Damming Grand Canyon: the 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition
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Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2007 Damming Grand Canyon: The 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition Diane E. Boyer Robert H. Webb Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the Natural Resources and Conservation Commons Recommended Citation Boyer, Diane E. and Webb, Robert H., "Damming Grand Canyon: The 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition" (2007). All USU Press Publications. 161. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/161 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DAMMING GRAND CANYON Cover of Scientifi c American magazine, October 1925, showing an artistic fantasy of work during the 1923 USGS expedition in Grand Canyon. The artist was Howard V. Brown. The model for the topographer shown dangling from a cableway may have been Roland Burchard. Courtesy of Scientifi c American. DAMMING GRAND CANYON The 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition Diane E. Boyer and Robert H. Webb U.S. Geological Survey Foreword by Michael Collier Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright © 2007 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7200 Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on recycled, acid-free paper ISBN: 978-0-87421-660-8 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0-87421-665-3 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boyer, Diane E. Damming Grand Canyon : the 1923 USGS Colorado River expedition / Diane E. Boyer and Robert H. Webb. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-87421-660-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Grand Canyon (Ariz.)--Description and travel. 2. Colorado River (Colo.- Mexico)--Description and travel. 3. Geological Survey (U.S.)--History--20th cen- tury. 4. Geological Survey (U.S.)--Biography. 5. River surveys--Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)--History--20th century. 6. Dams--Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)– History–20th century. 7. Water-supply--Political aspects--Arizona--Grand Canyon Region--History--20th century. 8. Water resources development--Arizona--Grand Canyon Region--History--20th century. 9. Grand Canyon (Ariz.)--Environmental conditions. 10. Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)--Environmental conditions. I. Webb, Robert H. II. Geological Survey (U.S.) III. Title. F788.B69 2007 917.91’320434--dc22 2006103108 This book is dedicated to the past and present scientists who work in Grand Canyon, often envied but seldom understood; to those river runners who continue to stand vigilant for the canyon’s resources; and to Steve Hayden and Toni Yocum. Contents Illustrations viii Foreword by Michael Collier x Introduction 1 1. Water and the Colorado Desert 11 2. Where Should the Dams Be? Politics, the Colorado River Compact, and the Geological Survey’s Role 32 3. Prelude to an Expedition: Washington and Flagstaff 48 4. A Cumbersome Journey: Flagstaff to Lee’s Ferry to the Little Colorado River 90 5. Surveys and Portages: Furnace Flats through the Inner Gorge 121 6. Of Flips and Floods: Bass Canyon to Diamond Creek 164 7. Feeling Their Oats: Diamond Creek to Needles 209 8. Aftermath: Politics and the Strident Hydraulic Engineer 242 About the Authors 279 Index 280 Illustrations Front Endsheet Havasu Creek Dam site Back Endsheet Specter Chasm Dam site ii Cover of Scientifi c American Magazine, October 1925 12 Map of the Colorado River Drainage 20 Map of the Lower Colorado River and the Salton Sink 21 The Western Side of the Salton Sink in 1905 35 Frederick Haynes Newell, First Director of the U.S. Reclamation Service 36 Arthur Powell Davis, Second Director of the U.S. Reclamation Service 59 Expedition Leader and Topographic Engineer Claude H. Birdseye 61 Head Boatman Emery C. Kolb 64 Boatman and Author Lewis R. Freeman 66 Boatman Leigh B. Lint 68 Boatman H. Elwyn Blake 69 Engineer Herman Stabler 70 Hydraulic Engineer Eugene C. La Rue 72 Geologist Raymond C. Moore 74 Topographic Engineer Roland W. Burchard 76 Rodman Frank B. Dodge 77 Cook Frank E. Word 77 Cook Felix Kominsky 79 Engineering Plans of the Glen from Drawings by Todd Bloch 88 Map of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon 91 Upstream View at the Mouth of Nankoweap Creek 92 Repairing the Road in Tanner’s Wash, En Route to Lee’s Ferry 95 The Crew at Lee’s Ferry 95 Lee’s Ferry, with the Vermillion Cliffs in the Distance 96 Soaking the Marble in the River at Lee’s Ferry 96 Sketch of the Head of Marble Canyon and the Vermilion Cliffs near Lee’s Ferry 108 Sketch of Marble Canyon from above Rapid 17 110 The Wreck of the Mojave at