March 14, 2011 © Thomas J. Kollenborn. All Rights Reserved.
On
March 18, 2011, we will be celebrating the centennial of the completion
of Roosevelt Dam. This enormous reclamation project was accomplished
during the transition from mule teams to motorized vehicles in America.
This accomplishment at that particular time in history was a triumph
over overwhelming odds of the period. Man, beast, and machine had
harnessed the power of the mighty Salt River of Central Arizona.
The early pioneers who first
settled in the Salt River Valley dreamed of harnessing the river. An
early pioneer named John W. “Jack” Swilling looked at the Hohokam canal
system and wondered why he couldn’t do the same thing. Swilling formed a
canal company and started digging. He planned to irrigate the fertile
desert land with water from the Salt River. Swilling began construction
on a canal site along the north bank of the Salt River in December of
1867. This vision of irrigating thousands of acres of desert land
eventually led to the construction of Roosevelt Dam. A hundred years ago
nobody would have believed Swilling’s name would someday be synonymous
with reclamation.
Prior to the construction of
Roosevelt Dam the citizens of the Salt River Valley depended on weirs (a
small overflow dam used to alter the flow characteristics of a river or
stream) and a canal system along the Salt River for water to irrigate
their crops. This system was constantly destroyed by flooding or had no
water to irrigate crops during drought. These weirs and canals did not
provide a dependable source of water for the valley and its farmers.
Water storage wasn’t
something new. The valley pioneers had explored the Salt River for a dam
site, but didn’t have the capital to build such a dam. They were very
familiar with the site at the confluence of Tonto Creek and the Salt
River. The Hudson Company had acquired the Tonto site by 1897 with plans
of building a dam.
The combination of serious
drought, federal inaction at the time and the failure of the Hudson
Company to construct Tonto Dam led to the formation of a citizen’s
committee on water storage in 1897. It was Benjamin A. Fowler, a man who
abandoned a successful book publishing career, who stepped in and led
the citizen’s committee which eventually ended up forming the Salt River
Water’s Users’ Association. The committee wanted to bond all cultivated
acres and charge $1.25 per acre water rent. This created considerable
consternation among committee members.
In the fall of 1900 a
permanent Salt River Valley Water Storage Committee was appointed. It
was composed of thirty-six men. The Arizona Republican in 1900 reported a
lot of talk by this committee, but no real action.
Fowler was able to pull the
group together into a working body. The group worked hard lobbying
Congress to pass the Newland Arid Lands Act. When the Newland Act passed
it provided the much needed reclamation construction for the West and
set into motion the future of the Salt River Valley Project. The
National Reclamation Act of 1902 promised financial subsidies through
the use of interest free federal money for construction projects in the
arid West. At first this act appeared to be an act of national
benevolence for the farmers of arid regions in the Southwest, but upon
closer examination it had many strings attached to it.
Fowler and others worked
diligently to organize the Salt River Water Users’ Association. The
process required signing up landowners. The association closed its books
on July 17, 1903 and forged ahead with 198,587 acres of land on the
books. Fowler became the Associations first president and was
instrumental in bringing together many factions in the Salt River Valley
so Roosevelt Dam could be constructed.
The Salt River Water Users’
Association committed bonding money to construct Roosevelt Dam by having
its membership put up their land as collateral for a federally
subsidized low interest loan. This loan is what built Roosevelt Dam and
insured a good water supply for the future of the Salt River Valley.
The construction bids for
Roosevelt Dam opened February 23, 1905. John M. O’Rourke of Denver,
Colorado submitted the winning bid of $1,147,600 and to complete the
project in two years. The newly formed Bureau of Reclamation started on
the infrastructure of the Roosevelt Project in 1903. Preliminary
construction consisted of building roads, base camps for engineers and
workers, a cement mill, a sawmill, a power canal, a sluicing tunnel, an
outlet tunnel, a coffer dam and stone had to be quarried at a nearby
quarry. The government needed cheap timber, cement, stone and
electricity to keep the construction cost of this project within the
original budget.
Louis C. Hill was appointed
as an engineer for the U.S. Reclamation Service on June 8, 1903. Hill,
age 38, was a former railroad engineer and professor of hydraulics and
electricity at the Colorado School of Mines when appointed to this job.
Hill was placed in charge of the Roosevelt Project in the spring of 1904
and remained with it until March of 1911.
The first stone was set down
on September 20, 1906, and the last stone was laid on February 6, 1911.
The original contract had called for a completion date within two years.
The construction site suffered severe flooding on several occasions
between November 26, 1905, and the spring 1906. Flooding caused many
delays in the construction. It required almost three years to raise the
dam to 150 feet at its lowest point. The dam was finally completed in
late February 1911. The dam was 284 feet above bedrock, at the time, was
the largest dam in the nation. The cost reached a staggering 5.4
million. Even at this cost the dam had borne out the wisdom of Louis C.
Hill’s decisions. This dam has become a national model in sound water
development and has been vastly important to the growth of Central
Arizona. President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the dam on March 18,
1911.
The construction and success
of this massive reclamation project was dependent on the cooperation of
many federal agencies. The success was dependent on the protection of
the watershed of this lake. This need led to the formation of the Tonto
Forest Preserve in 1909. The Bureau of Reclamation, Tonto National
Forest and the Salt River Project are all constant partners today
insuring a good water and electrical supply for the Salt River Valley.
The
need for a greater water storage capacity and better flood control
resulted in the modification of Louis C. Hill’s work. The dam was raised
77 feet in 1996 (work completed) giving this Arizona icon a new modern
look. If you decide to visit Roosevelt Dam be sure and visit the
Visitor’s Center at Roosevelt. The old haul road, the Apache Trail, will
provide you with a scenic and adventurous road to drive.
