FORMATION
OF THE COLORADO DESERT
Long ago, before the memory of man, but
comparatively recent from a geological standpoint, in what is known as the
middle tertiary period, the waters of the Gulf of California reached up as
far as the slopes of Mounts San Jacinto and San Bernardino, taking in all
the region now known as the Imperial Valley, Salton Basin and Coachella
Valley, an area of over 3000 square miles; the whole of the present delta
into which emptied the erratic and unreliable Colorado River - the real
heroine of the romance of the desert - for without the Colorado the waters
of the sea would still bathe the foot of the mountains.
Although deprived of a part of its glory by a
misnaming of the upper branches, the Colorado is one of the long rivers of
the world, being about 2000 miles in length, including the Green River,
which unites with the Grand to form the Colorado, the Green being really a
continuation of the Colorado itself. The river drains a region of about
300,000 square miles, the southwestern part of Wyoming, west Colorado, east
Utah, Nevada, and new and old Mexico. Most of the land is extremely dry,
with an average rainfall of only 8 1/2 inches, the river being supplied
chiefly from the melting snow of the mountainous parts of Wyoming, Utah, and
Colorado.
The Colorado Valley is distinctly divided
into two sections. The greater part of the lower third is but little above
the level of the sea, some parts in fact being more than 200 feet below the
sea level, but here and there occasional mountain ranges rise to a height of
from 2000 to 6000 feet.
Its northern boundary is an almost vertical
wall of cliffs, often thousands of feet high. The tableland which forms the
rest of the valley is from four to eight thousand feet above the sea, and is
surrounded on all sides but the south by snow-capped mountains, some of
which are 14,000 feet high. The whole upper part of the Colorado Basin is
cut by innumerable gorges of inaccessible depths, caused by the river and
its branches. They are dry, however, except during the rainy season and when
the snow melts on the mountains.
The erosion by the Colorado and its
tributaries has played a leading part in making the geography of the
country. All of the silt, broken and powdered rocks, vegetation and other
rubbish eroded by a river is held in suspension while the river is moving
rapidly; it is only when it spreads out, becoming shallow and sluggish, that
its burden is deposited along the banks and on the bottom. The Colorado
reached no such point until it emptied into the Gulf of California, known at
various times as the "Sea of Cortez," the "Sea of California" and the
Vermillion Sea," the latter name originating from the red color imparted by
the sediment-laden river, which has been called "The Nile of America."
That the valley was originally an arm of the
gulf is shown by the shell incrustations and reefs of oyster shells. That
the level of the country was raised by volcanic uplifts as some contend
seems to be disproved by the fact that the water lines are all unbroken and
do not show any evidence of any convulsions of nature. Hence the theory that
the formation of the valley was caused by the silt of the Colorado spreading
over the bottom of the gulf, thus displacing the water, seems the right one.
Little by little the silt was deposited, and little by little the sea
retreated, until what had been the sea became low marshy land, with the
river meandering through banks of its own creating. But with the melting of
the mountain snow the sluggish, sleepy river, basking lazily in the sun,
became a veritable demon of savage irresponsibility, going wherever it would
and leaving its burden. At such times it broke all bounds set by previous
deposits. During one such flood such a vast amount of debris was deposited
that an area in front of its mouth was covered by silt which rose higher
than the normal height of the river, so that when the flood subsided a great
dam was formed which shut off the northern portion of the gulf (now the
Imperial, Salton, and Coachella valleys). The channel connecting the two
portions must have become more and more shallow until it filled up so that
the tide no longer flowed in and out, thus forming a lake the southern
boundaries of which were the silt and mud from the Colorado
Prof. Blake's theory, formed from his
investigations when with the Williamson expedition, is that at first this
lake was kept fresh by channels from the river, but these filling up shut
off the supply, and being shut away from the sea also, a rapid process of
evaporation took place under the hot rays of the sun and the dry winds, and
in the course of a few years the lake dried up. Wharton James on the
contrary contends that as the shut-off portion of the gulf contained salt
water, that it evaporated by natural processes, and was filled with fresh
water by the outflow from the Colorado breaking over channel and dam and
forming the ancient Alamo River through which part of the Colorado flowed
into the basin and created a fresh-water lake, which it continued to supply
as the years passed, keeping as a lake for a time what had been first an arm
of the gulf, then a dry basin hundreds of feet below the sea level, then a
lake, then dry land again, but how often this region alternated between
being Lake and dry land no one knows.
