GEOLOGY 129 



times fifteen hundred feet above the channel. It is one 

 of the most picturesque places of its kind along the Divide. 

 At the head of this canyon is a natural amphitheatre which 

 offers exceptional opportunities for the construction of a dam 

 and the use of this natural basin as an irrigation reservoir. 



Several attempts have been made to construct cheap earth 

 dams at this ]place which of course are not invisible to the 

 mighty strain placed upon them by the enormous head of 

 water which gathers at times of cloud burts along this part 

 of the Divide. There is no provision made at present for 

 conserving the waters of the creek for the large, fertile, and 

 well deserving Bluewater Valley to the east of the canyon. 

 If this project was properly financed it would supply an 

 abundance of water to the large agricultural tract down the 

 Bluewater, San Mateo, and San Jose Valleys. 



THE BLUEWATER VALLEY 



The Bluewater Valley, together with the San Mateo valley 

 which joins the San Jose at about the same place, make up 

 about twenty one thousand acres of the richest and most 

 valuable land in west central New Mexico. As both of these 

 valleys are in close proximity to the Mt. Taylor and ZufLi 

 Plateau volcanic areas, and since volcanoes of lesser magni- 

 tude than either of the above named, are situated west of the 

 town of Bluewater, the Bluewater valley is said to be under- 

 lain with eighty feet of lava from the flows of different ages- 

 from the above sources. The two latest flows being well 

 shown just west of McCartys. This lava outcrops in places 

 all along the valley but the outcrops are small in area. There 

 are about seventy-five families at present in this locality try- 

 ing hard to develop the the section into an agricultural com- 

 munity but they are hampered greatly by lack of water. 

 The writer visited the ranch of Mr. C. E. Kyle near Grants. 

 This gentleman has some water for irrigation purposes, and 

 the healthy and vigorous growth of beans, potatoes, alfalfa^ 

 turnips, corn, and wheat with insufficient water well attested 

 to the possibilities of the soil in this valley if conditions were 

 such as to give growing crops a normal supply of water. A 

 head of wheat gathered at hapzard contained kernels as plump 

 as some of the plumpest kernels ever seen in any 

 of the wheat-growing states. Chemical analyses show 



