FREE ESSAY ON HISTORY OF COLORADO RIVER

HISTORY OF COLORADO RIVER

The Colorado River, one of the greatest natural wonders of the world, is a river of many
different extremes, from the barren deserts of Mexico to the huge mountains of Colorado.
This great river is born about 10,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and flows
southwest for 1,470 miles to the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) in Mexico. It is the
international boundary for 17 miles between Arizona and Mexico. Before the construction
of a number of dams along its route, it flowed 80 miles through Mexico to the Gulf of
California.
The 1,360 miles of its route in the United States makes it the nation's fifth longest
river. It drains a large portion of the North American continent covering 242,000 square
miles in the United States and 3,000 square miles in Mexico. The Colorado and its
tributaries drain southwestern Wyoming and western Colorado, parts of Utah, Nevada, New
Mexico and California, and almost all of Arizona. Three fourths of the basin is federal
land devoted to national forests and parks and Indian reservations.
For more than 1,000 miles, the upper and middle portions of the Colorado River and its
tributaries; the Virgin, Kanab, Paria, Escalante, Dirty Devil and Green rivers from the
west; the Little Colorado, San Juan, Dolores and Gunnison from the east, these cut a
spectacular labyrinth of deep gorges. The longest and most spectacular of these canyons
is the magnificent Grand Canyon, extending from the mouth of the Paria to Grand Wash
Stream. Canyonlands National Park encompasses another of these regions at the juncture of
the Green and Colorado rivers in southeastern Utah.
The lower Colorado River separates two great deserts, the Mojave on the California
(western) side and the Sonoran on the Arizona (eastern) side. The Gila River drains the
Sonoran. South of the Mojave Desert lies the Salton Basin, a large structural depression
235 feet below sea level, extending 150 miles northwest from the head of the Gulf of
California.
Ute and Southern Paiute Indian tribes, now living in reduced numbers on reservations,
hunted and gathered in the plateaus and canyonlands of the upper Colorado basin for
centuries. In the lower basin, the largest prehistoric canal irrigation system in the
American West was built by the Hohokam Indians on the Gila and Salt rivers. Yuman tribes
practiced more extensive patterns of floodplain farming and hunting on the Colorado,
which was too large and variable for canal irrigation. In the face of economic
exploitation of the region by whites, and the resultant ecological changes, Indian groups
have struggled to maintain vestiges of traditional lifeways with respect to the river.
Europeans in North America explored the Colorado River early on, but upon discovering
that it was practically useless for navigation, bothered with it very little. In 1539,
Francisco de Ulloa reached the Colorado from the Gulf of California; in 1540, Hernando de
Alarcon became the first European to sail up the river, while Garcia Lopez de Cardenas of
Coronado's expedition discovered the Grand Canyon. In 1776, Fathers Silvestre Velez de
Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Dominguez crossed the Colorado in Glen Canyon, while
that same year Father Francisco Garces named the river Colorado because of its red mud.
In 1857, Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives navigated the Colorado from its mouth to Black Canyon.
But it wasn't until 1869 that Major John Wesley Powell made the first trip through the
Grand Canyon. He led an expedition by boat, recording and mapping his perilous journey.
His journals are still in print and provide exciting reading for modern adventurers ready
to rediscover the wonders of the desert Southwest.
In 1905, floodwaters caused a levee to break on the Colorado River near Yuma; its waters
rushed into the Salton Basin. This created the Salton Sea, about 70 feet deep, 50 miles
long, and 15 miles wide, with a total water area of some 300 square miles. Since the
break threatened the agriculturally rich Imperial Valley and a major railroad route, the
levee was finally repaired in 1907, but the Salton Sea remains.
The Colorado is also remarkable in its value for hydroelectric power and irrigation. Of
its 9 1/2 million potential horsepower, one-fifth has been developed. More than 20 dams
have been built on the Colorado and its tributaries. As a result, the river rarely
reaches the Gulf of California. The Morelos Diversion Dam, located on the Mexico-Arizona
border is the southernmost dam on the Colorado. It sends virtually all of the remaining
water to irrigation canals in the Mexicali Valley and to the towns of Mexicali and
Tijuana.
The Colorado River system was the first drainage basin in which the concept of the
multipurpose dam was employed. In 1922 the Colorado River Compact was concluded by the
seven states that constitute its drainage area. The first major development began in 1928
when Congress passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act authorizing construction of Boulder
(now Hoover) Dam. Construction of this dam was considered a major engineering
accomplishment of its time. Since its completion in 1936, the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead,
which it created with its impounded waters, have become major tourist attractions.
Many additional projects have been completed since then. In the mid-1960s, Glen Canyon
Dam was completed, impounding Lake Powell. This dam was controversial, and opposition to
its construction helped shaped policy toward concepts of water management and
environmental protection.
Shortly after the completion of Hoover Dam, planning and construction began downstream on
the Parker Dam. From Havasu Lake, the reservoir impounded by the dam, water is
transported some 250 miles across California to supply a portion of the water needs for
Los Angeles and most of the water supply for San Diego. Davis, Imperial, Laguna, and
Morelos dams further regulate flow and diversion in the lower basin.
In 1963 a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court made explicit the amount of water
apportioned among the lower-basin states, as well as the amounts that had been implicitly
reserved for Indian tribes and federal public lands. This decision prompted funding of
the Central Arizona Project, completed in the 1980s. The project comprises a mountain
tunnel through which water from the southern end of Lake Havasu is pumped up and into an
aqueduct that flows southward to the two cities of Phoenix and Tucson.
The increasingly severe competition for whatever small quantities of water remain in the
Colorado River keeps the basin tied up in litigation and controversy. Water projects must
now undergo thorough environmental-impact studies in accordance with federal
environmental protection legislation.
The Colorado River in all it's splendor, is a great piece of nature. It supplies most of
the southwest with power, food and recreation. It is important to realize that the
history of this river in order to better understand it's workings and how to learn from
our past mistakes. We must conserve it's natural beauty and fight to protect it from
further development, other wise we will lose it for ever and our environment will never
be the same.