It is assumed the Indians occupied the basin
while dry, which will explain their tradition that after they had lived
there many years they were driven out by the floods. This may have happened
many times before another flood epoch came and built a new dam across the
Alamo channel, which closed the fresh water supply, and the Salton Sea again
dried up until it was filled by accident in 1905 through a miscalculation of
the Southern California Improvement Company's constructing engineer as to
what might be expected of the Colorado River, giving the modern world the
opportunity to see Nature at work. But while the cut made by the Southern
California Improvement Company was responsible for the divergence of the
river primarily, scientists believe from the behavior of the river since
that it would have happened from natural causes shortly, anyway. But what
was of no particular moment in prehistoric times became a calamity when the
basin was occupied by railroads, farms, orchards and homes. Hence at the
present time all the ingenuity of man is being brought to bear upon the
problem of curbing the riotous Colorado and making it return to its former
channel.
The land formed by the deposit from the river
was exceedingly rich, but unfortunately, except for flood waters,
extremely dry, the annual rainfall, as before stated, averaged only about 8
1/2 inches, and it presented all the aspects of a desert land.
The Colorado Desert, which is the local name
given by Prof. Blake in 1853 to that portion of the great Sonorian Desert
which lies between Parker, Arizona, and Picacho, California, a long, narrow
strip of country containing not less than 500,000 acres of alluvial soil,
needing only water to make it fertile. The temperature registers as low as
17 degrees, and occasionally in summer as high as 125 degrees. In the cool
of the morning the air is very stimulating and invigorating, but the heat of
the afternoon is intense and exhausting. The rainy season is from December
to February, but sometimes there are showers in the heart of summer.
The region around the Gulf of California and the
Colorado Valley was visited by many of the earlier adventurers who in the
interest of Spain were seeking places of colonization and conquest, and
incidentally some of the vast wealth supposed to be possessed by the
original owners of the soil. In 1539 Cortez sent an expedition, consisting
of three vessels, up the waters of the gulf, which at that time was supposed
to be a long strait leading to the North Sea, and Lower California was
supposed to be an island.
Ulloa was the leader of the expedition, and when
he found his way barred by the deposits of a huge river, and alarmed by the
rushing water of the "Bore," he returned without exploring it. In 1540
Alarcon was sent up the Gulf by Mendoza, the Spanish Viceroy, to explore,
and later joined the last expedition under Coronado, who started overland
about the same time. They were looking for the seven cities of Gibola, which
were believed to possess fabulous wealth. Marcos, a Franciscan monk,
inspired by the tales he heard from the Indians about these cities, started
to investigate, and sent Estaban, a negro, ahead to reconnoiter. The latter,
however, was captured and killed at the first Pueblo village, and Marcos, in
terror of his life, fled with only a distant glimpse of the coveted cities.
This did not prevent his giving Coronado, then governor of New Gallicia, a
glowing account of their beauty and vast wealth, drawing on a lively
imagination for what he lacked in actual experience and knowledge. Coronado
lost no time in taking Marcos to Mexico, where Mendoza organized the two
expeditions to hunt up these wonderful towns and appropriate their
possessions.
Alarcon left his vessel at the mouth of the river
and traveled upward for about sixteen miles. He discovered several harbors
not seen by Ulloa, and also discovered that the natives were ignorant of
most of the names supposedly characteristic of the region, that Marcos had
given, and it began to dawn upon him that the good father was a romancer of
considerable skill and fluency. However, the natives themselves told
marvelous tales of things to be seen inland, but no news of Coronado, so
Alarcon returned to his vessel. A little later he again ascended the river
about 85 leagues, according to his estimate, but probably much less when we
consider the winding course of the river. He left letters for Diaz at the
foot of a large cross, and Diaz, who came by land to the spot, claimed the
distance to be the first white men to walk on the Colorado Desert.
