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<br />, <br /> <br />5 <br /> <br />'I <br />., <br /> <br />/ <br />MOst ~-of-the-century Americans, seeing the great potential of America to rise <br /> <br />to unprecedented industrial, agricultural, and economic heights would have gone <br /> <br />so far as to say that conservation meant only development. America was coming of <br /> <br />age as an industrial power. Much of this po"er "as derived from the proliferation <br /> <br />of technology that allowed the access to raw materials and the control of natural <br /> <br />resources that previously could not be harnessed. With the new technology avail- <br /> <br />able, ~eople began to question the wisdom of leaving part of nature alone, whether <br /> <br />it was a hillside, river, or field, if man's industry could extract something <br /> <br />from it. To leave an available resource undeveloped would be to let it go to <br /> <br />waste. Roosevelt himself saw the Reclamation Act as a means of "reclaiming Hie <br />waste areas of the arid West by irrigating lands otherwise worthless. ,,16 The act <br /> <br />and its results, again in the '\lords of Roosevelt, "helped po\/erfully to prove <br /> <br />to the nation that it can handle its OIfll resources and exercise direct and <br /> <br />businesslike control over them." 17 His role in setting a national agenda to <br /> <br />protect America's resources for future generations should not be understated. Yet <br /> <br />that this agenda also included the forceful businesslike control of parts of <br /> <br />nature viewed as worthless unless irrigated should not be overlooked, either. The <br /> <br />idea of control for maximum profit, tempered but not eliminated by the conservation <br /> <br />movement, would also be applied to the Colorado River. <br /> <br />The Imperial Valley was one of the first areas to use the Colorado for wide- <br /> <br />scale irrigation works. The valley lies in southernmost California, a part of the <br /> <br />Salton Sink which also encompasses Mexico's Mexicali Valley. The sink used to <br /> <br />be the location of a lake into which the Colorado flowed. Due to a series of geo- <br /> <br />logical uplifts, however, the Colorado changed its course and flowed back into the <br /> <br />Gulf of California. The lake then evaporated and left a region of rich alluvial <br />'1 18 <br />SOl . <br /> <br />In 1891, the Colorado River Irrigation Company "as formed (later to be called <br /> <br />--...., <br /> <br />-...--__.w,;._: <br />