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<br />Platte River Valleys. These two events brought a huge influx of fortune seekers, miners, traders,
<br />cattlemen, soldiers, and settlers that traveled through and started to settle in these river valleys.
<br />This huge population influx required a reliable food supply and demanded fresh foods. The
<br />subsequent and rapid development of irrigation systems was nearly complete by the end of the
<br />1800s (Nadler 1978:58-60; Nadler and Schumm 1981:95-97; Abbott 1985:8).
<br />
<br />Nadler (1978: 111) and Nadler and Schumm (1981:95-97) utilize another important year,
<br />1926, as being significant in the metamorphosis of the Arkansas River. Nadler (1978) does not
<br />specify why this particular year is an important year and it may have been arbitrarily chosen;
<br />however, it appears that it may be related to the availability of a 1926 U.S. Department of
<br />Agriculture Soil Map (Sweet and Inman 1926) for the Arkansas Valley area that he used in his
<br />study (Nadler 1978:6). There are several reasons why a good map dating to the year 1926 would
<br />have been so important; several significant events occurred in and near the valley within about a
<br />ten-year period. These events include the period after the famous 1921 flood that had
<br />devastating effects on the human population in the Arkansas River valley; ".. .the amount of land
<br />being farmed more than tripled between 1900 and 1929" (Nadler 1978:60); the period is
<br />immediately before the "Droughts between 1926 and 1940" (Nadler and Schumm 1981:97); and
<br />at about this time, the valley starts to see the effects of the introduction of the invasive
<br />phreatophyte known as salt-cedar (Tamarix) (Lindauer 1970:4-5; Lindaur and Ward 1968:3-4;
<br />Robinson 1965; Nadler 1978:85-87,111; Nadler and Schumm 1981:97-98).
<br />
<br />Some of the earliest documented accounts and historical observations of the Arkansas
<br />River, the valley, and of its characteristics have been reported by early explorers and military
<br />expeditions in hundreds of diaries, journals, articles, and reference books such as Emory (1848),
<br />Farnham (1906), Parkman (1948), Coues (1895), Gilbert (1896), Vestal (1939), and Jackson
<br />(1966) as reported in Nadler (1978:64, 67, 78, 84, 89).
<br />
<br />Lt. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge ([1877] 1959), writing of his experiences in the 1860s
<br />and 1870s, provides an excellent description of the character of the Great Plains rivers and their
<br />floodplains, and on the shifting sands of these prairie rivers as he observed them. While his
<br />example of moving channels and Band is specific to the area near Dodge City. Kansas, a good
<br />distance downstream from the study area, the conditions he described were very similar to those
<br />of the study area. His description is so effecti ve as to the historic character of the Arkansas
<br />River that we reiterate it here word-for-word.
<br />
<br />"As soon as they [the rivers that cross the plains] emerge [from the mountains
<br />and foothills] on the third plain [between about 3,000 to 4,000 feet (Dodge 1959:7)]
<br />their character changes; their current is less rapid, the banks are low, the bed is wide,
<br />shallow, and filled with sand. The bottom lands are very broad, without trees or
<br />shrubbery, except occasionally a small growth of willow, scarcely larger than
<br />switches. The bottom is an alluvial deposit of from one to six feet, underlain by
<br />sand. When the river rises and the current increases in power, this sand is washed
<br />out from below,the banks falls in, and the stream is never, for two consecutive years,
<br />in the same bed, the current eating the alluvium on one side to deposit great bars on
<br />the other. These in a very few years gain a scanty vegetation, another slight deposit
<br />of alluvial soil, to be again destroyed by another freak of the ever-changing current.
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