig. 7.1). Floodwaters on the lower Colorado River also resulted in significant delays in the completion of Laguna Dam, the cornerstone upon which the entire project rested. With the Colorado River out of control and the fear that its riverbed would be eroded to a depth that would make it impossible to divert it for irrigation, active prosecution of the work at Laguna Dam was suspended until early 1907, after the Colorado River was brought back into its channel . This delay, and others that followed, eroded the early confidence in the Reclamation Service held by Yuma Valley settlers. Having endured the privations of life on the frontier without much success for several years, they had elected to place their trust in the service to assist them with the completion f i g . 7 . 1. An abandoned Yuma Valley homestead in December 1906 with highwater mark resulting from the 1905 floods. (National Archives photo, courtesy of the Yuma Area Office) Yuma Valley Travails 125 [44.222.186.148] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:43 GMT) of the venture that they had begun. But to their dismay, Laguna Dam was finished two years behind schedule, and the Colorado River siphon, the link that connected the Yuma Valley to the rest of the project, was not ready for service until the summer of 1912. Although the difficulties experienced in the Yuma Valley during the eight-year span between approval of the project and completion of the siphon can partially be blamed on the weatherrelated events of 1905 and 1906, bureaucratic loitering is also responsible for causing much suffering in the Yuma Valley. Canal Controversy Approximately five thousand acres out of a possible fifty-five thousand had been reclaimed in the Yuma Valley when the Yuma Project was approved in 1904.2 The major...