Lake Havasu

Lake Havasu is the widening and deepening of forty-five miles of Colorado River, ringed by range upon range of serrated mountains, and stoppered by the graceful modernism of Parker Dam.

It is 155 miles below Boulder (Hoover) Dam, an integral part of the Colorado River Project of which Boulder is only one unit. For a small dam, it is one of the most valuable in the whole west, for it is fulfilling four constructive purposes: (1) to control the flash floods that roar down the Bill Williams fork from highland Arizona: (2) to develop electric power; (3) to retain for irrigation the waters earlier used at Boulder for developing power: (4) to provide water for Southern California's crowded cities.

Not to discount these achievements, Lake Havasu has also created scenic charm and variety no less spectacular than Lake Mead, and is a paradise for the sportsman. Desert and mountain and water meet to serve the fisherman and hunter, boatman and swimmer, while the surrounding country does wonders for the desert rat, both experienced and wouldbe; the geologist, prospector and rockhound; the camper; birdman and botanist; mountain climber; camera fan; the historian in search of the paths followed in earlier times. of ghost towns and legends; and the just-plain-tourist.

Parker Dam was finished eleven years ago this August, but the war period closed it, and the lake, to the public and growth of the whole area came to a standstill. Hence the visitor is treated to the experience, rare in these late 40s, of finding a bit of undeveloped territory where the pioneers are still grubbing out a toehold.

Parker, Arizona, the natural entrance to this region, is that rare thing-the weatherbeaten desert town of fiction, the western town as one has pictured it. A year ago Parker seemed to be dozing in the sun, unaware of its certain destiny as a winter tourist center. Today the pulse has quickened perceptibly. Suddenly the people are aware that they have something to give the future.

The altitude is approximately four hundred feet; snow is not known; winter brings day after day of "shirt-sleeve

Smiling Indian boy works on his father's new farm.

weather," warm and balmy.

State Highway 72, from Hope to Parker, is a paved road, passing through some of Arizona's loveliest desert regions. The clear river, the lake, mountains and desert blend together.

Parker is on the river. The brilliant waters are an evershifting pattern of swift-current riffles and glassy slicks where the bass linger close to the rocks and buried brush.

Seventeen miles north of Parker, up-river, Parker Dam forms Lake Havasu. The lake shore is rock-bound and the current is negligible. Waters and shore-line are in the care of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior. The lake is a game refuge, but fishing is permitted through the entire year. Firearms are barred on the lake, except during the hunting season when it is the Service's policy to open about half of the lake area. Both sports are under regulations of the fish and game laws of Arizona and California respectively. and each require their own fishing and hunting licenses, the center of the river being the state line.Bass, catfish, blue gill, crappie, and carp are the fish in both lake and river waters. Average weights are two to five pounds for bass, two to six for catfish with an occasional big fellow. The year 1949 has been producing many catches far in excess of the average, with the record standing in early "COLORADO RIVER AT PARKER, ARIZONA" BY HUBERT A. LOWMAN. This river view is upstream, with the Riverview Trailer Park nestled on the distant California shore. The camera used was a Brand 17 4 x 5 view, on a tripod, the Ekachrome exposure on full second at f22. The lens was the 29cm. element of Lowman's Zeiss Protar combination. The photographer says: "I made the shot from the Santa Fe Railroad bridge when the light was failing in late afternoon. A giant diesel locomotive was switching just out of sight around a bend and as I went about the business of breaking down the Protar, focussing. and bringing into play the double bellows extension all under the focussing cloth-1 was startled three different times by the 'B-E-E-P!' of the diesel and scrambled each time out from under the cloth prepared to see the great locomotive bearing down upon me and poised to dash to safety in the event it really was com ing. But at last the preparations were complete, the exposure made, and the big diesel may still be at Parker for all I know it never came into sight as long as I was there.'"

February at an eight pound bass and a twenty-five and threequarter pound catfish.

The list of game makes the heart of any hunter lift. Twelve varieties of duck are common, and two of geese. In the hills and lowlands are many quail and a few deer. Mountain lion, bob cat, coyote, wild burro can all be found, and can be taken at any time.

Down-river from Parker is Indian land. The roads which reach the river are strictly four-wheel-drive, but a happy wilderness to the outdoorsman who is susceptible to the elemental mystery and gorgeous coloring of this tamed, but unbroken, river and its bottom lands. Sparkling sloughs search with inquisitive fingers back into jungles of arrowweed, screw bean and sand, where wild burros and horses come down to drink, and an occasional deer lifts its tail and leaps away. Accommodations along the seventeen miles of river road from Parker to Parker Dam are modern, including trailer camps, and a sportsman's lodge. On the California side of the lake, reached from Parker Dam over a difficult road, the camps are still fairly rugged.