After reading Alarcon's letter, Diaz followed the
course of the river for nearly a week, then crossed over on rafts owing to
the hostility of the natives, undoubtedly the Yumas, who even now consider
the white man a trespasser. They consented to help Diaz cross the river,
thinking this would give them an opportunity to separate the party and then
destroy them. Diaz, however, was sufficiently alert to meet them on their
own ground; becoming suspicious, one of the Indians was subjected to torture
until he admitted the plot. In the engagement which followed Diaz by his
superior weapons was able to drive the Indians back into the mountains, but
four days wandering in the desert was enough for him and he was glad to
leave further exploration to others.
In 1604 Juan de Onate went from San Juan de los
Caballeros, a small town near the present location of Santa Fe, toward the
west. He crossed New Mexico and left his autograph chiseled on a rock called
El Moro. He went up the Colorado to tidewater and returned in April, 1605.
He was the last known white man to visit the region until the missions were
established.
All the early maps represent California as an
Island, and the Gulf of Mexico as a strait extending nearly to 50 degrees
north latitude, and Sir Francis Drake named it New Albion, supposing it to
be an island separate from the Spanish New World; this error was perpetuated
in the English maps as late as 1721, although Father Kino and his associates
show by his map of about 1700 that they understood California was a
peninsula and that the Colorado River was responsible for the land formed at
the head of the gulf. According to one historian, Father Consag, or Sontag,
made the first survey of the gulf in 1746. He passed up the western side of
the gulf in small boats and reached the mouth of the Colorado, the land
around which, he said, was low and swampy, red in color, and so soft that
his men could not stand on it. After the Franciscans had established five
missions in Upper California, or "Alta California," as it was called to
distinguish it from the Peninsula, it was found to be a long and tedious
trip between them and the Sonora missions the way they had to go (i.e., by
way of the gulf and up the Peninsula), and the missionaries of Northern
Sonora made several attempts to reach them by crossing the Colorado River,
particularly Francisco Garces and the Jesuit Father Kino, who were very
preserving in their efforts, and Garces finally succeeded in crossing the
river and penetrating the desert for some distance, but without any results
worth mentioning.
At this time there were no white men in
California except at the missions, and the whole region was one of
desolation. The first Christian to make the trip across the desert was
Sebastian, an Indian who had run away from the San Gabriel mission with his
parents and wife, and crossed over to the Presidio of Tubac, about forty
miles south of what is now Tuscon, Arizona. He had roamed far into the
eastern part of the desert to avoid being captured by soldiers and returned
as a deserter. His family all died either from hardships or were killed by
hostile Indians. It is certain Sebastian crossed the desert to Yuma where he
was taken by natives to the Pima and Papago country and there met Captain
Juan Bautista de Anza, who was a very gallant officer, at that time
commandant of the Presidio of Tubac, and who had long been anxious to have a
part in the colonization of California. Bucareli, the viceroy, was finally
induced to give him a license to explore the country from Tubac to the
California missions, and find a convenient and practical route for travelers
to and from the missions. He started in January, 1774, with Sebastian for
guide and Padres Garces and Font as his spiritual guides, and an escort of
34 men, 140 horses, and 65 cattle. Reaching the river, de Anza made friends
with Palma, chief of the Yuma Indians, who went with him across the river
and as far as a lagoon to the southwest, a body of water left by the last
Colorado overflow. After Palma returned, De Anza wandered for six days in a
region devoid of water and grass, and so desolate and barren that he
returned to Palma for help. It is not known positively where he was during
those six days, but if the lagoon to the southwest of Yuma was below the
Mexican line there is reason to believe he was in what is now known as the
Imperial Valley. Palma proved amenable to persuasion, and giving De Anza
directions as to the proper path from one water hole to another, followed
with the baggage, horses and cattle, and they thus had very little
difficulty in making their way over the sand hills and into the Salton
Basin, until they reached the San Gorgonio pass (which they called Puerto de
San Carlo), over the Santa Ana River to San Gabriel. De Anza then went on to
Monterey and sent Padre Garces back to the Colorado River to await his
return. He stayed in Monterey three days and then returned, following Garces'
trail.
This journey of a thousand miles over untrod
desert being successful, a second one was taken over the same route in 1775.
This consisted of 240 people and over a thousand horses, mules, sheep, etc.,
and they went from Tubac to San Francisco. They evidently experienced
unusual weather, for De Anza's diary tells of continued storms of rain,
hail, and snow, accompanied by extremely low temperature. However, while
many were sick, none died, although many were women; and eight desert-born
infants raised their number to 248.
