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Develonnent Imperial Valley - Salton Sea The gold rush to California in 1849 took many hopefuls across the southern deserts of the Colorado Basin. One of the unlikely prospectors was a physician who stumbled onto the odd fact that the rich Colorado Desert was below the level of the river, making possible irrigation by gravity. The doctor spent the rest of his life in a futUe attempt to gain title to the "worthless" expanse through political leverage. About 1892, a land developer and an engineer picked up the doctor's irrigation scheme, but with a different twist. Rather than trying to obtain title to the land, they concentrated on the delivery of water, without which the land would be useless. Their enterprise, however, was destined for eight years of financial disaster before a fil"Dl capital base was established and construction of the canal could begin. The canal was completed in a year (1901) and the Imperial Valley was born out of the Colorado Desert. The valley nourished for three years before the sand. laden Color- ado silted. up the canal so that no more water flowed into the valley. Rockwell, the engineer, made several unsuccessf'ul attempts to get the Colorado to wash out its deposits in the canaJ.. By 1905 the situation in the valley was desperate and Rockwell cut a second opening to the canal in the Colorado's banks. But in that year, the river had five floods, each of which ripped. open the mouth of the canal a little more. By the end. of the fifth flood, the Colorado had silted up its own channel and had opened the canal sufficiently to hold its flow. The -5-