Water in the Desert
The Valley's Irrigation System

Cascading through the breach cleaving the Superstition and Mazatzal mountains fifty hard miles east of Scottsdale, the wild Salt River was tamed until the Italians and the Apaches joined forces in 1905. That's when construction began on Roosevelt Dam: it was the linchpin reclamation project for what politicians equated with the Second Coming for the Salt River Valley. When finally completed by Italian stone masons in 1911, it was the highest masonry dam in the world. It was a daunting 300 feet high and 110 feet wide, it cost $5.46 million to construct and it had a watershed of more than 6,000 square miles, creating a lake more than 30 miles long.

Ironically, this engineering marvel would not have been possible without the aid of the Apaches who, like Pattie, once traced the very course of the Salt River from the lofty reaches of the White Mountains. Only the Apache hadn't come in search of beaver pelts; they used the Apache Trail to raid Pima Indians a hundred years earlier. Equipped with picks and shovels, and their intimate knowledge of the terrain, they forged and chiseled a 50-mile-long mountain road atop their ancient footpath, whereby twenty-mule teams could haul men, supplies, and dynamite to the remote dam site from the last outpost and Mormon stronghold of Mesa. The Indians told Louis C. Hill, supervising engineer of the U.S. Reclamation Service, the following: "Tell us what you want us to do; show us how to do it; then leave us alone. We need neither bosses nor spotters. We'll do our work faithfully and well." In a little over a year, 400 sinewy Apaches had done just that.

Here was the liquid gold that would create Phoenix, named for the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes.

Jack Swilling was the first newcomer to finish digging a ditch that the Chamber of Commerce still claims gave birth to the mythological megalopolis that rose from the great Native culture. Other canals also trace out the across the desert took simple names like the Tempe Canal, the Salt River Canal, the Maricopa Canal, the Grand Canal, and the Mesa Canal. Yet if it weren't for Teddy Roosevelt riding in to save the day, those pioneers would have disappeared like the Hohokam, Glendale, Mesa and Tempe would not have become the metropolises they are today.

The Arizona Canal was no different. Built by New Yorker William J. Murphy under an imposing deadline with only two hours to spare, the 35-mile-long trench was the shining path that led to the founding of Scottsdale.

Civil War chaplain Winfield Scott was one of the first to follow. Invited to the Salt River Valley by Arizona land speculators, the visionary preacher didn't take long to realize where his greenest pastures lay. On day ten of his journey, Scott climbed off his mule, and hammered a stake in the ground on Section 23, Township 2 North, Range 4 East, calling the entire section home.

Scott had a good reason to call what amounted to 520 acres, good. Under the Desert Land Act of March 23, 1877, homesteaders had three years to irrigate their land or turn in their chips, and it just so happened that 80 acres of the Arizona Canal slithered across the northwest corner of Scott's homestead. Paid for with four bits an acre down and another two dollars an acre to cinch the dea, ($1,520 total),his claim became the heart of Scottsdale.

In April 12, 1996 a five-year, $430 million construction project was finished at Roosevelt Dam. The dam now stands 77 feet taller than when it initially was completed in 1911. With its expansion, the dam is expected to sustain water needs in the Phoenix area throughout the 21st century. Roosevelt Dam is the largest single-source of water for much of the metropolitan Phoenix area, according to the Salt River Project spokesman, Jeff Lane.

Return to Communities in the Valley of the Sun