Spude, Robert L

The Path Not Taken: The Development Company Of America's Hudson Reservoir Project, Arizona Territory, 1898-1902 During the early summer of 1900, a group of businessmen held clandestined meetings over lunch or in private offices in New York City to discuss the building of the nation's highest dam and creation of a thirty-three square mile reservoir. Among them was Elton Hooker, the chief engineer of New York state's Public Works and a just returned member of the U. S. investigatory commission that studied the possibility of a canal across the isthmus of Panama. Ex-Secretary of War Russell Alger, soon to be Senator from Michigan, was in attendance as was Henry M. Robinson, New York City corporate lawyer and player in the underway consolidation to create U. S. Steel, the first billion dollar corporation. Two westerners, Governor Oakes Murphy of Arizona Territory and his brother Frank, a rising financier of the territory's mines and railroads, brought the group together to negotiate with Henry Man, of Man & Man, New York City lawyers, and possessors of the right to build a dam on the Salt River upstream from Phoenix. The editor of the Arizona Republican, the Phoenix newspaper, shadowed the group in New York and leaked the story.1 It appeared that the long-awaited storage dam and reservoir to ease all water shortages in the Salt River Valley was to be built, if, the editor asked, the citizens would agree to supply a $500,000 bonding subsidy. In the months following, two factions in the Salt River Valley soon coalesced, one supportive of the private project, another demanding that the federal government take charge of the site and build the dam.2 Instead of supporting the Murphy brothers, the other group in Phoenix accused the governor and his brother of trying to bilk tax- payers of $500,000 and defraud the Salt River Valley's residents. For the next two years the two factions clashed, one pro-Murphy and private enterprise, the other in opposition and pro-federal control. Today, the tale of the passage of the Newlands Act in 1902 and the federal construction of Roosevelt dam at the site on the Salt River, 1903-1911, is well known. What is left out is the other group, the proponents of corporate dam building projects, of the path not taken.3 The leading promoters of the private project were the Murphy brothers, Frank and Nathan Oakes. Born in Maine, but raised in the lumber camps of Wisconsin, the two men followed separate paths West, sometime together in Kansas or California, sometime not. In December 1877, Frank moved to Prescott, Arizona Territory. After a period of varied jobs -- stage driver, haberdashery clerk, scribe for the territorial legislature -- Frank found his calling as mine promoter. In 1883, his older brother Nathan Oakes, always known as 1 Oakes, joined him in Prescott.4 Oakes had taught school, served in the military, then joined his brother in the firm of F. M. Murphy & Brother. One of the properties they acquired were the hydraulic gold mining operations along Lynx Creek, ten miles east of Prescott. Hydraulic mining used a stream of water to cut down stream banks, which then flowed into sluice boxes where the gold nuggets and flakes were washed out of the gravels. In the late 1880s, F. M. Murphy & Bro. operated their diversion dam, flume, and hydraulic nozzles during the high water of each spring.5 As others have pointed out, the basics of western water law came from the experience of hydraulic miners in the placer gold mining regions of Colorado and California. The experience at the Lynx Creek hydraulics would be used by Oakes, in training to be a mining lawyer, in his later irrigation views. He also understood the engineering basics as evidenced in his promotional pamphlet printed ca. 1889 in an effort to sell the mines. A British company, the Lynx Creek Gold & Land Co., Ltd., bought the property, built a sixty foot dam, cleared a storage reservoir site, and by 1891 began working the Arizona gold fields. By then Oakes had taken his profits and moved to Phoenix.6 Oakes had become active in Republican politics and rose through various appointed positions, first as personal secretary to the Governor, then Secretary of the Territory, similar to a Lt. Governor today, and then, finally, Governor in his own right in 1892. Forced to move to Phoenix with the removal of the territorial capital from Prescott, Oakes soon became a leader in the growing agricultural community in the Salt River Valley.7 Phoenix had risen from the ruins of the prehistoric Hohokam peoples's homes and irrigation system. After 1867, a series of ever larger and longer ditches and canals supported the new farms and ranches along the Salt River. Phoenix became a territorial trade and political center, especially with the arrival of the capital in 1889. The 