Essay On The Colorado River

Arizona farmers are resistant to drip irrigation and prefer flood or rainwater-propelled irrigation, which is used on about 95 percent of Arizona crops. “Farmers have a hard time justifying drip irrigation because water is relatively cheap and drip systems can cost from $500 to $2,000 per acre to install” (U.S. Water News Online). Unfortunately cost is a prohibition not only for farmers but for private residents as well. Many residents have migrated to Arizona due to the region's affordable prices. One of the major problems our towns are facing is the conversion of homes to a more environmentally sound energy models that currently are extremely expensive.

Flooding of the settlement was problematic. By 1812, the settlers had built miles of levees on the banks of the river. For the next two hundred years, the surrounding wetlands were drained to eliminate swamps filled with yellow fever carrying mosquitoes and to encourage economic development. Draining water from peaty soils encouraged subsidence. The land which was just inches above sea level to begin with steadily sank. In combat of this, higher and stronger levees were built, tightening the straight jacket already placed upon the Mississippi River. The massive flooding of 1928 brought further flood control systems implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers with Congressional blessing. By the 1950’s, dramatic rates of land loss in Louisiana’s coastal zone stretched across 300 miles from Texas to Mississippi and inland 50 miles. (Tibbetts)

Since the settlement of the American West, rivers have experienced changes in the natural flows and movements. Among these processes flooding has become controlled as dams have been built. Esselman et al. (2011) tracked numerous categories of anthropocentric activities through geographical informational systems. The team found that upstream fish habitats were exponentially impacted by human activities downstream. In addition to the upstream movement of impacts human impacts also travel downstream. Different human impacts on the Yellowstone River versus the Platte River have greatly affected the river ecosystems.

In 1935 the Hoover Dam was completed forming Lake Mead, providing flood control, reservoir storage, power generation and regulates the downstream flow to the Lower Basin States. [footnoteRef:20] In 1963, the Glen Canyon Dam was completed forming Lake Powell, providing the Upper Basin States with enough reserve capacity to allow them to meet their annual obligation of 7.5 Million Acre Feet (MAF) to the Lower Basin States, allowing the Lower Basin States to use the allocation.[footnoteRef:21] As a consequence of the construction of the Hoover Dam and the Glen Canyon Dam, the Colorado?s flow often evaporated in Mexican sands close to the Delta.[footnoteRef:22] Around the 1970s, the Cienega de Santa Clara had shrunken by 500 acres. Nevertheless, due to the following wet decades, the Cienega was resuscitated to about 10% of its original acreage in the 80?s and 90?s.[footnoteRef:23] Currently, the Cienega is a 40,000 acre wetland that exists due to the return flows from the Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District near Yuma, Arizona.[footnoteRef:24] This Cienega is the home of less than 100 members of the Cucapa tribe and is the habitat of several endangered fish and birds, including Desert Pupfish and Yuma Clapper Rail.[footnoteRef:25] [19: D.F.

Along this journey created by nature, the river interacts with man’s influence to encapsulate the full geographic experience of this region. The succession of dams along the river’s path is a major contribution to how man has decided to mesh with the river. The dams have created reservoirs for water supplies, harnessed energy to provide electric power to the southwestern region, and controlled flooding. Flood control was the main concern at the time between the years 1905 and 1907 when large floods broke through the irrigation gates and destroyed crops in California. The flooding was so large it actually created a 450 square mile sea, named the Salton Sea. As a result of this major disaster, ideas were formulated to

The Determination of the Rio Grande being the Texas official border was influenced by many policies and beliefs. Although one large piece was influenced by the Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a belief that God wanted America to expand all the way to the west coast of the American Continent. The Americans wanted the Rio Grande to be the Texas border because of this belief. However, Mexico objected and claimed that the Nueces River was the Texas border. The United States did not want the Nueces River to be the border because it did not fulfill the Manifest Destiny. So then the only way to make the Rio Grande the border was to push Mexican out of the area. American had to make Mexico recognize that the Texas border was the Rio Grande.

Louis L’Amour, author of “Rivers West” and many other famous books and short stories, was born in Jamestown North Dakota March 22, 1908. L’Amour was an indifferent student and dropped out of school at the age of 15. The next two decades L’Amour traveled the world and held many different jobs, he was a lumberjack, an elephant trainer, a miner, and during World War 2 he served as an officer in the tanks corps in Europe. It was not till he came back from World War 2 that he decided to be a writer and he wrote books as wells short stories, but finally after years his big break came at the age of 46 with the western book “Hondo” which later was adapted into a movie done by John Wayne. L’Amour married Katherine Elizabeth Adams in 1956, and they had two children. Over the next thirty years L’Amour wrote many more books and short stories, some were eventually adapted into movies, and on June 10,1988 Louis L’Amour died of lung cancer though he was not a smoker.

