For Just the Taste of Water

Arizona's Salt River Project, which supplies not only precious water to the the Valley of the Sun and its environs but electrical power as well, is celebrating its 75th birthday this year.

But no one knows for sure if it really is or not. Because there is no recorded history dealing with the roots of the project, and there probably never will be.

Six centuries after the Hohokam the white man began his battle for water in the Salt River Valley. Today's Roosevelt Dam, near the confluence of Tonto Creek and the Salt River, is a direct descendant of the early systems of brush dams, which washed away with every flood. The dam was completed on Feb. 6, 1911, at a cost of over $10 million.

(Right) Scene at night, headquarters building of the Salt River Project, in Phoenix. Koppes Photography (Below) When the water is high and running hard, the Salt River churns itself to furious life. Earl Petroff Initially dug by the Hohokam, many of the Salt River Project's canals today follow these ancient irrigation routes in the Valley of the Sun.

But if you subtract 75 from 1978 you come up with 1903, the year the Salt River Valley Water Users Association was formed. And that's technically right.

But it won't satisfy the purists.

Actually, to find its beginnings we have to go a lot further back in time. About the year 200 B.C. This probably isn't exact either, but at this late date who's going to argue.

About that time, a band of early agriculturists settled around what is now Phoenix. Sometime during the next 15 centuries, those people used Stone Age digging tools to excavate a 125-milelong series of major canals which they used to irrigate the land with water from a nearby river.

And that, historically and romantically, was the very beginning of the Salt River Project.

The people who built the canals would later be called Hohokam Indians and the area they cultivated would be called the Valley of the Sun.

The land upon which the Hohokams built a civilization now is home for about 1.3 million people, drawn here because the land can now support them.

And the land supports them because, almost six centuries after the Hohokams gave up on it, the white man didn't.

From beginnings that hinged entirely upon the elements and the availability of water in the Salt River, through three decades of hopes, frustrations, failures and determination, the Salt River Project emerged as that important first step necessary to vitalize a major city.

The Hohokams left the area about 1400 A.D., probably because of severe and extended drought. For the next 400 years, the brilliance of their achievements lay unnoticed and the few white men who tried to coax a living from the land often left in disgust. The canals, the only visible trace of a successful civilization, gathered tumbleweeds.

Recorded time arrived at the year 1867, and Arizona's history was about to bend to the will of one John W. Swilling.

Swilling was a hot-tempered redhead who epitomized the early frontiersman. But it was not his gun, his courage or his fists that earned him his niche.

It was hauling hay.

He came to Arizona as a laborer, worked as a miner, soldiered on the Confederate side for a while, then tried his hand at farming. While hauling hay to Fort McDowell in 1867, he saw the remains of the abandoned canals and realized what potential they held for agriculture.

Swilling organized a canal company, found workers willing to share his dream and in 1868 his canal brought the first complete crop and the beginnings of economic prosperity to the area.

Almost immediately, more canals were constructed. Some were refurbished Hohokam ditches, others were dug anew. Each tapped the Salt River as it sliced through the Valley. But although they were a major improvement over waiting for the rain to fall, they were not the ultimate. Their major flaw was that they did not provide for the dry years.

In 1884, an article in The Arizona (Phoenix) Gazette observed that “our people have not begun to master the principles of irrigation, and 60 per cent of the water now used in producing crops is virtually wasted.” The lack of reservoirs resulted in a continuing catastrophe for Valley farmers. From 1891 through 1894 severe drought hit on the heels of a flood that had washed out every one of the crude irrigation dams built on the river. Then, another drought brought hardship from 1897 through 1904.

The seemingly never-ending battle against the elements was too much for many, and a large-scale exodus occurred between 1897 and 1901. But some stayed to fight. Unlike the Indian and Spanish-American societies that solved social-survival problems by adapting to the dictates of the environment, these Anglo-Americans fought their harsh surroundings and sought to adapt the environment to their purposes.

The canal system was called “the worst system which human ingenuity could devise for the distribution of irrigation water” and was blamed for “impoverishing many of our farmers,” but nobody did much except talk about it. And yet, the potential was there.

Proposals for a storage dam began as early as 1889, and it was also in that year that a survey party composed of William Breckinridge, Maricopa County surveyor, newspaper reporter James H. McClintock and Bill Norton, a stockholder in the Arizona Canal Company, selected what they considered the ideal site for a dam, at the confluence of the Salt River and Tonto Creek. Their report was made to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Sept. 4, 1889.

The first serious proposal to build a dam at the selected site was in 1893, when the Huron Reservoir Company was formed here. Investors and land were acquired, but the dam wasn't built, so the problem of the canals remained and the brown earth continued the reclamation of its former possessions and returned them to desert. But on Aug. 31, 1900, after three years of drought, a mass meeting was held at the Dorris Opera House in Phoe-

MEN OF VISION

nix, and one of the results was a deciVision bonding the gigantic water storage and irrigation project. This man, who started out with so little hope of success, went on to become the father of the National Reclamation Act. Teddy Roosevelt signed the act in 1902, the Salt River Valley Water Users Association was officially formed in 1903, the first stone in the dam was set down in 1906, and for many years thereafter, freight-hauling wagons clattered back and forth from the Valley to the dam site until President Roosevelt dedicated it in 1911. Today, the Salt River Project is recognized as the nation's oldest and most successful multi-purpose reclamation development. Vision to send B. A. Fowler of Glendale, a retired publisher, to Washington to obtain Congressional approval to bond Maricopa County so construction of a dam could be financed.

