Irrigation Affected Yuma

How has irrigation affected Yuma? Well, irrigation has completely changed Yuma. The reason why is because before irrigation Yuma was a complete nothing. No one really knew what Yuma was before irrigation. No one wanted to live here. Yuma’s crops were dry because there really was not crops growing.

Irrigation affected farmers. The reason why is because farmers were losing money because their crops were not growing due to lack of water. Now that we have irrigation farmers can irrigate their fields. About 100 years ago, an underground passageway was built to help irrigate the fields and is still used today. Irrigation has changed Yuma because it has affected different people. The most important people affected was the farmers. The reason is

For one the river helps because that is easy access to water. Without Yuma being where it is now we would not have as much crops as we do now. What really started the geography of Yuma was the gold rush of 1849. The U.S. Army was able to send supplies down to Mexico. So having the river right there was very helpful to both farmers and the military.

If Yuma did not have the river next to it we would have to find a different source of water. The Colorado River is very useful for the farmers. About 80 percent of Colorado River water goes to agriculture. Having the river was helpful for the Yuma population. More farmers wanted to move here just because of the Colorado River right here and that was good for farming.

The Colorado River, before Yuma was built, ran wild. The Colorado River met up with the Gila River in the table-flat floodplains. When irrigation was first created people used gates to control the water flow to the fields. But, before they used the gates a dam had to be built in order to control how much water is flowing. After the dam was built the farmers would open the gates to the fields and let water run in, after the amount of water was needed the people would close the gates and the river kept flowing. This made farmer’s lives

The reason why is because their land would finally be irrigated and they could start making some money to get more crops. So farmers had a little bit of happiness with the Yuma Project. But, the farmers also had to worry about over flooding. The reason why is because if their fields got over flooded then the crops would drown and die which meant money lost for the farmer. Some farmers were nervous about the Yuma Project because they were nervous about how it would affect their crops and fields. So it was a 50/50 on the Yuma Project. After the Yuma Project farmers had to pay $10 an acre-foot. Which back then was a lot of money for a farmer to pay for an acre foot.

The Indians were affected by the Yuma Project. This is because they lost a lot of land. Most of the land was occupied by the Quechan Indians. Time was running out for the Indians. The Indians had to give up a lot of land so that the Yuma Project could get constructed and put into function. The Indians did not really have a say if they wanted to give up land or not. So they packed up their stuff and moved down to some new land. This was hard on them because this meant that they had to start all over again and make new huts and