Salt River Project Research Paper

For thousands of years dreams of permanently diverting stream water from the Salt and Verde rivers to the arid desert lands of Arizona, through a myriad of canals, would finally come to fruition in the early twentieth century. Flooding and or droughts would always seem to destroy their early attempts at diverting the water. At the end of the nineteenth century, frustrated landowners formed a committee and with the help of Theodore Roosevelt came up with a Reclamation Act that took effect in 1902. This Act birthed the Salt River Project a multipurpose project that would generate hydroelectric power, deliver water, and provide flood protection. The Salt River Project was a dream come true, constructing massive dams and canals, that would supply

For several hundred years they successfully routed canals throughout the desert until their mysterious disappearance.(Hill, Clark, Doelle, & Lyons, 2004). In 1865, the U.S. Army unearthed these waterways and were able to dig up these ancient canals, channeling water from the Salt River to their fort supplying water for its livestock. (Bickley, 1998). The Hohokam established a pattern that our modern irrigation system carefully reconstructed. Gary Clyde noted that “They developed the most complex irrigation system in the entire New World."(Bickley, 1998). Jack Swilling founder of the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company, came to realize the real purpose and potential of these channels.

By the end of my third afternoon there I was convinced that I had examined nothing less than an extensive system of canals and ditches whose function had once been to bring the water of the river to the farms of a country with rich soil but no rainfall to speak of. (Wilson,

The Salt River Water’s Users’ Association and many landowners pledged more than 200,000 acres of their land as collateral for the project behooving them to repay the federal government.(“Theodore Roosevelt Dam,” 2012). The first cornerstone of the Roosevelt Dam was laid in 1906. “The dam created the world's largest artificial lake, and the dam itself was "the largest cyclopean-masonry dam" which means it was the largest dam built the way the ancients built dams.”(“Project Description and Importance to Society,” n.d. par.1). The project took much longer than expected, delays such as building temporary dams to reroute the river flow, and flooding that damaged the dam on a recurring basis. Millions of gallons of water tore through the construction site washing away months of work in a few hours. The dam was placed between two canyon walls and utilized an arch-gravity design. The project required lots of manpower and the federal government even hired Apache men to work on the construction of the dam. More than 344,000 cubic yards of masonry stone and almost as many barrels of cement went into building the