Lost, A Desert River and its Native Fishes - Sierra Club

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MUELLER AND MARSH 11 Fig. 9. Survey map of the Colorado River near Fort Mohave, Arizona Territory, drawn by First Lieutenant Eric Bergland, Corps of Engineers (Wheeler, 1876). Colorado Delta The most prominent feature of the lower basin was the broad floodplain of the delta. The Colorado River had the largest sediment load of any stream of its size in North America. The Grand Canyon is a testament to the amount of material that has been moved downstream. Over the millennium, the river deposited vast amounts of sediment that gradually filled the Salton Trough and isolated the Salton Sink from the Sea of Cortez. Geographically, the river‘s delta starts at the confluence of the Gila River and extends downstream to cover more than 6,000 mi 2 (Fig. 10). The channel meandered through the 10- to 25-mile-wide corridor and during floods carved a complex maze of sloughs, oxbows, and wetlands. Flood waters frequently covered hundreds of square miles of the desert. Mr. Redondo, a butcher from Yuma, reported the river changed course during the 1862 flood, leaving behind a 50-mile-long slough that extended from Algodon to New River (Wheeler, 1876). The delta contains two large basins: the Salton Sink (USA), and the Pattie Basin, which is located west of the Cucopas Mountains in Mexico. Periodically, major floods would fill these basins, forming huge, temporary lakes. Blake (1857) reported that a Cahuilla Indian legend held that in ancient times the Salton Sink filled with water, destroying lakeside villages. The legend holds that fish became plentiful as the lake slowly receded, which took a period equal to the life span of four men. There is ample archeological evidence to support the legend. A beach mark outlines the shoreline of ancient Lake Cahuilla where archeologists found rock fish traps and charred remains of razorback sucker and bonytail bones. The traps were found some 30 feet below the high watermark and were estimated to be between 300 and 1,000 years old. High water lines suggest the basin has filled many times, creating a lake some 105 miles in length and nearly 300 feet deep (Wilke, 1980; Desert Magazine, 1981). Colorado River waters reached the Salton Sink at least four times in recent history. Wheeler (1876) reported that a Mr. Jones stated he —saw in the basin [Salton Sea Basin] a great lake some 60 miles long and 30 miles wide“ in 1862. James (1906) reported the Salton Sink was again partially flooded in 1891 when the Colorado River spilled water that covered an area 30 miles long and 10 miles wide in the Salton Sea Basin. H.W. Patton, a reporter from the Banning (California) Herald, floated by boat from Yuma to the Salton Sink during that flood. The most notable of these events occurred in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through its levee and left
12 INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY REPORT--2002-0010 Fig. 10. Map of the Colorado River delta, pre-1910 (Sykes, 1937).
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Lost, A Desert River and its Native Fishes - Sierra Club

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