The route which these two expeditions covered was
used for a number of years. In 1780 Garces established two mission pueblos
at Yuma , but Palma's influence was not enough to overcome the antagonism
the Yumas always had for the traveler, and in June, 1781, Riviera, who had
been governor of both Upper and Lower California, stopped at Yuma with a
party of colonists he was taking to Los Angeles. He crossed the Colorado,
and after sending his party on across the desert, camped on the east bank
with twelve men. On Tuesday, July 17th, the Indians attacked the two Pueblos
and Riviera and his soldiers and killed forty-six of them, including
Riviera. The massacre was discovered by Ensign Limon, who had escorted the
settlers to San Gabriel. He was on his way back with nine men, when some
desert natives told him of the outbreak. He left two men in charge of his
animals and went forward to investigate; there the charred ruins of the
buildings and the dead bodies lying about told their own story. While he was
reconnoitering he was himself attacked, and he and eight men wounded.
Starting to return to San Gabriel, he found the men he had left with the
horses also killed. He with difficulty made his way back to San Gabriel with
his bad news. In an attempt to punish the Yumas two forces were sent out at
different times, one from Sonora and one from California, but as their
efforts were but half-hearted, all they succeeded in in doing was to further
embitter the Yumas against the white man without particularly impressing
them with his authority and power. As a result there was a practical
abandonment of the new route, although it was occasionally used.
In 1782 Don Pedro Fages made the first trip from
the Colorado to San Diego. In 1783 an attempt was made to follow the same
route, but the party only went as far as the mountains and returned. The
route was too difficult and few ever used it until the United States army of
the west under Kearney came through in 1847, after which it became the
southern route for the gold seekers.
The first English-speaking man to look upon the
Colorado Desert was probably Lieutenant Hardy of the British Royal Navy, who
led an expedition sent out by England in 1800 hoping to find a river
ascending from the Gulf of California far into the interior of the great
northwest navigable for a sufficient distance to make it a commercial
highway into the interior. The river he discovered, however, was a narrow,
shallow and sluggish stream, and with much difficulty he succeeded in
passing the sand bars and low islands in the mouth, and finally entered a
small lake. Not understanding the conditions he found, he landed and climbed
a butte several hundred feet high which was washed by the waters of the lake
to investigate. To the far north as far as the eye could reach stretched a
barren and sun-blistered desert. The river of which he had expected such
great things, was spread out over immense marshes. In his report he stated
that the Colorado was not navigable. He manifestly was not in the channel
which until 1906 was known as the Colorado River, but in one which ran from
Volcano Lake to the Gulf and which has since been known as Hardy's Colorado,
or sometimes the Hardy River. Geographers have believed all these years that
Hardy overlooked the entrance to the real Colorado, but since that erratic
stream has deserted its bed, and is flowing across the marshes into Rio
Paradones, thence into Volcano Lake and out to the gulf by way of the Hardy,
they are inclined to believe it was doing the same at the time of Hardy's
expedition, as he could hardly have helped seeing the channel it had
occupied for years.
In 1807 Johnathan Trumball, a native of
Connecticut, but known in California as Juan Jose Warner, took an expedition
to Santa Fe, and soon after with Jackson, Waldo and Young, left for
California. They crossed the Colorado below the Gila, and thence across the
desert to San Diego via San Luis Rey. Warner engaged in various mercantile
ventures in Los Angeles, and having become a naturalized Mexican citizen,
was given a grant of land covering a ranch which still bears his name,
to which he moved in 1844 with his family, remaining thirteen years, when
they were driven off by an Indian uprising.
About this time the American statesmen were
awakening to the commercial value of the west and to try to save it for the
United States. Mexico now being independent was the nominal owner of Spanish
possessions in the southwest, but was too far away to hold a very tight
rein. It was clear to any thinker that some stronger government would soon
appropriate them. Both France and Great Britain were known to be just
awaiting an excuse. Senator Benton of Missouri, the gateway of the west,
from the reports of the possibilities of the country beyond, was most
anxious to obtain it for his own country. However, his foresight was not
shared by his colleagues who debated the matter in Congress with arguments
which in the light of succeeding events seem to us very laughable. Petty
politics also interfered. Finally, through Benton's efforts, John C.
