SRP Little-known Facts

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As the Salt River Project evolved, a cultured frontier town was buried beneath Roosevelt Lake, fish replaced horses to clean the canals and floods became a project nightmare.

Featured in the February 2003 Issue of Arizona Highways

BY: BOB AND SUZANNE CLEMENS,KELLY TIGHE

Arizona got into deep water with the Theodore Roosevelt Dam. At 280 feet high, it was the world's largest masonry dam when dedicated in 1911, requiring 350,000 cubic yards of dolomite carved from stone canyon walls.

[BELOW] Roosevelt Dam, the first of the West's great water reclamation projects, brought widespread agriculture to Arizona's central deserts and helped create the great cities downriver. NICK BEREZENKO