The Story of the First Decade in Imperial Valley, California

ThestoryofthefirstdecadeinImperialValley,California EdgarF.Howe,WilburJayHall <i*• ' '; ffl s i*' y? ME THE S TORY OF THE FIRST DECADE In I mperial Valley, California BY E DGAR F. HOWE and WILBUR JAY HALL IMPERIAL Edgar. F Howe & Sons 1910 Copyright, 1 910 By Edgar. F Howe and .Wilbur Jay Hall *.;■ STORYF O THE STORY For s everal years it had been my dream some day to write the romantic history of Imperial Valley, and when the time was drawing near for celebration of the tenth year of the beginning of reclamation, I said to myself: "Now I will write 'The Story of the First Decade.' " Butn i the print shop man proposes and the necessity of current events disposes. The inability to find time for the work led me to call in as an " associate" in the writing of the story Mr. Wilbur J. Hall and events have so shaped themselves against my purpose that the finished book is primarily the work of the "associate." In looking over these pages, now that the work is concluded, I feel that I can congratulate the public that fate de creed that the important task of recording this history was res cued from my hands and placed in those of an abler man. Thiss i the time for the story to be told. The pioneer period is drawing to a close. The ten years of struggle has laid the foundation for an addition to Southern California such as it has never before received. Yet t he structural labor is but begun. We can see today more clearly the possibility of building a new Egypt. We can see the possible unification of Imperial and Coachella Valleys in a continuous garden from the Mexican line to the mountains which cleave Southern California into two parts. The d esert has been called the land that God forgot. It is not true. It is the land that man, in the building of Southern California, forgot, the land whose products are essential to the rounding out of a complete self-sustaining unity. Its i Imperial Valley which is making a city of a million in habitants of Los Angeles, and this story of the achievements of the pioneers of Imperial Valley will some day be recognized as the narrative of one of the most important stages in the construc tion of an empire in the Southwest, the glory of which the keenest visioned of us all can now but dimly see. EDGAR F . HOWE. IMPERIAL V ALLEY, CALIFORNIA CHAPTER I VALLEY B EFORE SETTLEMENT PARTNE O When C olumbus, standing in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, pleaded for money with which to outfit ships for a voyage of discovery and conquest, there dwelt in the south western part of that country he was later instrumental in opening to the old world, a strange people of swarthy skins, in settlements even then very ancient. This people was divided into several tribes: some lived nomadic lives, carrying their tents from place to place, calling themselves Navajoes; some dwelt in burrows in the cliffs and raised corn or hunted and fished on the plains below — a tribe known as Walapais in one place, as Hopis in another; a third group peopled the rich flats on the bank of a great, muddy river that frequently overflowed, enriching and irrigating the land — these were the Yumas. For m any generations these aborigines lived their simple, savage lives, watching the days come and go without interest or speculation. Occasionally, though seldom, indeed, one of their number came to wonder about the countries surrounding their own and wandered off to learn what he could. Some of these did not come back — a few did, bringing tales of strange mountains full of ore, of plains where wild things roamed, or of deserts unpeopled, desolate and forbidding. But at some time very long ago some of these adventurous spirits returned to the Yumas from the west with report of a great inland lake, full of fish, surrounded by rich land, and thither a company of bold spirits went, with their few belongings, to live. Years later a few of these with many of their children returned, saying that the lake had turned too salt to use, that the fish were dying and that the country was baking under a cruel sun that drove the rain clouds away and made the land desolate. Generations p assed, Columbus' mission was performed and the intrepid old Genoese died with a broken heart, white people 8 S TORY OF THE FIRST DECADE filled t he eastern part of the country, and rumors reached the far-away southwest — the country of the Yumas and the Nava- joes — that a dominant race had come to crowd all Indians into the sea. Their first evidence of this was when the missionary fathers crowded across their country to the Pacific, and one of these expeditions ended in a massacre, the father and his follow ers never having been heard of again. One day it was re ported that the boats of the whites were coming up the Colorado — that muddy river on which the Yumas depended for both food and drink — and the frightened tribesmen laid plans for defense. But the invaders never reached the settlements, although they sailed away a few days later believing that they had discovered the mouth of the Colorado river and had sailed up its waters many miles. The l eader of this expedition was Lieutenant H. Hardy, of the Royal Navy of Great Britain, who was exploring the western coasts in a search for some river up which he could sail, as was then thought, well into the great western part of the new con tinent. This was about the year 1800. Lieutenant Hardy as cended the Gulf of California and made his way with great diffi culty past low islands and over shallows and sand bars into the mouth of a sluggish stream. Although puzzled at the narrow ness of the river he pushed on to a small lake where he moored ship and went ashore to reconnoitre. From the top of a neighbor ing butte that rose 300 feet into the air almost from the shores of the lake, he looked north on to a desert stretching as far as the eye could reach — bald and desolate under the straight rays of the sun. The river on which he hoped to sail spread out to the east over great marshes and he saw at once that it would be hopeless to go farther into this slough. Regretfully he turned back, re porting to his superiors across the sea that the Colorado was non- navigable. Whether L ietutenant Hardy, who probably looked on the Colorado desert first of all Englishmen, was really in the Colorado or not is a debatable point. He was not in that stream which — up to a few months before this writing — was the Colorado, but on the other hand was in a stream running from Volcano lake to the Gulf of California and which, because he called it the Colorado in his reports and maps, has since been called Hardy's Colorado, or the Hardy. Geographers have thought for almost one hundred years that Hardy was mistaken, but it is not unlikely that he was IMPERIAL V ALLEY, CALIFORNIA 9 not a nd that the reason he could not find another and larger stream was that the Colorado was then, as it is at the present writing, flowing west across the marshes into Rio Paradones, thence into Volcano lake and so to the sea by the Hardy. We are inclined to believe that the laugh, instead of being on Hardy, was on the later geographers, for Hardy climbed Cerro Prieto and from there would have been able to see the real Colorado had it then been flowing to the gulf in the channel it used for many years prior to the spring of 1910. This C olorado river Lieutenant Hardy desired to explore was worthy of his best efforts. It is one of the long rivers of the world, although robbed of some honors in this regard by the fact that its upper tributaries bear other names. An excellent brief description of the drainage basin of the Colorado is found in Water- Supply paper, Number 211, issued by the United States Geo logical survey and because this is pointed and accurate it is given. The report was prepared in 1906 by R. L. Meeker and H. S. Reed and concerning the great stream says: "The Colorado River is formed in the southeastern part of Utah by the junction of Grand and Green rivers. The Green is larger than the Grand and i3 the upward continuation of the Colorado. Including the Green, the entire length of the Colorado is about 2,000 miles. The region drained is about 800 miles long, varies in width from 300 to 500 miles, and contains about 300,000 square miles. It com prises the southwestern part of Wyoming, the western part of Colorado, the eastern half of Utah, practically all of Arizona and small portions of California, Nevada, New Mexico and Old Mexico. Most of this area is arid, the mean annual rainfall being about 8^ inches. The streams receive their supply from the melting snows on the high mountains of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. "There a re two distinct portions of the basin of the Colo rado. The lower third is but little above the level of the sea, though here and there ranges of mountains rise to elevations of 2,000 to 6,000 feet.

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