Fremont, a young engineer, was put in charge of an expedition whose secret
intent was the occupation of the west by the United States. But even when he
was ready to start petty politics interfered, and his wife, who was a
daughter of Senator Benton (Jessie), intercepted and withheld the order,
delaying them until the expedition was beyond reach, rather than see the
fruit of her father's and husband's work lost by political filibustering. We
probably owe it to her that California is one of the United States instead
of a French or English colony, as Fremont was accidentally turned into
California and his reports roused the whole country.
In 1846 the Americans in Southern California,
which was then part of the Mexican possessions, urged the government to send
troops to protect them from the insults and depredations of an organized
gang of Mexican bandits. Fort Leavenworth was the nearest fort to the coast,
and the route between was little used and full of hardships, but as
complaints and petitions were becoming more frequent, in June an order was
issued to send a column of cavalry under Colonel Philip Kearny to their
relief, with directions to proceed by the shortest route to San Diego. The
war department asked that officers from the engineering department be sent
along to take observations. Lieutenant Emory and two assistants were
appointed for this end of the expedition. They followed the old trail
between the mouth of the Gila and San Diego. Some captured Mexicans informed
them the waters of the lake some 30 or 40 miles away were too salty to use,
but because other information did not tally with this statement they
disbelieved it, and continued on their way. They found it even worse than
the Mexican had said, and searching parties were sent out to locate a
running stream which they said they had found a league west. Lieutenant
Emory's reports were complete and detailed - he speaks, for instance, of
reaching "an immense level of clay hard and smooth as a bowling green,"
which it is quite likely was the present site of the City of Imperial. He
also noted the shells in the desert, and Captain A. A. Johnson, who was with
him, was probably the first to realize that the desert was the bed of a
departed body of water, for he wrote: "At a not distant day this place which
is now a dry desert was a permanent lake." They make no mention of the fact
that the desert was below the sea level, which is a surprising oversight
considering the completeness of their notes.
Kearny's party reached San Diego early in 1847
and engaged with the Mexicans there and later at Los Angeles, where the
American flag was planted to stay.
Kearny's party was followed by another; a company
of Mormons expelled from Nauvoo, Illinois, were formed into a company
consisting of 500 men of all ages, under Captain St. George Cook, known as
the "Mormon Battalion." After many and extreme hardships, and hampered by a
wagon train, for which they were obliged to hew the rocks to make a path
wide enough to let them through the canyon at San Felipe, they reached Los
Angeles.
The Mexican war resulted in the seizure of
California and New Mexico and the purchase of Arizona. The treaties of
Guadeloupe Hidalgo and the Gadsen Purchase stipulated that the boundary line
between Mexico and the United States should be jointly explored and run, and
in 1850 to 1853 John Russell Bartlett and assistants did the work for the
United States and the route they followed was from San Diego to Yuma by way
of San Pasqual (Warner's ranch) and San Felipe, thence by Cameron Lake to
the Colorado River.
Some time before gold was discovered in
California a General Anderson of Tennessee went from Tucson to California,
and on reaching the Colorado built a ferry boat to transport his party and
equipment. Afterward he gave this boat to the Yuma Indians with a
certificate by which they held possession as long as they would ferry
Americans across the river at the rate of one dollar per man, one for his
horse or mule and one for his pack, but would forfeit it when they failed to
keep this rate. The Indians were faithful to this contract and for some time
operated the ferry at the lower crossing, some four or five miles below
Yuma. But with the rush of adventurers to the gold fields the white men
looked with covetous eye on a business they knew would prove a gold mine
itself, and this caused the first trouble with the Indians. Dr. Lincoln,
said to be a relative of President Lincoln, seeing the possibilities of the
ferry run by an American and not wishing to interfere with the Indians,
established one at the junction of the Gila and the Colorado. It proved very
profitable, and he had a number of men working for him. One of them, a man
named Glanton, quickly acquired a dominating influence in the business.
Until his advent there had been no conflict between the Indians and Dr.
