Page 67

receipts from the sale of public lands in the sixteen states and territories of the arid region. This money, to be used in the construction of projects, was known as the Reclamation Fund. This, as it turned out, was Powell's "cooperative capital," which he said in the Arid Lands would be necessary for maximum reclamation development. Reclamation law was broadened by the Power Act of 1906 and other legislation, especially by the Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928, the first of the great multiple-purpose projects. Before 1928 federal reclamation in the watershed of the Colorado River focused mainly on the requirements of the lower basin and on developments on the upper basin tributaries like the Uncompahgre and Grand Valley projects in Colorado and the Strawberry project in Utah. Little attention was given to possible developments in the Glen Canyon region until the Colorado River dramatically shifted its channel and flowed into the Salton Sea in the summer of 1905. Before it was stopped February 11, 1906, much agricultural land in the Imperial Valley had been inundated. The river was called a "natural menace" and other names, and investigations of several kinds were undertaken in the upper basin, most of them concerned with water storage locations to serve the needs both of irrigation and flood control. Private concerns and government agencies, particularly the Reclamation Service (formed in 1902, as part of Geological Survey, until 1906, when it became a separate bureau named Bureau of Reclamation in 1923) Geological Survey, Office of Indian Affairs, Forest Service, and Weather Bureau, participated in these studies. The accumulation of material collected by different agencies bearing upon the water resources of the entire Colorado River basin was assembled by E. C. LaRue, hydraulic engineer of the Geological Survey, and published in 1916 under the title, Colorado River and Its Utilization. This was a pioneer work undertaken to provide a basis of knowledge about the behavior of the river, the water supply, river control, irrigation and water power potential for the comprehensive consideration of the development and utilization of the total basin. The paper reveals the extensive development that had taken place in the upper basin since the time of the Powell, Hayden, and Wheeler surveys of the 1870's. For the Glen Canyon region LaRue indicated the extent to which irrigation had been practiced on the tributary streams and he mentions the prospective irrigation systems on the Paria River, Escalante River, Fremont River, and the San Juan River at Bluff. He reported that -67-Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 13,858,816 byte