Parker's business establishments thrust their shading verandas across the sidewalks. Increasing popularity of Lake Havasu in the past few years makes Parker a big sports and travel center.

It is unfortunate that the Arizona side of the river has no through road to the Dam. A road of sorts does go up-river from Parker a few miles. It is a charming road, adventuring around some sharp turns, over a steep ridge or two, around little bays and washes trimmed with the varying greens of creosote bush, ironwood, palo verde. A sweet odor component of desert blooms and a warm wind, holds the faint hum of bees at their never-ending work. River flats are a tangle of arrowweed, mesquite and catclaw with ragged bunches of desert mistletoe making exotic splashes of dull red against blue sky or gray-green river.

Up-lake from the Dam, on the Arizona side, the Bill Williams Recreational Area, a government project under the control of the Fish and Wildlife Service, is a shore-line frond of land on the south side of Bill Williams River where it enters the lake, with the Buckskin Mountains making a giant stairline backdrop against the sky.

Inaccessible less than a year ago, two miles of road have been forged out of the canyon-cut hardrock shore to reach the Arizona Boat Landing where a free boat slip has been provided for fishermen bringing in their own boats. And in the vast span of rugged, untenanted country north of the Bill Williams River on the Arizona side the flying-fisherman will find a good lakeside airfield.

While Boulder Dam is famed as "the biggest," Parker Dam is "the deepest." So silted was the Colorado River bed that concrete foundations of the dam rest two hundred thirty-five feet below it, with eighty-five feet above. It is eight hundred fifty-six feet long, its crest thirty-nine feet wide and its base one hundred feet thick. Almost 300,000 cubic yards of concrete were poured in the structure.

But the dam itself is an impersonal curve shutting off the view of towering mountains, a white fret-work against dark hills and the rippling waters. It is only the inanimate starting point for an animate story of man's struggle for water. Its real meaning takes form in the story of fifty-five million gallons of water crossing two hundred forty-two miles of desert and mountains via the Colorado River Aqueduct to thirteen cities neighboring Los Angeles. The chunky red-roofed pumping station on the lake shore pumps water from the lake some three hundred feet up into Gene Lake a few miles back in the hills, thence another three hundred feet up into Copper Basin Lake. Only then does the long series of ditches and tunnels, gravity flows and booster stations begin to carry the water to the coast cities, and the simple act of turning a faucet in a kitchen sink takes on mammoth proportions.

Geologically the land is still something of a puzzle. One great geologist found himself impotent when asked to characterize the country and replied, "It's a burned-up mess."

Even to the lay eye it is clear the land has risen and fallen many times, that the stream has meandered over a wide valley leaving gravels and sands of every color. These have since eroded into hills and canyons that spread close to the sparkling green river and the quiet blue sloughs.

Volcanic periods have scattered burned brown boulders over the tan sand hills, spread blue-gray ash layers, and tossed up angry black picachos; and on the Arizona side Black Mountain broods, its massive peak shaped like a fierce bat with head and wings extended in flight.

The Buckskin Mountains are strongly stratified. The Whipple Mountains, directly across the joining of lake and river, have the look of a moulded plaster study of curves and angles, or a storm tossed sea guarded by a lighthouse called Monument Peak.

Rugged and wild as the back-country is, it nevertheless is perfect for the would-be desert rat. Some part of river or lake is visible from almost any hill, thus minimizing danger of getting lost. There is another aide. Dozens of high-tension lines guide the wanderer back to the rough maintenance roads that serve the lines. A canteen should be carried as a matter of course, but danger of thirst decreases with that of becoming lost.

There are excellent mountain climbs awaiting the ambitious. A few of the pinnacled ridges should not be attempted except with some mountain climbing experience, but most of the mountains are well within the capabilities of any hiker.

The prospector and miner have scoured this country, finding some gold, silver and copper, leaving their monuments and mine shafts, the romantic aura of ghost towns like Old Ehrenburg and La Paz, and sometimes their bones. The rockhound will find moonstone, agate, moss agate, jaspar, chalcedony, geodes, malachite, scheelite, desert roses, thunder eggs. petrified ironwood, and fossils.

