What the NATIONAL FORESTS Mean to the WATER USER 21 



Some Results of Forest Destruction 



How any interference with the protective cover of trees and other 



vegetation works to the detriment of the water user is illustrated by the 



history of a small stream on the Pike Forest known 



as Trail Creek. This was originally a clear stream con- _, . 



Lreek 

 fined to a narrow channel and with comparatively little 



erosion. Gradually, however, the character of the stream changed as a 

 result of heavy cutting on its watershed, prior to the creation of the 

 National Forest and on private lands included within the Forest bound- 

 aries, followed by a number of severe forest fires. Floods became more 

 frequent, erosion set in, the stream beds were widened, and their bottoms 

 began to fill up with sand and gravel washed down from above. 



In April, 191 4, a heavy flood occurred which wrought serious damage 

 to a small ranch at the mouth of the creek. Approximately 11 acres of 

 irrigated land, worth $40 an acre and including nearly a fourth of the 

 irrigated land on the ranch, were buried under from 18 to 30 inches of 

 coarse gravel and rendered practically worthless. Furthermore, the flood 

 filled up the irrigating ditches so completely and changed the course of 

 Trail Creek so markedly as to make it impossible to continue the use of 

 water from the creek for irrigation without going to considerable expense 

 in the construction of new improvements. In August of the next year a 

 heavy hailstorm resulted in another flood which washed out several acres 

 of hay land along the creek bottom and ruined 1 6 tons or more of hay worth 

 $14 a ton. The same storm also brought down an immense amount of 

 gravel in an ordinarily dry gulch running through the farm and piled this 

 2}4 feet deep against the kitchen door. Altogether, the floods of these two 

 years damaged this one small ranch to the extent of at least $600 and 

 rendered approximately one-fourth of it practically nonproductive. 



Other examples of the damage resulting from interference with the 

 forest cover before the creation of the National Forests can be selected 



almost at random from the Mountain Forests of the 



-r - ^ • -^ 1 ,, ^ ban Isabel 



West. In the Sangre de Lristo Range and the Green- 



FoTcst 

 horn Range, in what is now the San Isabel National 



Forest, in southern Colorado, it is very noticeable that streams whose 



headwaters have been denuded to a considerable extent of their protective 



cover have badly eroded channels and are subject to great extremes in 



