254 Bulletin 38. 



is offered by the San Simon valley. This once beautiful district 

 has been despoiled and hopelessly ruined within the short space 

 of some fifteen years. At Solomonville, the great barranca which 

 has cut its way up the valley is about fifty feet across and from ten 

 to twelve feet in depth. From this point it is stated to extend 

 southward for sixty or seventy miles, with tributary washes and 

 barrancas branching out to a yearly increasing distance on either side. 



Let us consider this state of affairs in its bearing upon the 

 various industrial interests of Arizona. In the first place, the 

 stockraising industry itself has suffered in some localities almost 

 to the point of extermination. The ruinous methods which seem 

 to be inevitable upon a public range have so destroyed its value 

 and have so changed the original condition of the country that in 

 many sections, in spite of the present high prices for cattle, the 

 ranges now carry but a tithe of what they once did. Definite fig- 

 ures are not at hand; yet even casual conversation with the stock- 

 men of this depleted range shows it to have been commercially 

 destroyed. In the San Simon valley alone, judging from the 

 statements made to the writer by observers of its history for the 

 past few years, it is judged that the number of cattle has fallen off 

 from seventy-five to ninety per cent. 



Furthermore, the operations of the stockmen upon the range 

 watersheds of the Gila and Salt rivers intimately concern the wel- 

 fare of the irrigation farmers along their banks. As previously 

 stated, the vegetation on the range, especially the bunch grasses 

 in the lower swales, at one time so obstructed the flow of water 

 that the rainfall found its way but gradually over the surface of the 

 ground to the main watercourses, while a large portion, sinking 

 into the ground, joined the underflow and found its way down yet 

 more slowly. The result was a constant and not excessively 

 muddy flow of water, whose fluctuations were not extreme ; but 

 now, in the more denuded condition of the watershed, a heavy 

 storm in an upper valley causes a tearing torrent to appear below. 



The evil effects to the irrigator of a rapid run-off of water of 

 this nature are two-fold in character. In the first place, a quick 

 rush of water soon carries off the whole of the rainfall and leaves 

 the stream-courses dry, so that the irrigation farmer is overwhelmed 

 one week with floods and threatened next with prospective drouth . 