For the naturalist there are the usual birds, animals and plant life of the Lower Sonoran Zone, with the less usual feature that desert and river species are both present. And on the Arizona side the mountain sheep (desert bighorn) is seen.

Head Gate Rock Dam as seen from the Arizona side. Parker Dam powerhouse is an engineering marvel.

Cholla and barrel cactus spatter the hillsides, with the staghorn less frequent. Only a few lonely saguaros grow near the lake; back from it, however, are some generous stands. There are beautiful stands of ocotillo along the road to Gene Lake above Havasu. The Cactus Plain, between Bouse and Swansea, on the rough continuation of route 95 southeast of Parker, has all these varieties as well as prickly pear, and one of the fine stands of saguaros mentioned. It should be lovely this spring as a result of the winter rains.

Boat races are popular and almost every Sunday sees a race somewhere up or down the river, for some size boats.

Only a few minutes drive from town is the Colorado River Indian Reservation where the Indian Service is conducting a really constructive program involving the irrigation of an ultimatemate 100,000 acres of desert land and the resettlement of a hoped-for 20.000 Indians into a productive and self-supporting economy.

Key to the plan is the Head Gate Rock Dam, completed by the Irrigation Division of the Indian Service in 1941. This dam is a half-mile north of Parker but, being rather hidden by the terrain of the shore line, many people fail to see it.

At present fourteen thousand acres are irrigated from this dam. Eight hundred more are being cleared this year by the Indian Service, and as fast as forty-acre tracts can be brought to sufficient productivity to support a family, Hopis and Navajos are brought in for resettlement.

Land can be seen in every condition, from wild sand desert or raw tangles of mesquite, through the many stages of clearing and leveling, to irrigated land bearing lush green crops. It is an experimental project fraught with a great human problem-to what extent man (be he brown, white or black) is willing to sacrifice homeland and the associations of a lifetime in order to obtain a better or easier living. This experiment is of long enough standing, now, so we can report that success is clearly indicated.

But always, in this great stretch of country, the eye turns back to the river and the lake.

Havasu is the Supai word for blue-green. In northern Arizona a stream bears that name because its waters are bluegreen, or turquoise. To this lake the name applies as well, but with a slightly different interpretation. The waters are seldom turquoise, but may be blue, or may be green. Or they may be any shade between. I have seen them so steel-gray as to be almost black, or so yellow-green they looked like pea soup.

With forty-five miles of lake it is not surprising that its scenery changes character several times.

A day in a large boat, touring the lake, is full of grandeur... The mountains crowd close in deep brown, cool, shadows: or they make purple marches back from the blue-black waters. leaving space for golden gravel hills, for the narrow rose line of salt cedar at waters' edge, backed by the silver green of arrowweed.

Strange rock formations add interest to the shore line. Cap Rock, shaped like a mushroom, has mustard-green strata forming the thick stem, a burned-red cap as the top. Across the same cover, utterly unlike in shape and color, is Split Rock, a clear red block, split open and revealing a glimpse of more water and other rocks behind. Elsewhere soft, perpendicular cliffs are constantly being undercut by waves until huge blocks slip off into the lake.

Some day a leisurely outdoorsman is going to put several days' camping gear into a small boat, camp at night on the sand beaches along the lake shore where driftwood is abundant. By day he will poke in and out of the coves, fishing. exploring for rocks, birds, flowers according to his own hobbies, and absorbing impressions of the little things that only the slow traveler sees: an egret standing like a question mark on top of a gravel hill; wild burros cropping the tules and digging their drinking holes just back from the water line; beaver at work on their dams, or their houses, which look like nothing so much as an alkali coated heap of branches caught on a point; the grisly rustle of a raven's wings as he flys overhead with a gory tit-bit in his beak. An island is a whiteringed bouquet of yellow and brown encelia. Two saguaros, with opposing arms like a pair of bookends, holding up a wisp of cloud. A muskrat scampering to his hideout. Wild horses top a ridge on the Arizona side in the rugged hills across from Whipple Point.

The Parker-Lake Havasu area is in its infancy as a sportsman's center. Development is little more than well started. Some facilities are modern, but others are still ripping an opening for themselves in virgin desert pioneering in the true sense. Thus there is ruggedness for those who like the sturdy life, yet comfort for those who prefer their vacations the easy way: nearly every outdoor sport one can think of is here at finger tip; and over all is the brilliant sunshine and the soul-rending beauty of mountains and river and desert.