Imperial (196 page)

Photo #P85.13.1—Catalogue number from the ICHSPM.

Photo from Mexicali—Display at Mexicali Casa de Cultura, 2003: “Inundación de Mexicali, 1906.”

“Serious and urgent”—Senate Doc. No. 212, Fifty-ninth Congresss, second session. Imperial Valley or Salton Sink Region. Message from the President of the United States relative to the threatened destruction of the overflow of the Colorado River, . . . January 12, 1907. Southern Pacific Imperial Valley Claim (1909).

The immortal words of Otis B. Tout: “Silt—that’s the devil we’ve got to fight!”—Otis B. Tout,
Silt
, p. 3.

The Colorado’s silt content exceeded the Nile’s tenfold—Information supplied in Montgomery, p. 41.

Once upon an even more prehistoric time (or, as translated by my
Salton Sea Atlas
, millions of years ago), the Gulf of California wetted Indio. But in time the Colorado built a wall of silt across the Imperial Valley, leaving Lake Cahuilla’s trapped waters to wax and wane over the centuries in homage to this flood and that; right now the Salton Sink is dry, and had better stay so forever, because we’ve built saltworks and homesteads there. If anything, we’re afraid that it will get too dry, for the Imperial Canal’s choking and strangling with—Silt, by Otis B. Tout.
WATER IS HERE
, but only sustained effort can keep it here.

“We hesitated about making this cut . . .”—Farr, p. 127 (narrative of C. R. Rockwood, 1909). The President of Mexico’s not precisely averse; the U.S. Congress meanwhile seems disinclined to allow Imperial to suck the Colorado’s breast: Better navigation than irrigation! Imperial, being thirsty, disagrees; Imperial must have water; the Mexicans require a mere 50% of what will flow through our new canal, and maybe not less; we’ll put up the capital. Temporarily, I said; we’ll figure out something better before high water in 1905.

“Mexican Dwellers Along the Canal”—
Out West
, vol. XXIV, no. 1, January 1906, p. 11 (Edwin Duryea, Jr., C.E., “The Salton Sea Menace”).

An engineer: “Sandy soil that eats away like so much sugar.”—Southern Pacific Imperial Valley Claim (1909), p. 21.

“J. C. Thompson has rigged a double cable across New River . . .”—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 178.

“It was he who discovered the source of the water . . .”—
Out West
, vol. XXIV, no. 1, January 1906, p. 11 (Edwin Duryea, Jr., C.E., “The Salton Sea Menace”).

“The great cataract, which resembles Niagara Falls . . .”—
National Geographic
magazine, 1906 (?), vol. XVIII, no. 1, Arthur P. Davis, Assistant Chief Engineer, “The New Inland Sea (An Account of the Colorado River Break),” p. 49.

“THE SAFETY OF $100,000,000 IN THE BALANCE.”—“The New Inland Sea,” p. 41.

“Here was the gay, careless life . . .”—Farr, pp. 211-12 (“Medical History,” by Dr. F. Peterson).

Closure of the Colorado break with 11,000 flatcar loads of gravel—Southern Pacific Imperial Valley Claim (1909), p. 22.

A settler: “Characteristically American . . .”—Howe and Hall, p. 104.

45. The Third Line (1907)

Epigraph: “Because no single version of a map can serve all purposes . . .”—Greeley and Batson, p. 16.

San Diego . . . no longer reaches east of the Anza-Borrego badlands—Specifically, Imperial County’s western border is a more or less south-north line from Mexico up through the east edge of Anza-Borrego badlands to (and I quote) “the second standard parallel south of San Bernardino Base and Meridian, at the common corner of township nine, range nine east, and township ninety-five, range eight east”—this elaborately labeled point marks the northwest corner of the new Imperial County—dissects off Imperial’s west-pointing tail, leaving it to struggle as best it might within the now slightly inimical confines of San Diego County.—Coy, p. 113.