1890 census takers counted 3,152 residents.8 When Oakes arrived in the small town, the city fathers had been working to build a railroad connecting the northern and southern parts of the territory via Phoenix. He organized a company, ushered through a twenty year tax exemption from the territorial legislature, and ceremoniously broke ground for the Santa Fe, Prescott, & Phoenix Railroad. Because of his gubernatorial duties, he passed the leadership of the project to his brother Frank, who completed the line to Phoenix between 1892 and February 1895. Wealthy investors from Chicago and Detroit backing the Murphy brothers' railroad also invested in Salt River Valley canal companies and land.9 During the 1890s the diverted water from the Salt River did not meet demands of boosters and land speculators, especially during drought years. Oakes Murphy became a leader in the 2 political debate over water and irrigation, especially governmental support. At the 1892 National Republican Convention, Oakes was able to have included as part of the major party's platform the first call for federal support of private irrigation projects.10 In 1894, Oakes ran for and was elected to the U. S. Congress as Arizona's delegate or non-voting member, and again pushed for support for irrigation projects in the territories. During his tenure as member of the U. S. Congress, Phoenix hosted the National Irrigation Congress, one with many ideas but dominated by disputing factions and many resolutions. Murphy pushed for the ceding of lands for irrigation projects, in line with the 1894 Carey Act.11 When Oakes left office in 1897, he turned to developing a resort and opening a land office in the Adams Hotel, Phoenix. Among the investors who had backed the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railroad were some of the nation's most prominent businessmen, who now invested in his new projects. These investors included Dexter M. Ferry and C. C. Bowen of Detroit, the nation's largest seed producers. Through a field man, Dr. Alexander. J. Chandler, they had bought Salt River Valley lands and built a major canal. Simon Murphy, a millionaire timber man from Detroit and "uncle" of Frank and Oakes, also invested in Salt River Valley lands, and supported the canal and land promotions of the Ferry and Bowen crowd through Simon's ranch manager A. C. McQueen.12 Included in the group of Detroit men was Russell Alger, another millionaire timber man. Alger had been a one-time candidate for U. S. President, but relinquished his bid to aid the Republicans and elect Benjamin Harrison. Eight years later, as pay-back, President William McKinley appointed Alger as his Secretary of War. Alger provided access to the White House for the Murphy brothers, and, in 1898, helped Oakes Murphy receive a second appointment as governor of Arizona.13 Upon his return to office Governor Murphy joined other residents in stating that the biggest need in the Salt River Valley was a means to store enough water to ensure that a steady stream could be provided for the expanding farmlands. He spoke at national arid lands meetings, raised awareness within the federal government, and sought incentives to assist private enterprise. By 1898 too, he, with his brother Frank, looked at ways to take over the company owning the best dam and reservoir site along the Salt River, the foundering Hudson Reservoir & Canal Company.14 Some sixty air miles east of Phoenix, the Salt River flows from a broad twenty-six mile wide valley into a narrow canyon barely two hundred feet across, an ideal water storage dam site. An 1889 visit by a Senatorial committee to Phoenix spurred the finding and description of the dam site, followed by a savvy New York lawyer who lay claim to it under the revised 1891 Federal land laws. In 1893, Wells Hendershott organized the Hudson Reservoir & 3 Canal Company to build the dam and create a reservoir estimated, at first, at eighteen square miles. U. S. Senator John Martin of Kansas became president and secured the company's claim from the federal land office.15 However, 1893 was the worst time in the nineteenth century to promote new ventures. Across the nation railroads, banks, and canal companies went bankrupt as the country entered a depression that lasted from 1893 to 1897. Hendershott, a tall handsome promoter personality, raised only $3,900. Sims Ely, secretary for Senator Martin, recalled that Hendershott had borrowed from the New York City law firm of Man & Man in order to keep an office open in Phoenix, take water measurements, and do minimal engineering assessments for the Hudson company. The amount of capital needed -- the Hudson company had estimated $2.5 million -- was beyond the reach of the Salt River Valley financial world at that time.

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