A water committee had proposed bonding the county and Fowler, who came to Arizona at the age of 56 with retirement in mind, was sent to Washington in 1901 to sell the proposal. He wasnt' an instant success, for very few cared about reclamation, and those who did were generally against it. But Fowler persisted, finding support from Rep. Francis G. Newlands of Nevada, Sen. Henry Hansbrough of North Dakota, George Maxwell, executive director of the National Irrigation Association, and Theodore Roosevelt, the nation's vice president.

Roosevelt ascended to the presidency on September 14, 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley. Nine months later, on June 17, 1902, Roosevelt signed the National Reclamation Act, providing that money from the sale of Western public lands would be made available for reclamation projects. The money would be paid back to the federal government out of water and power revenues from the projects. But the signing of the act didn't solve everything. The money still had to be acquired. It would take a huge loan to build the dam, and the federal government said it was willing to grant the loan, but only with some guarantees that it would be repaid.

Finding an acceptable method of repayment apparently riled everyone. The big landowners didn't like proposals which would shackle them with huge payments; the small landowners and water rights holders weren't about to stand still for anything above mini-mum payments.

Years of every-man-for-himself attitudes had to change. The discussions that followed produced strong words, swear words, cuss words and other words, but when they had all been uttered, an agreement was reached and the Salt River Valley Water Users Asso-ciation was formed to finance construc-tion. Articles of incorporation were filed in February, 1903, and the first stone was set down on the new dam on Sept. 20, 1906.

At the beginning, the huge structure was known simply as Tonto Dam or the Salt River Project; eventually, it was named after the president who had helped the beleaguered farmers.

It was not completed without controversy, however.

Costs far exceeded original estimates. The project was supposed to cost $2.5 million, but in 1917, the Water Users Association was presented with the final bill - $10,166,021.

Project engineer Louis Hill was accused of building an unnecessarily large power plant (for the fun of it), and became the subject of congressional hearings. But he refused to buckle, saying that the additional cost of making the plant larger would be easily offset by the increase in power generating capabilities, and that revenues from the sale of power would be a major means of financing the project.

In the end, Hill won.

And, in a sense, so did the people of the Valley, for Hill's "fun" is now recognized as foresight.

The dam was dedicated a month after its completion. Ernie Douglas, a veteran Arizona newspaperman, wrote about it: "What a day it was! March 18, 1911. The day Roosevelt Dam was dedicated by the immortal Teddy himself. A sun-drenched day in Phoenix and on the verdant mesas and hills between Mesa and Roosevelt through which 25 automobiles nearly all the cars in Arizona at the time chugged their uncertain way over the road that later was to be known as the Apache Trail."

The federal government operated the dam and tended to the infant Salt River Project-a catch-all name later formally assigned to the multi-purpose operation until 1917 when the Water Users Association signed a contract to assume all future operation expenditures and repay the entire cost of the undertaking.

At that time, the Project consisted of Roosevelt Dam, Granite Reef Diversion Dam (which had been completed in 1908), and various irrigation properties, including the canals.

The development since that time has been stupendous.

Mormon Flat Dam was built in 1923-25, creating Canyon Lake; Horse Mesa Dam was started in 1925, completed in 1927, and now impounds the 17-mile long reservoir called Apache Lake; and the Stewart Mountain Dam was built during 1928-30 and when it was finished, Saguaro Lake had been created.

In 1937, the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District was formed to serve rural customers, and two years later Bartlett Dam was completed on the Verde River. Horseshoe Dam, also on the Verde, was completed in 1946 and spillway gates added in 1949.

The Project draws runoff water from 13,000 square miles of watershed. That's 8,320,000 acres, and they're all necessary because only five percent of the snow and rain that falls in the watershed reaches the Project's impoundment areas.

The six lakes created by the Project's dams can store 2,072,050 acre feet of water. (An acre foot is the volume of water which will cover one acre to a depth of one foot; in other words, 325,850 gallons.) The lakes also have developed into prime recreational areas for the Valley. When full, they offer more than 27,000 surface acres of water and 240 miles of shoreline.

The Project's power generating potential, which developed almost as a fringe benefit when water storage was the prime concern, is growing annually. At the end of 1977, the Project could supply 2,909,000 kilowatts of power. Although originally all of SRP's power was produced at its dams, today the hydroelectric generators on the Horse Mesa, Mormon Flat, Stewart Mountain, Bartlett and Horseshoe dams produce only about three percent of all electricity used by Project customers.

The fuel-fired Agua Fria, Kyrene, Crosscut and Santan generating stations produce nearly 20 percent. Participation in the coal-fired Hayden, Four Corners, Navajo and Mohave generating stations accounts for slightly more than 60 percent. The remainder is purchased, some of it from dams on the Colorado River.

And as the Phoenix metropolitan area grows, the demand for power increases, so the Project is also involved in the Coronado generating station and the Palo Verde nuclear plant, now under construction.

And all that represents a staggering investment of more than $1.5 billion. But that's just a start. Nearly $2 billion more will be needed during the next five years to keep up with the growing demand for energy.

The Project's development also had another benefit - employment.

The Hohokams did it themselves with volunteer labor and Swilling's first crews were a handful of investors willing to stake their cash and sweat on the future.

Today, the Project employs more than 3500, and has an annual payroll in excess of $60 million.

So the Project has contributed heavily toward making Phoenix a major city. And it did it not with six-guns and fists, but with hard work and water. For despite what the romanticists would like to believe, this was never a wild and wooly cow town; it was a farm town.

And it exists, even though its only natural asset was a wide expanse of flat, irrigable land and a very unpredictable watercourse named the Salt River, because some people believed the river could be tamed.

And they did it.