WSP10089

• File Number: 8220.200.05.A
• Description: Hoover Dam/Lake Mead/Boulder Canyon Project
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 1/1/1950
• Title: The Story of Hoover Dam: Conservation Bulletin No. 9
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

civilization. The evidence was in imposing ruins of communal architecture
unexcelled in the Old World. There were '....ell-constructed four-storied
apartment houses containing as many as 800 rooms.
How did the Indians manage to exist in this desert? The mystery was
soon solved. The exploring Spaniards encountered canals and dit~hes ~'hich
guided life-giving water from the stream into fields of corn. beans, and squash.
The art of irrigation had made it possible to establish the earliest civiliza-
tion in the United States.
The first white man known to have visited the Colorado was the Spanish
explorerl Hernade de Alarcon. In 1.=)40, while exploring the Gulf of Cali-
fornia, he found the mouth of a then unkno"m river, and ventured up the
l'eddish.brown stream some 150 miles. Two years later the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado was discovered by Cardenas.
But, it was all difficult terrain to explore, and doubly difficult to obtain food
and supplies. Cardenas never succeeded in descending the sheer walls of the
Canyon, and other explorers and missioners, who followed him, were also
discouraged by the seemingly hopeless task of penetrating this section of the
canyon. Two centuries passed before a passage was discovered permitting
a crossing.
In fact the entire length"or the river was well shrouded in mystery. Some
speculated that it was not a river at all, but a swift running strait separating
California from the mainland. It was rumored also in those early days that
the Colorado was subterranean for hundreds of miles. To attempt a voyage
downstream by boat from its higher reaches was reputed to mean certain
death.

.-4. Dangerous Obstaele

Unlike many rivers, which provided an artery for exploring the wilderness,
the Colorado was a dangerous obstacle. It was shunned or passed over as
quickly as possible. To those venturesome few, who had visions of tracing
its course, the Colorado quickly revealed that the dream was not the deed.
By the treaty concluding the Mexican War in 1848, and by the Gadsden
Purchase in 1853, the United States acquired the territories of New Mexico,
Arizona, and California. Discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought
hordes of adventurers westward. They poured across the Colorado at two
points. One crossing was near Yuma, not far from the Mexican border.
The other was "The Needles," 200 miles farther north. But, the canyon-area
of the Colorado still remained an obstacle to be conquered at some future date.
Having acquired the territory, sentiment grew in the United States that the
area should be explored at all costs. In 1857 the War Department dispatched
Lt. J. C. Ives to the task, instructing him to proceed up the river by boat as
far as navigation was practicable. He succeeded in ascending in his boat, the
Explorer, only as far as the head of Black Canyon, the present site of Hoover
Dam. His voyage of about 400 miles upstream from the mouth of the
Colorado was accomplished only after tremendous hardships.

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Grand Canyon of the Colorado-View from Navajo Watch Tower.

In his report to the War Department, Lieutenant Ives stated:
"The region last explored is, of course, altogether valueless. It can be
approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do
but leave. Ours was the first, and doubtless will be the last, party of whites
to visit this profitless locality. It seems destined by Nature that the Colorado
River along the greater portion of its lone and majestic way shall be forever
unvisited and unmolested."
~n 1869 M~~. J. W. Powell of the Geological Survey succeeded in leading
a rIver expedItIon down through the canyon of the Colorado_ His expedition
traveled .from the Green River in Utah down to the Virgin River in Nevada,
a few illIles above where Lt. Ives had stopped. Powell covered 1,000 miles
of unknown rapids and treacherous canyons, and became the first white man
to gaze up at the sheer walls of the Grand Canyon and live to tell of it.
With the Colorado explored, the next natural step was to investigate methods
whereby it might be used beneficially. In 1875 Lt. Eric Berglund mapped
a route for a canal to irrigate California's rich but arid land. Construction
of the canal began about 20 years later and in 1901 the first water from the

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