Destiny of the Desert

DESTINY OF THE

In smug complacency we are inclined to regard our mines, our highways, and our great irrigation works as near perfection. Sometimes we need drop back a little and in re-calling the accomplishments through re-trospect gain a better perspective of the possibilities in the years to come.

Roscoe Willson, a former forest official and lover of the great outdoors of

Arizona, says one may see from the top

of a not-too-high mountain, not much

more than 100 miles from Phoenix, 500

square miles in which there are only two inhabitants.

Incredible, you say, and so it might

seem, but it proves that Arizona is just

beginning its development and that a

great and undreamed of future waits

For those fortunate enough to live for another half century or so.

Seventy years ago Jack Swilling crossed the Salt River Valley; he saw

evidence that the soil was deep and fer-

While. He saw canals, many of them, made by that unknown people whom the Pimas called by a word in the In-dian language which means "those who have passed on."

Perhaps he may have climbed to the highest of the peaks of the South Moun-tains, now Phoenix Mountain Park, and looked Out to the East, the West, from Superstition Range to the White Tanks and North to McDowell Mountain and

on skirting the mountains on the north-

ern horizon. There was then not one

white inhabitant in that great Valley

plain, although just beyond McDowell Mountain was the old army post then recently established and called Fort McDowell.

Far to the north of the White Tanks and hidden from view by the Vulture and the Wickenburg Mountains was the little village named for Henry Wickenburg, discoverer just a few years before of the famous Vulture Mine. Here spread Out before Swilling was a great almost level area of more than 1,500 square miles in which there were no white settlers and this was since the war between

the States. No wonder Swilling was in-

spired. Next year will be the 70th an-

Anniversary of the beginning of the Swill-

ing ditch and the first large scale irri

gation operations in Arizona of modern

times.

Perhaps Marcos de Niza may have climbed the same South Mountains

more than three centuries before Swilling-

ing's first visit. Perhaps he did carve

his name and claim this great territory

for the Crown of Spain and New Mexico,

Eastern extremity of the mountains would

indicate. We know he was the first

white man to penetrate that part of the

United States west of the Rio Grande

And north of the Mexican border. We

know but little development took place for three centuries in what is now Arizona and none at all in this Valley of the Sun.

In seventy years a miracle has been wrought.

acres of wasteland transformed into gar-

dens of wonderful productiveness. High-

ways, homes, cities, churches, schools, millions in wealth created, thousands

of ill people made well, opportunity and

happiness to thousands of others, a mecca for visitors from colder sections.

mecca for visitors from colder sections.

Perhaps these transitions that have come within the memory of men now living are only a beginning, a prophecy, of what may be in another seventy years.

Possibly there are valleys and plains like those that Willson described that may be due for development greater than those of which we are a part.

We measure the future of any unde-

veloped land in Arizona by the possibi-

lities of water for irrigation, and non-

Chalatantly say we have reached the limit

of the known water supply.

But that quotation "known water sup-ply," should be qualified for it is not

given to any one person to know with

certainly how much we have in water

wealth from conserved streams or un-

derground sources.

Twenty-five years ago, Dr. R. H.

Forbes, Dear. of the Arizona College of Agriculture, after a careful study based upon the best engineering data available, estimated the acreage which might be irrigated from small streams and wells at 30,000 acres. This was not a

fool's guess, but a wise and conserva-