( \. OUTLINE of EARLY HISTORY OF COLORADO RIVER DEVELOPMENT IvaI V. Goslin Executive Director Upper Colorado River Commission Colorado Water Summer. Workshop sponsored by Department of History Western State College and Colorado Water Congress July 20, 1976 o SALT lA*'E CITY ",,, COLORADO RIVER BASIN UPPER COLORADO RiVER COMMISSION f974 OUTLINE of EARLY HISTORY OF COLORADO RIVER DEVELOPMENT I. Introduction As my part of this presentation on "The Colorado River Compact of 1922 and Related Compacts and Treaties, I' Mr. Sparks and I decided upon what we believe is a logical division of the subject matter in order to avoid too much repetition and at the same time cover as broad a spectrum as possible within the allotted time. Here is what we are going to try to do. Because this Colorado Water Summer Workshop -is sponsored by the De­ partment of History of Western State College as well as by the Colorado Water Congress, I am going to try in a somewhat sketchy outline form to portray for you 'some of the early history of development of the water resources of the Colorado River Basin in order that you may better under­ stand what has happened in the past, and how we have arrived at our present state of precarious confusion. It is hoped that alTIOng the events cited there will be those that will serve as a background for understanding the influences that have led to present conditions, and for your analysis of the relative values of alternative choices with respect to future develop­ ment. After I have attempted to bolster your knowledge of the evolution of what we call the "law of the river" which is comprised of numerous compacts, subcompacts, laws, court decrees, operating principles, and an international treaty, Mr. Sparks, an outstanding water lawyer, will discuss for you various interpretations of these documents, their implications, what they really mean, and problems that have developed, or are anticipated to develop, under the ffl aw of the river." From many standpoints the Colorado River is the most interesting river on the North American continent--if not in the world. Today it is the most cussed, discussed, and litigated river anywhere. A bibliography of the books, treaties, papers, legal documents, and other articles written abo~t it and its problems would fill a book. It is truly a river of controversy. The Colorado River's problems, almost without exception, originate from the fact that there is such a great imbalance between its very small water supply and the other vast resources within its basin, including such items as oil, gas, oil shale, minerals, coal, radio-active elements, land, beauty and space. To· give you an idea of this imbalance we can compare the Colorado with the Columbia, another great river In the northwest. The Colorado River has a Jrainagc :lrC,l of ~42,OO() square miles, or 1/12 of the land area of the con­ ti.guous 4H States. The \,.;atershed of the Columbia is 259,000 square miles --a reasonably comparable figure. The Colorado River serves parts of seven southwest States and a foreign country, Mexico. The Columbia serves parts of seven northwest States and a foreign nation, Canada. Here the similarity ceases. With a total \vater supply of 13-15 mililon acre-feet per year, depending UpOl1 \vhose figures you choose, the Colorado River spills no \'1ater from its mouth into the ocean. The Columbia after havlng served its seven States and Canada discharges an average of about 180,000,000 acre-feet per year into the Pacific Ocean. Or another way to look at the two rivers is to realize that the Columbia spills to the ocean about 12 times the total supply of the Colorado before man uses a drop from it. That is today's picture which is causing the people of the Colorado Riv~r Basin States to speculate. about water supplies for impending energy industries and the population increases of the future. What was the picture four and one-half centuries ago, or almost 250 years before the declaration of independence? II~ Exploration - Navigation A. Early Explorers The earliest explorers were Spanish. Navigation was the first use made of the lower mainstem of the Colorado River by white men. As early as 1539, Francisco de Ulloa, exploring what was believed to be a strait, sailed to the head of the Sea of Cortez, now known as the Gulf of California. He noted the turbid condition of the water, and guessed that a great river entered the gulf near its head. Ulloa reported: ( "We perceived the sea to run with so great a rage into the land that it was a thing much to be marvelled at; and with a fury it returned back again with the ebb . and some thought: ... that some great river might be the cause there­ of. " Ulloa did not see this stream, the Colorado, but indicated its supposed position on a sketch