THE M A G A Z I N E - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

ories and we enjoy them. But we enjoy
new things too, and the dam and canal
open a new vista to all of us.
"The desert's charm is not lost for me
when the green of cultivated fields replaces
the tans and browns, when trees
and shade give material form to the desert
mirage. Here we have both pictures.
Imperial valley is home. To folks like me
it is the fairest spot on earth and Imperial
valley is full of folks just like me."
Sam is a poet as well as a farmer.
Not only to the Truesdells and their
valley neighbors is the new dam important.
The structure is dedicated to service
of an area as large as the state of Connecticut,
an arid region big enough to
make two states each the size of Delaware,
a land in which Rhode Island
could stretch to three times its dimensions
with room to spare.
To the farming and urban communities
in a sweep of desert half as large
as the cropped land under Aswan dam in
Egypt, Imperial dam will divert water
without which life would be impossible.
N O V E M B E R , 1938
When President Roosevelt dedicated
Boulder dam on September 30th, 1935,
he said:
"The farms, the cities, and the people
who live along the many thousands of
miles of this river and its tributaries, all
depend for their permanence in value upon
the conservation, the regulation, and
the equitable division of its ever-changing
water supply."
Three dams have been built to conserve,
regulate, and distribute water from
the Colorado to the river's lower basin
lands. First is Boulder, the world's highest
dam, storing a supply sufficient to
give 5,000 gallons of water to every inhabitant
on earth. One hundred and seventy-five
miles downstream, Parker, the
world's deepest dam, stores and diverts
water for 13 cities of the Metropolitan
district in the Los Angeles region, com-
This Reclamation Bureau photograph
shows the overflow sector of
the neiv Imperial dam—looking east
from the California headgate.
munities which require one billion gal-
Ions of water daily. Below Parker 137
miles, Imperial dam will divert water to
Imperial and Coachella valleys in California,
to the Gila and Yuma valleys and
mesa lands of Arizona and water passing
this point will supply also the Sonoran
mesa and Mexicali valley in Mexico.
In size, Imperial is not a great dam. It
was built to divert, and not to store water.
It will raise the river level only 21 feet.
Its length is 1770 feet from Arizona to
California abutments. But under this dam
the potentially irrigable area has been estimated
at the amazing total of two and
three quarter million acres.
At the east end of the dam, on the
Arizona shore, are headworks for the
Gila project, planned to irrigate eventually
650,000 acres. An initial unit of
150,000 acres is now being developed.
At the west end of the dam, on the
California side of the river are headworks
of the All-American canal, which will replace
the present channel supplying Imperial
valley with water through Mexico.