Laserfiche WebLink
<br />002177 <br /> <br />l <br />) <br /> <br />ARIZONA v. CALIFORNIA. <br /> <br />3 <br /> <br />The river and its tributaries flow in a natural basin <br />almost surrounded by large mountain ranges and drain <br />242,000 square miles, an area about 900 miles long from <br />north to south and 300 to 500 miles wide from east to <br />west-practically one-twelfth the area of the continental <br />United States excluding Alaska. Much of this large basin <br />is so arid that it is, as it always has been, largely dependent <br />upon managed use of the waters of the Colorado River <br />System to make it productive and inhabitable. The Mas- <br />ter refers to archaeolo'~ical evidence that as long as <br />2,000 years ago the ancient Hohokam tribe built and <br />maintained irrigation canals near what is now Phoenix, <br />Arizona, and that American Indians were practicing irri- <br />gation in that region at the time white men first explored <br />it. In the second half of the nineteenth century a group <br />of people interested in California's Imperial Valley con- <br />ceived plans to divert water from the 'mainstream of the <br />Colorado to give life and growth to the parched and barren <br />soil of that valley. As the most feasible route was through <br />Mexico, a Mexican corporation was formed and a canal <br />dug partly in Mexico and partly in the United States. <br />Difficulties which arose because the canal was subject to <br />the sovereignty of both countries generated hopes in this <br />country that some day there would be a canal wholly <br />within the United States, an all~American canal.' <br />During the latter part of the nineteenth and the first <br />part of the twentieth centuries, people in the Southwest <br />continued to seek new ways to satisfy their water needs, <br />which by that time were increasing rapidly as new settlers <br />moved into this fast-developing region. But none of the <br />more or less primitive diversions made from the main- <br />stream of the Colorado conserved enough water to meet <br /> <br />7 "[The All-Am~rican Canal] will end an intolerable situation, <br />under which the Imperial Valley now secures its sole water supply <br />from a canal running for many miles through Mexico . . .." B. Rep. <br />No. 592, 70th Cong" 1st Bess. 8 (1928). <br />