Lincoln, but Glanton determined to drive the Indians out of business, and is
said to have destroyed the Indians' boat and murdered a white man working
for them. This treatment infuriated the natives, who never had been very
friendly to the whites, and it resulted in the murder of the white men at
the ferry and the determination on the part of the Indians to kill every
American they met. As a large party of immigrants was expected shortly,
Governor Burnett, for their protection and the punishment of the Yumas,
ordered the sheriff of San Diego to enroll 20 men, and the sheriff of Los
Angeles 40, to be placed under the command of General Bean of the State
militia and proceed at once to the scene of the trouble. General Bean placed
the command in the hands of General Moorhead, but the expedition did no good
whatever, but sent in a tremendous expense account, so in the following
November Fort Yuma was established for the protection of that part of the
country, and Major Heintzel was put in command. Under his authority a party
left San Diego in May,1850, fully equipped to build and run boats at
Lincoln's ferry. After a few years of successful operation, the ferry line
was sold to Diego Yeager, who made a fortune out of it before the building
of the Southern Pacific Railway, after which it ceased to be so profitable.
Another expedition of military engineers, sent out
to investigate possible railroad routes to the coast, passed over the desert
in 1853 under Lieutenant R. S. Williamson, and Professor William Blake was
appointed geologist of the party. His reports are both complete and very
interesting.
In 1855 Congress appropriated money to buy camels
for transportation purposes across the desert, it being necessary in some
way to reduce the time, labor and discomfort of desert travel; and two
different herds were purchased, one in 1856 and another in 1857. In some
respects they were very satisfactory; but a camel needs to be handled by men
who understand it, and when the officers who did were transferred and the
new men in charge neither understood nor cared to learn, complications
ensued which resulted in the abandonment of the camel scheme, and the sale
of the animals, save a few which escaped to the desert.
As a preliminary to the building of the
railroads, various stage lines were run. One called the San Antonio and San
Diego. Semi-monthly stages ran for about a year. Then the historic
Butterfield Stage Coach Line was started. It ran semi-weekly, and had a six
years' contract with the government for carrying mails, at $600,000 per
year. The route lay between St. Louis and San Francisco, and was covered in
from twenty to twenty-two days, although it is said to have made the trip in
sixteen upon occasion. There were three stations upon this line, at Coyote
Springs, Indian Wells, and at the east side chain of sand hills.
The mail service of the Butterfield stage was not
the first that California had. As early as the time when Benjamin Franklin
was appointed postmaster general for the colonies, there were monthly mail
trips between Monterey in Upper California, and Loreto, at the end of Lower
California. They even had a franking system in full force, which was
seemingly as much abused in those days as in our own.
The California mail system was not only four
hundred miles longer than the continental one on the eastern coast, but it
made better time, which is a surprise to those of us who are in the habit of
considering California and its institutions as new and rather undeveloped.
Northern California had a number of stage
routes beside the Butterfield - the first in Southern California was
Gregory's Great Atlantic and Pacific Express. It brought the eastern mail
down from San Francisco. The first overland stage by a southern route
started from San Antonio, Texas and followed the extreme southern route
through New Mexico and Arizona to California. Owing to Indian outrages this
route was abandoned. The Butterfield route was the largest and best
organized of all the stage routes, but it suffered so much loss through the
Civil war that it was abandoned. The last stage company was Wells Fargo &
Company, which was established in 1868.
The same year that the Butterfield stage line
was established, Dr. Oliver Wozencraft began to agitate the question of
bringing the waters of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink for
irrigation purposes. Many people less informed on the subject of irrigation
than he regarded him as a dreamer, but nevertheless his project might have
gone through but for the breaking out of the Civil War. In 1859 a bill was
passed by the California State Legislature which ceded to Dr. Wozencraft and
associates about 1600 square miles of desert land in consideration of a
water supply being introduced. The reclamation must begin in two years and
be finished in ten, and as fast as it was introduced the government was to
issue patents for the land reclaimed; the title to be granted when all
conditions were filled. But the Civil War stopped proceedings. After the
war, Dr. Wozencraft again endeavored to bring the matter up, but died
suddenly in Washington just as it was about to come up for another hearing.
He sacrificed his entire property to this project of reclamation.
In 1881 to 1884 the tracks of the Southern
Pacific were laid following the main survey of the government in 1853. Those
who complain of the fatigue and dust of the trip across the desert in the
comfortable Pullman of today should read the diaries of those pioneers of
western progress and learn what discomfort in traveling really is. The
completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad closed the first part of the
story of the Colorado Desert.