46. Subdelineations: Paintscapes (1903 -1970)

Epigraph: “The magnitude, on every level of experience and meaning . . .”—Fondation Beyeler, p. 30 (letter from Rothko to John and Dominique de Menil, 1966).

“Now knowe that all
Paintinge
imitateth nature”—Hilliard, p. 54.

“The goodnes of a picture after the liffe . . .”—Ibid., p. 58.

Photographer’s account of the composition of “Clearing Winter Storm”—Ansel Adams, pp. 103-4, 106 (commentary on “Clearing Winter Storm”).

Rothko to Stanley Kunitz: “Start new” in “a new land”—Breslin, p. 283.

Breslin on Rothko’s multiforms—Ibid., pp. 245, 235.

Painting Number 10: A “humanized sun”—Ibid., p. 277.

“To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience . . .”—Fondation Beyeler, p. 25 (Rothko typescript, 1951 MOMA symposium).

One collector: “What were they made of, after all? . . .”—Fondation Beyeler, p. 180 (essay by Ben Heller).

“Rothko’s paintings grow beautiful, reaching out to a viewer with their sensuous color . . .”—Breslin, p. 283.

Breslin: “Rothko’s empty canvases are filled with ceaseless movement . . .”—Ibid., p. 278.

Rothko on the Houston Chapel: “Something you don’t want to look at.”—Breslin, p. 469 (Rothko to Ulfert Wilke, 1967).

One admirer: “All that remains of Rothko’s once rich colors . . .”—Fondation Beyeler, p. 31 (essay by Oliver Wick).

47. Imperial Reprise (1781 -1920)

Epigraph: “They had all kinds of picturesque names for highways . . .”—Sinclair, p. 79 (
Oil!
, 1927).

PART THREE

REVISIONS

48. Futures (1883 -20 07)

Epigraph: “In compiling the present report . . .”—Weide and Barker, p. 1.

Wallace W. Elliott: “The future of San Bernardino Valley is fruit culture.”—Elliott,
History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties
, p. 117.

Helen Hunt Jackson: “. . . one of those midsummer days of which Southern California has so many in spring . . .” —Jackson, p. 36.

Wheat and barley in California, 1880-1906—
Britannica
, 11th ed., vol. 5, p. 12 (entry on California).

Wheat rust infection in Imperial County—Farr, p. 188 (Walter E. Packard, “Agriculture”).

Wheat as “a classic swing commodity”—Paul Foster reports (2007) (“Imperial Color Commentary,” comments on “Wheat: Column G, lines 5-17, Ag Census”).

“Two States in the Union produce half of the entire barley crop . . .”—
Appletons’ Annual Cyclopaedia
, 1892, p. 73 (entry on California). The greatest production was in the southwest and south, including Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties, “where this cereal is produced with the aid of irrigation, and without rainfall from seed time to harvest.”

Judge Farr: “Barley and wheat were the winter crops . . .”—Op. cit., p. 188 (Walter E. Packard, “Agriculture”).

The same, on pears and apricots—Ibid., p. 193 (F. W. Waite, “Horticulture”).

Fruit and tree nut gross income in Imperial County, 2005—Imperial County Agriculture Commissioner’s papers, 2005, p. 2.

Top five Imperial crops, 2005—Ibid., p. 10.

“During the past years nearly every kind of fruit and nuts grown . . .”—Farr, p. 192 (F. W. Waite, “Horticulture”).

“There is in America a nomadic race of beings . . .”—Ibid., p. 150 (Edgar F. Howe, “Irrigation”).

49. Harry Chandler ’s Homestead (1898 -1938)

Epigraph: “The model ranch of the Valley . . .”—Howe and Hall, p. 169.

Description of the Biltmore—From a visit in 2005.

Description of the CRLC’s cotton sampling room—
Los Angeles Times
, April 26, 1925, p. J10 (A. W. Swanson, “A Remarkable Room In Which Cotton Experts Meet”).

Image of Chandler and President Obregón,
ca.
1925—After a photo reproduced in Celso Bernal, p. 268.

Chandler’s attendance at Calles’s inauguration—Kerig, p. 242.