Cave Springs Rapid 111 La Rue with his Cameras at Vasey’s Paradise in Marble Canyon 114 Surveying at 36 Mile Rapid 122 View Upstream of Granite Rapid from below the Mouth of Monument Creek Illustrations 125 The Crew, Boats, and Camp Kitchen at a Camp at 75 Mile Canyon above Nevills Rapid 132 Edith Kolb and Leigh Lint in the Boulder at Hance Rapid 134 Repair of the Boulder at Hance Rapid 137 Claude Birdseye Records while Roland Burchard Surveys in the Upper Granite Gorge 139 Leigh Lint, Emery Kolb, and Elwyn Blake 147 Part of the Crew and Guests at the USGS Building at Bright Angel Creek 152 Downstream View of Hermit Rapid 156 Emery Kolb Rows the Marble through Hermit Creek Rapid 165 Eugene C. La Rue Measures Flow in Deer Creek below Deer Creek Falls 168 Upstream View of 128 Mile Rapid 189 Downstream View of the Marble, Wenched Up the Bank at Lava Falls Rapid 189 The Marble, Stranded High Above Water at Lava Falls Rapid 197 Sketch Map of an Unnamed Canyon on the Hurricane Fault Zone 203 Sketch Map of Diamond Peak in Western Grand Canyon 210 Travertine Falls at Mile 229 in Western Grand Canyon 218 Sketch of Separation Rapid 222 Emery Kolb Piloting the Marble through Separation Rapid 223 Sketch of Lewis Freeman and Frank Dodge 224 Sketch of Lava Cliff Rapid 227 Sketch of Leigh Lint 228 The Portage of Lava Cliff Rapid 230 Herman Stabler and Claude Birdseye with the Radio Setup at Devils Slide Rapid 232 The Ruins of Pearce Ferry, Now Submerged beneath Lake Mead 236 Boulder Canyon Dam site 238 Packing the Boats and Equipment at Needles, California 243 La Rue, Birdseye, and Stabler Standing near the Grand 256 Blake, Kominsky, and Lint at Diamond Creek 262 Sketch of Eugene C. La Rue 269 George Otis Smith, Fourth Director of the U.S. Geological Survey 275 Proposed Dam Sites along the Colorado River Foreword s a graduate student thirty years ago, I chose for my thesis A a stretch of buckled rock along the Colorado River within Grand Canyon that could only be reached by boat. I carried the most up-to-date equipment—kapok-fi lled Mae West life preserv- ers, a pocket calculator that could actually determine square roots, and plan-and-profi le maps of the river corridor that Claude H. Birdseye had prepared fi fty years earlier. I was a little troubled that the Birdseye maps were sprinkled with references to twenty-nine dam sites between Lee’s Ferry and Black Canyon. But I wasn’t too worried; hadn’t David Brower and his Sierra Club saved the Grand Canyon from the dam-builders’ antics in the 1960s? How quickly we forget. At the turn of the twentieth century, entre- preneurs in the American Southwest were breathless with the possibil- ities of harnessing nature and harvesting its bounty. Surely the deserts would bloom if only crops could be sprinkled with holy water from the untapped Colorado River. Itinerant schemers and voluble visionaries lined the banks of the river, waiting for their chance to send water to California’s Imperial Valley, to vegetable fi elds in Mexico, or even all the way to Los Angeles. But the Colorado had proven unruly with its track record of untamed fl oods punctuated by intermittent drought. Early attempts at water diversion were scuttled by fl imsy headgates and fi shy fi nances, stymied by disastrous fl ooding of the very lands that developers had billed as the future of a new West. What was needed was a plan to control the river. And a plan required knowledge of the topography through which the river fl owed. Maps in the middle of the nineteenth century had remark- ably little to say about the canyons of the Colorado River. In 1869 and 1871–72, John Wesley Powell had successfully navigated much of the Green and Colorado rivers from Wyoming to Arizona and California, but his accounts were peppered with far too much hyperbole to be useful to engineers. By 1890, Robert Brewster Stanton had surveyed a hypothetical railroad through Cataract, Glen, and Grand canyons. The railroad would never be built, but the survey alone offers insight into the busy-beaver fervor of these early explorers: they truly believed that anything was possible. x Foreword xi Technological achievements never happen in a cultural or politi- cal vacuum. Railroads that had so recently stitched together the Atlantic and Pacifi c coasts were stoked as much by coal as by the religion of Manifest Destiny. The explosion of agriculture across the continent had been ignited as much by a Jeffersonian belief in the dignity of farming as by a fl y-blown optimism that rain always follows the plow. Powell had tried, courageously and unsuccessfully, to link agricultural development of the West with the availability of water. But he was shouted down by self-interested speculators who were selling empty dreams, not sustainable communities.