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THE IBEIGATION AGE. 



NEW MEXICO'S GREAl^NATURAL RESERVOIRS 



More Valuable than All the Minerals in the Mountains Rushing to Waste to Gulf of Mexico 



COL. R. E. TWITCHELL 

 First Vice President, Eighteenth National Irrigation Congress. 



IX all its history New .Mexico has never had so much 

 attention as at the present time. The early admission 

 of the territory as a state, the great land hunger epi- 

 demic which seems to be prevalent in the middle and 

 eastern states, the knowledge that in New Mexico there 

 are thousands of acres of land which may be taken up 

 under the homestead laws of the nation, and the great 

 amount of publicity given to the possibilities for the 

 homeseeker and the homemaker in the west and south- 

 west, have provoked an enormous inquiry from all por- 

 tions of the country. 



New Mexico, is looking ^forward to a great era of 

 prosperity. Of course, locally, the subject just now up- 



the dominant party the Republican in New Mexico. 

 There are a great many Democrats who believe they have 

 better than a fighting chance. 



Even in the west there seems to be a great lack of 

 information as to the prospects of the new state along 

 agricultural lines. The amount of water which may be 

 made available for irrigation purposes, through storage, is 

 but poorly appreciated even among our own people. The 

 truth is the great majority knows nothing about surface 

 and torrential flows, although* they witness every year the 

 going to waste of enough water to quadruple the present 

 irrigated area of New Mexico. 



The continuation of the Sangre de Christo range of 



The Eagle's Nest project comprises several good storage and distributing reservoirs where water can be stored at a very reasonable expense. The best .in 

 lake fed by many clear mountain streams and was formed by a granite dyke through which the Cimarron River has cut its rocky channel. Had not thi 

 completed among the earlier reclamation projects. 

 The engineering problem of the dam is very simple. A dam 90 feet long on the bottom, 320 feet long on top and 140 feet high, built of rock from the clil 



114,000-acre feet of water at one filling. 



Eagle's Nest reservoir will be at an altitude of 8,100 feet, where there is little evaporation. There will be no loss from seepage on account of the solid graoi 

 ply of water. 



permost in the minds of the people is making the consti- 

 tution for the new state, and for the next twelve months 

 we will have about as much politics in New Mexico as 

 is ordinarily allotted to the citizen of the great and 

 growing southwest. We are not lacking in politicians; 

 we could loan Colorado a few to great advantage, just 

 now most of them are candidates for the senate. A 

 desire to represent the new state in the upper house of 

 the national Congress is not confined to the members of 



mountains from Colorado southward into New Mexico 

 carries their elevation, practically undiminished, down 

 through the western portions of Colfax, Mora and S?.n 

 Miguel counties, and the eastern portion of Taos county, 

 and end in the Glorieta and Santa Fe ranges. This range 

 is a great watershed Its abrupt and precipitous slopes 

 make a runoff of probably more than one-half of the 

 heavy, dashing rains, and at least one-fourth of the lighter 

 rains and snows, while the forests of pine, spruce and 



