River Histories

Colorado River, History

Robert McPherson
Utah History Encyclopedia

The Colorado River is one of the most important water systems in the United States. Draining watersheds from seven western states, it is divided into two major districts, the Upper Basin comprised of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin formed by Nevada, Arizona, and California. With its headwaters in Wyoming and Colorado and its mouth (until recently) flowing into the Gulf of California, this river serves as a focal point for both prehistoric and historic events in the West.

The Colorado courses through Utah in a southwesterly direction and has two major tributaries, the Green and San Juan rivers, with smaller, additional sources flowing in from east and west. During prehistoric times it constituted a permeable boundary between the Anasazi populations to the south and east, and the Fremont and western Anasazi populations to the northwest and west, respectively. The Anasazi farmed tributary canyons and alluvial bottom lands where soil was rich and water adequate. These early Indians also created a system of trails that crossed both the San Juan and Colorado rivers. Spanish and Anglo-Americans later used some of these paths in their exploration and settlement of the West…

…During the 1820s and 1830s, Euro-American mountain men ventured down and trapped parts of the Colorado. Famous personalities like Jedediah Smith, James Ohio Pattie, and Ewing Young searched for beaver along its banks, while another trapper, Denis Julien, left his inscription in Cataract Canyon…

…Many people in Utah came to cross or visit the river but, with the exception of Moab where the water was calmer and the flood plain wide, few came to stay. For instance, the Mormons built the Hole-in-the-Rock trail in 1880, but once across, they moved on to the quieter San Juan. Charles Hall, a year later, placed into service a thirty-foot ferry boat to handle the traffic on the route between Bluff and Escalante; insufficient business caused Hall's Crossing to close three years later. Even Hite City (1883), named after Cass Hite, a prominent prospector, was a boom-and-bust mining town on the Colorado that lasted only seven years. After the placer gold was removed from the gravel bars located at sites like Dandy's Crossing and Ticaboo, the miners left their claims in search of better paydirt…

…The 1930s and 1940s saw the introduction of a more profitable trade on the Colorado--river running and tourism. Norman Nevills, for example, headquartered at Mexican Hat and turned the red waters of the San Juan and Colorado into green cash as recreation became increasingly important. Even with the introduction of the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950s and Lake Powell in the 1960s, there was still plenty of white water and red rock for adventurous souls to find the isolation and excitement they desired. And later, when its tributaries were heavily committed to irrigation and culinary use, the Colorado remained a playground for kayakers, rafters, and tourists. Today, the Utah portion of the Colorado River continues to offer not only its water as a resource, but also its beauty and adventure to those who come to its banks. [Full article available at: Utah History to Go]

Columbia River, History

The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation in the Columbia River Basin dates to 10,000 B.P. [Before Present Time] The earliest groups lived by fishing, hunting large mammals, and gathering plant foods. Cultures in the proto-historic and historic periods varied greatly along the river. On the lower Columbia groups lived in large multi-family long houses, while on the middle and upper river sections, people moved seasonally and lived in smaller groups. Native fishers took salmon at Willamette Falls on the Willamette River and at Kettle Falls on the upper Columbia. Celilo Falls on the middle river was the most important native fishery. Thousands gathered there during the spring and summer fish runs to harvest chinook salmon and trade. In the early 19th century, Pacific Fur Company trader Alexander Ross called Celilo "the great emporium or mart of the Columbia…”

…Twentieth-century alterations on the Columbia River dwarfed the early dredging and canal building. In 1932, private power companies completed Rock Island Dam on the middle river. In 1933, the federal government began work on Bonneville Dam on the lower river and Grand Coulee Dam on the upper river. By 1975, eleven dams stood on the mainstem, with many additional dams on major tributaries. The hydroelectric resources contributed directly to waging World War II. Electricity from the Columbia River powered aluminum plants, shipyards, and the development of the plutonium atomic bomb at Hanford Engineering Works near Richland, Washington. The hydroelectricity generated on the Columbia has stimulated significant industrial growth in the Pacific Northwest since World War II. [Full article available at: Center for Columbia River History]

Rio Grande, History

The Spanish Empire's entradas for colonization and conversion first made their way up the Rio Grande led by explorer Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1536. Wandering inland in search of the mythic, "Seven Golden Cities of Cibola," Cabeza de Vaca and his band never found gold, but they did uncover an unexpected surprise. The conquistadors and priests found near the present site of Juarez, Mexico, Pueblo Indians irrigating and cultivating almost 30,000 acres of maize, beans and calabashes. The Spanish arrival instigated a hundred year test of wills between the Europeans and the Pueblos. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, a mission established by fathers at El Paso del Norte, (modern Juarez), began schooling the Indians in more advanced methods of growing crops, aided by water provided by the Acequia Madre (Main Canal). In 1680, an Indian revolt drove the Spanish and Christianized Indians south from New Mexico to present Juarez, Mexico, and Yselta, Texas. Don Diego De Vargas began the reconquest of New Mexico twelve years later, and the Spanish influence over the Rio Grande was cemented into place.

In the following 150 years, up to 40,000 acres of land were tilled along the river, most on what would later become Mexico. Once Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexican settlers dug modest canal and diversion structures, and built a loose boulder dam. On the left bank of the river, Juan Maria Ponce de Leon in 1827 found modern El Paso. Almost immediately, colonists diverted water from above the boulder dam with no complaint from the residents of Juarez. At the close of the nineteenth century, 25,000 people lived on the U.S. and 25,000 on the Mexican sides of the Rio Grande…

…As the State Department shut out the RGD&IC in the courts, a door opened for the possibility of a federally built dam. The birth of the United States Reclamation Service (USRS) in June of 1902 propelled construction of a storage system on the Rio Grande to the top of the Federal government's "must do" list. Surveys of the bedrock in south-central New Mexico began in March, 1903, and a year later, the USRS settled on a site near Engle, New Mexico, where it would build a dam accomplishing "much for Mexico, and a great deal more for the United States."8

Below the conical peak of Elephant Butte, the Reclamation Service conceived a reservoir 175 feet deep at its lower end, and 40 miles long. With a storage capacity of 2 million acre feet the dam could furnish 600,000 acre feet a year of water for irrigation. Armed with a library of reports and a drafting table piled with designs, Reclamation captured the Rio Grande, but the voices of legislation and diplomacy still had to speak -- in both Spanish and English. [Full article available at: Bureau of Reclamation, The Rio Grande Project]

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