Gila River

“ The Gila River cutting straight across the southern portion of Arizona, from the Alkali flats on the east to the Colorado at Yuma on the west, flowed then its whole course through desolation. Sometimes cottonwoods and sycamore trees rose in the bottom, and there was a patch of green around some irrigated land. But, for the most part, the basin was a waste of glittering sand and white dust, and beyond, the low hills, bare of every plant save a few stunted wild flowers, cacti and sage, greasewood and mesquite, rolled for miles and miles of barrenness. ”

“ Toward evening of the eighteenth day of March, we reached the Gila River, at a point over eighty miles from Pimole, and about the same distance from Fort Yuma.
“We descended to the ford from a high, bluff hill, and found it leading across at a point where the river armed, leaving a small island sand-bar in the middle of the stream. We frequently found places on our road upon which the sun shines not, and for hours together the road led through a region as wild and rough as the imagination ever painted any portion of our earth. ”

“ Its problems are [Pg 251] largely solved by the civil engineer and the irrigation expert, who transform vast deserts to regions of blossoming beauty, change the course of a river, send railroad trains climbing the mountain peaks or penetrating beneath the range, and who are, in short, the modern magicians who work their will with the forces of nature. The National Reclamation Act is fairly recreating the entire Southwest.
The Gila River, which is the largest tributary of the Colorado, flows through the regions south of Florence, Arizona, and affords water to many fertile and beautiful valleys ”

“ In the distance we could see the white sand of the bed of the Gila, and half-buried in it the ghastly, water-bleached limbs of the trees that the river had uprooted year after year in its annual frenzy. We could not go the upper road, on account of the Gila's having washed out a portion of it, and the lower road seemed to be regarded by Sam with all the disfavor it deserved. Verde or grease-wood, as ragged and scraggy as the willows, covered the whole Flat, except where, towards the centre, a dilapidated shanty stood on a sandy, cheerless open space. ”

“ He has reclaimed this land and brought it into a high state of cultivation, through irrigation, by means of water drawn from the river into the Montezuma canal, and thence, by ditches, spread upon his cultivated land. In the dry seasons, particularly, this water so used for irrigating purposes deposits upon his land the tailings and waste material so suffered to get into the tributaries of the Gila river from the reduction works of the appellant above. ”

“ The house faced south, overlooking Gila River, and commanded a magnificent view of mountains and foothills and valleys. To the northeast, rose a distant mountain peak always streaked with snow.
The ranch house, built of blocks of adobe, was of a creamy cement color resembling the soil of the surrounding foothills. The building was long and low, in the Spanish style of a rectangle, opening on a central court at the rear. The red tile roof slanted in a shallow curve from the peak of the house, out over the veranda, which extended across the front. ”

“ Whatever the relative importance of the great mining and reduction works using the water on the upper reaches of the Gila river and its tributary streams, and of the agriculturists using the same water below, from either a public or private point of view, the right of the lesser interest is not thereby subordinated to the greater. ”

“ A large body of like land situated in the same valley has been irrigated in the same way by waters drawn from the Gila river by the Montezuma and other like canals constructed and maintained for irrigating purposes, and a large agricultural community has grown up dependent upon irrigation. ”

“ One half of a miner's inch per acre was found to be necessary for the irrigation of the lands served by the various canals. It was further found that a surface flow of 7,500 miner's inches in the Gila river at the head of the irrigation system furnished more water than is needed to irrigate the entire acreage shown by the evidence to have been in cultivation in the year 1904 ”

“ Early next morning we resumed our journey down the Gila, and prosecuted it for several days until we reached the Colorado near its junction with the Gila. At that period the whole country was a wilderness, and the place now occupied by large houses and well filled stores, with an American population of six or seven hundred souls, was waste and desolate. The approach to the river was hidden by a dense mass of young willow trees, through which we had to pass in order to reach water, of which ourselves and animals were greatly in need. ”

“ Therefore, parties from Santa Fé, on their way to California, are compelled to make a circuit of near a thousand miles northward to the Salt Lake, or about the same distance southward by the route of the Gila. Although this valley is little known, there are indications that it is fertile and valuable.
"The name of the river 'Colorado' is descriptive of its waters; they are as deeply colored as those of the Missouri or Red River, while those of the Gila, which we know flows through barren lands, are clear. ”

“ From the mouth of the San Pedro, which joins the Gila about forty miles eastward of the Casa Grande, up the Gila valley eastward, ruins of ancient edifices are frequently found on both banks of the river. Emory says "wherever the mountains did not impinge too close on the river and shut out the valley, they were seen in great abundance, enough, I should think, to indicate a former population of at least one hundred thousand; and in one place there is a long wide valley, twenty miles in length, much of which is covered with the ruins of buildings and broken pottery." ”

“ Here the peaks are made twice as far from the left side as they are from the river, but they may be really four times as far, or they may be only the same distance; there is no saying at all; as he has drawn it, the point where the road begins is a good deal more to the south than the peaks are. If the scale is correct, it is not more than thirty miles at most north of the Gila that the path begins. You see about halfway between this point and the river are five or six little marks like a V upside down. I see there are other marks like these at different places on the map. ”

“ Almost anything will grow there. Vast groves of cottonwood and mesquite exist. In the alluvial division, the last stretch of the river, from the Gila down, cotton and sugar cane would probably grow. This is the only division where the water of the river can be extensively diverted. At the mouth of the Gila an old emigrant road to California crossed, and another here in this Green River Valley. A third route of travel was by way of Gunnison’s Crossing; and a fourth, though this was seldom traversed, was by the Crossing of the Fathers, some thirty-five miles above the present Lee’s Ferry. ”

