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entire Colorado River was now fiowing into the ImperiaJ. Valley-, ruining valuable crop land and foming the Salton Seal The whole valley- jumped into the act now, aJ.ong with the Southern Pacific railroad which held significant investment in the Imperial V~ ley- . The railroad constructed a bridge across the old canal opening and proceeded to dump tons and tons of rock into the river, hopefully- faster than the river could wash them a~. After tw y-ears of steady pouring the canal was finally- filled, and the Colorado burst through the sandbars blocking the old channel and found its WSJ' to the Guli' of California once again. This fiasco had cost more than $7 million in railroad. expenses and damages to farmers in both Mexico and the Imper- ial Valley.~3,4) ImperiaJ. Valley - The Cutback One other offshoot of this first disasterous attempt to tame the Colorado was the "cutback". The new river channel running through the canal was much steeper than the old one. Consequently- , the river, in . an effort to level out its bed, began cutting back upstream. At first the cutting action was minor but within a few days the river was carving out a channel at an average of 10e feet wide and a. mile in length each day. 2. By" the time the cutback would reach the old river bed, the channel would be some 300 feet deep with no hope for ever diverting its fiow back to the Gulf of California. The cutback had to be stopped! A second engineer, Charles Perry, came up with the solution. He constructed a series of levies to fragment the river's flow and reduce 2 Similar cutback action is postulated for the formation of the Grand Canyon. -6-