THE COLORADO DESERT 



though there is no Spanish hulk in the 

 bottom of the Salton Sink and no evi- 

 dence that a lake had existed there within 

 historical time, there can be no possi- 

 bility of doubt of the existence of this 

 lake in the latest of prehistoric periods. 



The desert became known to white men 

 through the activities of the early Span- 

 ish explorers, who, pushing northward 

 from Mexico into Arizona and Cali- 

 fornia, finally established an overland 

 route connecting the Mexican missions 

 with that Pacific Coast group that 

 stretches from San Diego to San Fran- 

 cisco. The earliest of these Spanish ex- 

 plorers to leave a full record of his jour- 

 neyings is Father Francisco Garces, who 

 made at least four trips on foot through 

 the Sonoran deserts into southern Cali- 

 fornia, and on one of these journeys 

 passed northward nearly to San Fran- 

 cisco Bay. The simple and devout padre, 

 urged onward by the desire to extend 

 his faith to the California Indians, at last 

 lost his life in the massacre on the Colo- 

 rado at the mouth of the Gila in 1774. 

 This massacre checked the missionary 

 activities for a time, but occasional ex- 

 plorers continued to penetrate the region, 

 so that it had become known in a general 

 way when the discovery of gold in Cali- 

 fornia in 1849 led to the crowding of all 

 the western trails by the argonauts. 



One of the results of the stimulus 

 given to western exploration by the gold 

 discovery was the organization, under 

 the auspices of the army engineers, of a 

 series of expeditions whose object was 

 the determination of possible railroad 

 routes to the western coast. One of these 

 explorations, commanded by Lieutenant 

 Williamson, was assigned to the south- 

 western field, and to it was attached Prof. 

 Wm. P. Blake, now Territorial Geologist 

 of Arizona. In the course of the ex- 

 plorations of this party Professor Blake 

 visited the Colorado Desert between 

 November 13 and December 19, 1853. 

 In the volume based on his explorations 

 Professor Blake gives a complete and 

 graphic account of the great desert and 

 the phenomena displayed there. He 

 recognized that the depression was but 



the bottom of a vanished lake, whose 

 depth and extent, however, he was unable 

 to outline definitely because of the lack 

 of accurate maps. All later scientific 

 descriptions of the desert are based on 

 Blake's account and have done nothing 

 more than add detail to the general prin- 

 ciples which he outlined more than half 

 a century ago. The work, though done 

 in the briefest time and under great 

 physical difficulties, has borne well the 

 tests of all later investigations. 



The desert, although known and trav- 

 ersed when necessary, continued to be 

 shunned and dreaded until as late as 

 1879, when the Southern Pacific Railway 

 became a transcontinental line by con- 

 necting New Orleans with Los Angeles 

 along a route that crosses the southern 

 extension of the Sierra by San Gorgonio 

 Pass and follows the arid valley from 

 north to south between the pass and 

 Yuma. Since then access to this section 

 has been relatively safe and easy, but it 

 has been so uninviting and so apparently 

 worthless that until about the beginning 

 of the present century it contained no 

 permanent human inhabitants except a 

 few railroad and mine employees, who 

 regarded their assignment as worse than 

 exile. 



Engineers, however, had long realized 

 that the silt-covered floor of the desert 

 required only the application of water 

 to become a most productive agricultural 

 area. The fact that it is a portion of the 

 original delta of the Colorado River, 

 across which that stream has meandered 

 many times during the past centuries,, 

 means that the task of conducting Colo- 

 rado River waters to it is a comparatively 

 simple engineering feat ; hence several' 

 attempts had been made to finance a plan 

 to build such a system as the present 

 Imperial Canal System before the suc- 

 cessful organization of the California 

 Development Company. Following the 

 organization of this company construc- 

 tion was begun in 1900, and in 1901, in 

 the month of June, water was delivered 

 across the international boundary at Cal- 

 exico and the first Imperial Valley lands 

 were irrigated. 