“ We are centuries behind them. Look what the acceptance of the superstition has already cost California! The Mexican Boundary Survey Commission did its work pretty thoroughly until familiarity with the bad lands they were plodding through confirmed the old superstition. The international line was to cut across at the mouth of Hardy’s Colorado. When the surveyors struck the Gila, they assumed it was the river they wanted it to be; anyway, it did not matter; it was ‘bad land,’ where even the Indians were thinning, where only scorpions and rattlers could flourish. ”

“ Detached from the mass of the mountains, a rock in the form of a truncated cone towered up like an outwork. A cascade fell noisily from an adjacent hill into a deep gulf below, and in front of the rock a row of willows and cotton-trees indicated the neighbourhood of a stream. Then the immense plain of the delta formed by the two arms of the Rio Gila (which from east to west cuts for itself a double passage through the chain of the Misty Mountains) displayed itself in all its sombre majesty. Such were the striking points of the landscape which opened before the travellers. ”

“ Eagle-head observed.
"You, chief? Then you will tell us of it."
"Let the palefaces listen. The Rio Gila, like all other large rivers, brings down with it dead trees, at times in such quantities that at certain spots they completely block up the passage, in time these trees press against each other, and their branches become entwined; then grass grows, to cement them more firmly together; the sand and earth are piled up gradually on these immense rafts, which at a distance resemble islands, until a storm comes as a flood, which breaks up the raft, and bears it away." ”

“ It includes the famous Gila Wilderness, the first such area set aside in the United States and the largest in the Southwest. Most of the Gila National Forest is north of Silver City, though part of it lies in the high country between Silver City and Lordsburg.
The Gila is an exciting and exhilarating place to explore, sightsee, hunt, fish, and just enjoy. Indian ruins are evident almost everywhere, but the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, adjacent to the Gila Primitive Area, is the best preserved. Ancient tree stumps and abandoned Indian ruins record the history of man ”

“ Then Esther and Edith started.
For a few miles, they repeatedly crossed bridges over the Gila, then their road followed the foothills for some distance. The hills were still yellow with the silky California poppies. Green alfalfa fields, in the valley below, looked like bits of Eden let down into the grimly majestic scene. Higher the travelers rode, and higher. At a sudden turn, they came upon the narrow and perilous canyon road, where they drove slowly, drinking in the grandeur of it all.
The tinkling of a cowbell warned them that they were approaching a human habitation. ”

“ The channel of the Nile is much broken by rocks and islands, and the rapids follow one another in constant succession. Both banks are fringed with a dense belt of bush and high reeds. Looking down any one of these reaches, the tumbling, indigo-coloured water, streaked with foamy threads of white, the purple background of hill and mountain, the sombre greens of the forests and the lighter tints of the reeds, with the brilliant blue of the sky overhead, present a combination of wild river scenery not often to be met with, and not easily to be forgotten. ”

“ Indeed, with a moderate amount of enterprise, and a small amount of capital, we saw no good reason why the valley of the Gila should not eventually be dotted with excellent farms. The land is all there, and plenty of water to irrigate it (if only the Gila can be subdued, and surely it can) , and the climate the year round must be delicious. ”

“ Threshing up against the current, the gunboats and stern-wheelers one after another entered the gorge. The Nile, which below is nearly a mile across, narrows to a bare 200 yards. The pace of the stream becomes more swift. Great swirls and eddies disturb its surface. High on either side rise black, broken, and precipitous cliffs, looking like piles of gigantic stones. Through and among them the flood-river pours with a loud roaring, breaking into foam and rapids wherever the submerged rocks are near the surface. Between the barren heights and the water is a strip of green bushes and grass. ”

“ In the valley of the Gila and on its tributaries from the northeast are the Pimas, Maricopas, and Papagos. They are skilled agriculturists, cultivating lands by irrigation. In the same region many ruined villages are found. The dwellings of these towns in the valley were built chiefly of grout, and the fragments of the ancient pueblos still remaining have stood through centuries of storm. Other pueblos near the cliffs on the northeast were built of stone. The people who occupied them cultivated the soil by irrigation, and their hydraulic works were on an extensive scale. ”

“ Even at half-flood this obstacle is navigable for steamers, but care is at all times necessary, as the only safe channel is a very crooked one, and the river-bed is much studded by rocks. The scenery of these rapids is beautiful. The Nile is split up into several branches by islands, all thickly covered with trees and a luxuriant undergrowth. Through this foliage the shining black surface of the granite rocks projects at intervals, making a sharp and agreeable contrast. ”

“ Pike acquired a good idea of the Gila, for one who never saw it, and it is well laid down on his map; though it joins the Colorado a considerable distance above the head of the Gulf of California, the confluence is below 33°, being in lat. 32° 43 ́ 32 ́ ́ N., long. 114° 36 ́ 10 ́ ́ W. The Gila was known to the whites before the Mississippi was discovered; it was long better known than the Rio Grande, and down to the present century was far better known than the Rio Colorado. The valley of the Gila was the first seat of semi-civilization within the present limits of the United States ”

“ So much will be sufficient as to the course of the eastern stream of the Nile, the White Nile, and its affluents, and these are the rivers which traverse those south-eastern regions of the Nile Basin through which Baker travelled and campaigned. But besides the eastern or White Nile, there are a number of western affluents, which unite in the Gazelle River, which joins the White Nile just at the point where that stream is greatly impeded by great barriers and masses of weeds, which so choke the channel as to render it for some portion of the year almost impassable. ”