8/20/2009 3:11:00 PM
Paradise Verde Part 2: The would-be dam
Saved from an uncertain future
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| Camp Verde Dam Site No. 2, from the 1930s. |
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CAMP VERDE - On Nov. 10, 1933, the headline story of the Jerome Copper News was printed in the newspaper's largest typeset, a size usually reserved for presidential elections and assassinations.
It read: "Verde Dam Work To Start Soon: Verde Irrigation Project Will Benefit Yavapai Co. By Hiring Laborers Soon."
The story's lead paragraph stated, "Businessmen and residents of the entire community have rejoiced this week since the news arrived in Jerome that $4,000,000 to start work on the Verde dam project had been granted by the public works administration in Washington, D. C."
A week earlier, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes announced the PWA would not only fund $4 million for preliminary work, but also provide $14.9 million to build the bulk of the Verde River Irrigation and Power District's dams and canals.
To placate any doubts the project would be completed, Ickes assured Arizonans his agency would not start something it did not intend to finish.
The rejoicing in Jerome and elsewhere across the state was justified. Men who had not worked for months, if not years, saw hope.
The Bureau of Reclamation estimated the Verde project would employ 2,000-7,000 men and generate a $350,000 monthly payroll.
The project's promoters, the settlers, investors and speculators alike, were also rejoicing. On Dec. 3, 1933, 15,000 people reportedly turned out in the barren desert of Paradise Valley for a barbecue celebrating Ickes' announcement.
Gloom and doom
But not everyone was celebrating.
Attorney Richard Sloan, representing the Salt Verde Valley Water Users Association, took the occasion of Ickes' announcement to announce his organization would file suit to have the project stopped. The Association also began a campaign to stop the loans.
For Camp Verde residents, whose homes and property lay in the belly of the proposed reservoir, a feeling of resignation set in.
"I hope I never see the ranch after it is covered with water," Mrs. Lulu Harbeson, wife of Camp Verde farmer Charles Harbeson, was quoted in the Prescott Courier as saying. "It will be like a death in the family when we give up this home that we have learned to love for almost a half century."
Harbeson spoke for many of the families in Camp Verde, the Wingfields, Monroes, Jordans and others, all owners of productive farms or ranches and all with roots deeper than the lake that would soon drown them.
For some, the feeling was bitterness.
"The water will come within 10 inches of the schoolhouse steps and will kill the largest part of Camp Verde," said Esler Monroe. "It will kill most of the businesses in town. Why not kill it all?"
Burials ceased at the Clear Creek Cemetery, the final resting place of many of the Verde Valley's earliest pioneers. It would soon be under 60 feet of water.
Feeling short changed
But as much as most were torn by the thought of leaving, they were all equally concerned about receiving an adequate settlement on their land. Realizing they would have to start over, they were also concerned about money.
"I hate to leave the valley, but I believe there is no way out of it," said Mrs. Molly Marksberry, wife of Camp Verde rancher and race horse breeder John Marksberry. "It must be for the best. I guess the government will be fair and give us what our land is worth."
Not everyone shared her naiveté.
"Someone is going to get fooled," said Lily McCracken. "The government is not going to give anyone a fortune for a farm."
McCracken spoke for most of the farmers and ranchers, as witnessed by the formation of the Verde Valley Owners Mutual Protection Association.
Upset with the prices being offered and the fact the government's three-man appraisal board consisted of one man from the Bureau of Reclamation and two from the Verde River Irrigation and Power District, the association vigorously complained to their representatives in Washington.
But as luck would have it, at least for those in the project's path, other forces were at play.
Other forces
As rumors of the dam made their way to Camp Verde, the Salt River Valley Water Users Association and the Verde River Power and Irrigation District began negotiations on a settlement.
In 1928, the two sides came to a compromise. The Verde district landowners along with their board of directors approved the compromise, as did the board of directors of the SRVWUA. But, after a year spent trying to convince them otherwise, the Salt River farmers voted it down.
Most had fought too long and too hard to protect their share of the Verde. They had little interest in sharing its water, or the generation of electrical power, with anyone.
The battle over the Verde seesawed back and forth for the next few years. The SRVWUA won some of the battles. The Verde promoters won the others. And the state's politicians tried their best to avoid being trapped in the controversy.
But as the Great Depression settled in, attitudes changed and the thought of a huge public works project to save the state's bacon gained support.
Flip flop
By the early 1930s, Senators Carl Hayden and Henry Ashurst, along with congressional Rep. Isabella Greenway, a personal friend of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, were actively lobbying for the Verde project.
A preliminary study by the Bureau of Reclamation deemed the project feasible. The SRVWUA vehemently opposed the study, arguing as they had all along that there was not enough water to supply both irrigation projects.
Their opposition drew the ire of Arizona Gov. Benjamin Moeur, along with others including the City of Phoenix, who saw the benefit of an increased tax base once the project was completed.
More hearings were held. On Nov. 3, 1933, Ickes announced the loans for the project had been approved.
But Ickes, it seems, still had doubts. Believing the preliminary feasibility study was deficient, concerned about impending lawsuits and aware the worst drought in 40 years had left Salt River reservoirs at 20 percent capacity, he ordered yet another feasibility study.
The report, prepared by Bureau of Reclamation engineer E.B. Debler, arrived on Ickes' desk on or about June 7, 1934.
It spelled the end of the Verde project.
End of the road
Debler found the Verde project, which had been previously estimated to cost $18.9 million and provide irrigation to 85,000 acres, would in fact cost $25.5 million and provide only enough water for 54,000 acres.
He deemed the $472 per acre cost, to be "extremely high" and "beyond the ability of the land to repay." In conclusion he declared the project "not feasible."
He also noted, somewhat prophetically, "An uncertainty will exist as to the water supply until all rights to the use of the Verde River are fully adjudicated."
Report in hand, representatives of the SRVWUA lobbied Rep. Greenway and Gov. Moeur to have the money for the Verde project allocated to the association to build a dam at the Bartlett site.
Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the two agreed, insisting their about-face was a way of keeping the federal relief money in Arizona.
On Oct. 3, 1934, Ickes formally announced the loans to the Verde River Irrigation and Power District had been cancelled.
Epitaph
On Oct. 13, nearly a thousand settlers, investors and speculators in the Paradise Valley project, many of whom had attended a barbecue just 10 months earlier, showed up in the desert once more, where they hung Gov. Moeur, Greenway and Ickes in effigy.
By nightfall the crowd had thinned to 400. That's when the figures swaying from the scaffold burst into flames.
Construction began on Bartlett Dam in July 1936. It was completed in 1939. Known by then as the Salt River Project, the quasi-governmental utility and water provider had at last wrestled control of the Verde River.
What happened in Camp Verde that October of 1934 was either not recorded or remains hidden. But it can be safely assumed there was a considerable amount of rejoicing.
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