map. The actual discovery of the river occurred the next year, 1540, when three explorers, one by sea and two by land, reached it. Captain Alarc6n, the first of three to be on the scene, sailed up the Gulf of California to its head, entered the Colorado River, and traveled upstream in boats for IS days. Alarcon recorded that he ascended the river a distance of 85 Spanish leagues, or about 234 miles, which would have placed his party east of the present city of Blythe, California. Diaz, from Coronado's main expedition, journeyed overland to the mouth of the Colorado, proceeded up the rIver to a point several leagues above the Gila River, crossed and explored some of the country to the west. Cardenas, another of Coronado 1 s Lieutenants, trave 1ed through \vha t is now northern Arizona and "arrived at a river the banks of which seemed to be more t]lan three or four leagues apart in air line. II This is the first written description of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. In less t:han SO years after the landing of Columbus (1492), Spanish missionaries and soldiers Here traveling upon the Colorado, following its 2 ( course upstream from its mouth, and even attaining one of the most distant and inaccessible points of its upper waters. More information was gained concerning it at this time ~han was acquired during the next three centuries. Onate, during hIS expedition in 1604-05, from the Rio Grande to the mouth of the Colorado, arrived on the banks of a stream flowing northwesterly, which he named Colorado. This stream is now known as the Little Colorado River. It appears that Onate was the first person to use the name IfColorado." B. Commercial Navigation Steamboating began on the lower Colorado River in 1851, mostly for the purpose of carrying freight from the head of the Gulf of California to Yuma. From 1846 to the start of the Civil War, the lower Colorado was explored by surveying and exploring parties under the auspices of the U.S. Department of War. The most detailed examination of the river made during this period was by Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives in 1857-58. He ascended the river in a steel, stern-wheel steamboat, 50 feet in length, which had been constructed in Philadelphia and shipped in sections via ship and the Panama Railroad Com­ pany to San Francisco; and thence to the mouth of the Colorado River at the head of the Gulf of California where it was assembled. A detailed examination was made of the rive~ with the objective of determining how far it was navigable for steamboats~ lves turned back at the mouth of Las Vegas Wash, which he ( called the head of navigation. Within a few years, steamboats carried cargos further upstream to the Mormon settlement of Callville, which was founded in 1864. Although practically nothing was done to develop the river for navigation) except to periodically remove sandbars, blast rock obstructions, and construct a few docking facilities, it is of historical significance that early proposal~ were under consideration to make parts of the stream commercially navigable as a transportation arteryo The coming of the railroad sounded the death knell of water navigation on the Colorado. C. Proposed Railroad After the two expedl~lons of John Wesley Powell in 1869 and 1871, from Green River, lvyoJning through the ca'nyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers, others began thinking of the Colorado River in terms of another form of transportation_ Frank M. Brown conceived the idea that the deep canyons might provide a practicable route for a railroad. He and Robert Brewster Stanton organIzed an expedition to survey the river for this purpose from Grand Junction, Colorado to the Pacific Coast. Brown believed that such a railroad at approximately river grade all the way would carry enough coal to the Southwest to justify its construction. The railroad line was incor­ porated as the Denver, Colorado Canyon and Pacific Rail\vay. During the surveYlng expedition by boat in 1889-90, Bro\aJl1 lost his life in a whirlpool. ( Stanton's party carried out the remainder of the survey to the head or the Gulf of California. Due to lack of financing and economic justification, construction of this railroad was never initiated, although Stanton's col­ leagues at the time agreed that his survey had establ.lshed the feasibility of a railroad down the Colorado from an engineering standpolnt~ In addition to those explorations mentioned above, there were many others that could be related to subsequent qevelopment of the Colorado River system. These played their part in spreading knowledge of the region and undoubtedly stimulated many of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the Pacific Southwest in the latter half of the 19th Century.