The Colorado River Basin starts in the Rocky Mountains and cuts through 1500 miles of canyon lands and deserts of seven US states and two Mexican states to supply a collection of dams and reservoirs with water to help irrigate cropland, support 40 million people, and provide hydroelectric power for the inland western United States [1,2]. From early settlement, rights over the river have been debated and reassigned to different states in the upper and lower basin; however, all the distribution patterns lead to excessive consumption of the resource. In 1922, the seven US states signed into the Colorado River Compact, which outlined the policy for the distribution rights to the water [3], however, this compact was written during an exceptionally

One of the challenges developers faced while building these canals was flooding. In 1916 a major flood hit Yuma destroying buildings and homes and more reconstruction needed to be done. To make this water source lasts developers had to change these canals. By adding siphons along the canals and rivers making the water flowing and stable. Now with the water at a steady flow more Wheat, Cotton, Broccoli and Lettuce can be grown for the seasons. The Colorado River flows progressively, Indians in the desert are relying on Yuma on the

The Colorado Gold Rush is one of the Gold Rushes that does not get that many attention when it comes time to talk about our nation history. Sure they talk about the Gold Rush that happened in 1848 which was the California Gold Rush. The Colorado Gold Rush didn't happen 11 years after the gold was founded in eastern part of the Rocky Mountains in Cripple Creek. When the San Francisco Gold Rush was happening it made people wanted to come to the West for a bite of that Gold but ones people got here in Colorado people had one thing on their way which was the Rocky Mountains. There was no way around the Rocky Mountains at that time it was hard because people would have wagons with all their stuff most people would leave someone of their belongings behind so they could go through easer just reach the Gold Rush in San Francisco

One of the many things that irrigation changed Yuma was by it expanded Yuma’s population by 80%. Yuma used to be a very unpopulated area. Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas have the biggest basin.” One of the biggest reasons on how Yuma got very populated was because of the project called Yuma Project. For this project to get authorized President Theodore Roosevelt turned the abandoned Fort Yuma Military Reservation, in Arizona, over to the newly formed Reclamation Service for the development of irrigation projects.”

There are many different ways irrigation has changed Yuma and the rest of Southern Arizona very drastically. Irrigation has existed in Southern Arizona and Yuma County since the 1800’s. Irrigation has been practiced in the Algodones Grant with a view to determine if gravity canals would be effective for irrigation. 50,000 to 60,000 acres are extremely fertile and are very capable of producing crops when there is a sufficient amount of water given for irrigation to take place. “Water is too valuable to use on farms” was a myth in the 1900’s about irrigation but there is 80% of the Colorado River water the is used in agriculture. Agriculture business in Yuma county has changed

It is without saying that irrigation holds a vital role in the Yuma County and is significant in varying ways. The influence and control that it has reaches past the county and state of Arizona and affects people throughout the nation. It paved the way for superior crops, more efficient farms, and great feats of accomplishment.

In his book, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Marc Reisner’s main thesis is to show the inefficiency, greed, and inherent difficulty in the American West’s never-ending struggle to turn its unwelcoming desert into a lush garden. One of his main sub-points is that the West is not meant to support millions of people. It has a wide range of geographic challenges throughout the entire region. Its inconsistency and diversity is a primary cause of its water problems. For example, Reisner notes that the West consists of “plains so arid that they could barely support bunchgrass; deserts that were fiercely hot and fiercely cold; streams that flooded a few weeks each year and went dry the rest; forests with trees so large it might take days to bring one down; . . . hail followed by drought followed by hail;” (23).

Prior to settlement of the western United States, the Colorado River roamed free. Starting from cool mountain streams, the river eventually became a thunderous, silty force of nature as it entered the canyons along its path. The river nourished wetlands and other riparian habitats from the headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the delta at the Sea of Cortez in Northwest Mexico. Settlers along the river harnessed these waters mainly for agriculture via irrigation canals, but flooding from spring runoff wreaked havoc on agricultural land, prevented development in the floodplain and full utilization of the water, a waste in the eyes of western farmers. In order to meet current and future water demands in the west, the Federal Government