In 1883 the New Liverpool Salt Company filed on
some land and leased more from the Southern Pacific and began to recover the
layers of salt which covered the bottom of the Salton Basin - now the Salton
Sea. They scraped the salt in heaps with steam plows and then purified it.
This company made a great deal of money until the overflow which in 1906
destroyed the whole plant.
EARLY SETTLERS IN THE VALLEY
P. J. Storms was one of the first permanent
settlers in the Valley; he came just after the annual overflow of the
river and saw the land covered with grass, and thousands of head of
stock grazing.
In the valley were Andy Elliott, Tom McKane,
Fred Web, Nat Willard, Bruce Casebier, Bert McKane, Wash Lawrence,
Arthur Ewens, Thomas Silsbee and Charles Hook. The Valley then had one
voting precinct with ten voters on the list: P. J. Storms, Arthur Ewens,
A. J. Elliott, Fred Hall, William Huitt, W. Wilkins, Thomas Silsbee, A.
N. Jones, William Harris and Peter Larson. It was still part of San
Diego County and they were 140 miles by stage and 300 miles by rail from
the county seat, and as a result the election supplies did not arrive
for the first election until it was over.
In October, 1900, the Imperial Land Company
started the towns of Imperial, Brawley, Calexico, Heber and Silsbee.
Imperial was located in the center of the irrigable district, and was
intended to be the chief city of Imperial Valley, Calexico on the
international line, Silsbee to the southwest, Brawley north, and Heber
to the south; afterward Holtville and El Centro was added to the list.
The first store in Imperial was for general
merchandise and was built and stocked by Dr. Heffernan, and Millard
Hudson erected a tent hotel. The next year was built the Christian
Church and a printing office. They were the only wooden buildings in the
Imperial Valley until late in 1901. As the accommodations improved the
stream of land seekers increased. W. F. Holt built a telephone line from
Imperial to Flowing Well telegraph station. The Imperial Press, Henry
Reed, editor, was the first paper. The first child born was a son of Tom
Beach, superintendent of construction of canals. Most of the necessities
used by the settlers in the early days was brought in by the freighter
with a long string of mules, but the mule is being displaced by the
automobile and traction engine, and one of the picturesque effects of
the country is fast disappearing.
In May of that year (1891) a post office was
given to Imperial with Dr. Heffernan as postmaster, and in the fall a
public school was organized by Professor J. E. Carr from Nevada City.
This school was to serve for the entire district and was located in the
center of the population, which was about 10 miles south of Imperial
City on the bank of the main canal. The night before the school was to
open Professor Carr tool two men and drove to the location in a wagon
and sent up a tent, and next to it they built the school house of arrow
weed, with eight supporting poles and the next day this sheltered 50
pupils, many of whom later walked five miles every day. In the following
spring the district was divided and permanent buildings erected.
In April, 1902, the Imperial Land Company
invited the Southern California Editorial Association to make an
excursion to the Imperial Valley, and they were so well treated that
they felt very friendly to the Valley and the publicity they gave to the
work of development brought a great many settlers.
In 1902 the government put out "Circular No.
9," a so-called soil expert's report on the soil of the Valley which had
been eagerly watched for both by the settlers and prospective settlers.
He proved conclusively, to his own satisfaction, that the land was too
full of alkali to grow anything. It did not leave the settlers a ray of
hope. Many newspapers gave publicity to the pamphlet and featured it.
One editor, Isaac Frazier of the Oceanside Blade, treated the thing as a
joke and with some others refused to take the government expert
seriously. There is no doubt but the report did a great deal of damage
to the community, beside injuring the credit of the California
Development Company. Dissensions arising in the company itself, the
Chaffeys withdrew from the enterprise. Time has disproved the report of
the government's inexperienced expert, and the settlers have gone on
raising all sorts of things that were said to be impossible.
In 1902 the first Farmers Institute was held
in the new brick block of the Imperial Land Company. In August they gave
a big watermelon festival where 250 people feasted. In fact the year
1902 witnessed the birth of many business enterprises and a rapid growth
of construction and settlement. Water was turned into the main canal in
March, 1902.