Tale of the Volcano Lake Compromise—Ibid., pp. 210, 229.

Chandler “took a prominent part in the organization of the company . . .”—
Los Angeles Times
, September 24, 1944, p. 1 (“Harry Chandler Called by Death: Publisher, 80, Succumbs in Hospital Following Two Heart Attacks”), continuation on p. 6.

“Chandler’s mistake”—Baja website, p. 2 of 8.

The agrarian mind’s “longing for independence . . .”—Kimbrell, p. 9 (Wendell Berry, “The Whole Horse: The Preservation of the Agrarian Mind”).

“The fundamental difference between agrarianism and industrialism . . .”—Ibid., pp. 8-9.

Footnote: “One history’s” skepticism regarding
I’ll Take My Stand—
Watkins, p. 372.

Properties of Earl and Hearst—Magón, p. 69 (essay by editor).

The “undated map of the Mexicali Valley, faded and stained, made probably before 1940”—AHMM, undated map: “Comisión Internacional de Aguas Río Colorado: Plano General de la Region Deltaica . . .”

“The methods of The King’s Basin Land and Irrigation Company . . .”—Wright, p. 283.

Holt’s special train; his commission from the SP—
Valley Grower
, July/August 2002, pp. 30-31 (Steve Bogdan, “That Man Holt”).

The “horrible company that hoarded the land”—Dwyer, p. 59 (statement of 1936).

Chandler’s arrival in the Imperial Valley—Frisby, pp. 41-42.

Harry Chandler as 3rd to file in Imperial Valley—Kerig, p. 60.

Composition of the Chandler Syndicate—Ibid., pp. 64-67.

Proposed renaming of Port Isabel to Port Otis—Ibid., p. 260.

Chandler as 85% owner of CRLC stock—Ibid., p. 292.

“There is no doubt that they sought wealth and power . . .”—Ibid., p. 70.

Otis B. Tout: “Henry Auster”—
Silt
, p. 28.

“Purchased outright from the Mexican government”—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 364.

The tale of Blythe and Andrade (incl. “now held title to virtually the entire Mexican portion of the delta”)—Kerig, pp. 40-41; Hendricks, unnumbered pp. 4-8.

Entities, events and acreage of 1898—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, pp. 363-64.

Footnote: In 1910 W. F. Holt “announced the improvement of 32,000 acres in Mexico”—Ibid., p. 192.

Same footnote, on the Inter-California Land Company—Howe and Hall, p. 119.

Tale of the Sociedad de Irrigación y Terrenos de la Baja California, S.A.—Kerig, pp. 46-48.

“Largest Irrigated Ranch in the World”—
Imperial Valley Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 25, October 4, 1902, p. 1.

Ads from the Sociedad de Irrigación y Terrenos—For instance,
Imperial Valley Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 38, Saturday, January 3, 1903, p. 2.

Holabird’s hunting trip—
Imperial Valley Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 11, Saturday, April 11, 1903, p. 1.

Andrade-CRLC transaction, 23 May 1904—California State Archives. Microfilmed Imperial County records, 1851- 1919. Roll #1433101. Index to Grantors, 1851-1907. Book 17, p. 190. Nadeau, p. 165, gives the figure of 830,000 acres owned by Chandler’s syndicate in the Mexicali Valley. DeBuys and Myers, p. 142, write that the syndicate’s holdings were 862,000 acres. Here is Hunt, p. 456: “Securing the interest of General H. G. Otis, owner of the
Los Angeles Times
, the outcome was the purchase of a great ranch of 700,000 acres, lying partly in the United States and partly in Mexico.”

SITBC-CRLC transaction, 13 June 1904—California State Archives. Microfilmed Imperial County records, 1851- 1919. Roll #1433101. Index to Grantees, 1851-1907.

The California-Mexico Land and Cattle Company accepts delivery of Texas cattle for fattening—
California Cultivator
, vol. XXIII, no. 10 (August 19, 1904), p. 251 (“News Notes of the Pacific Coast”).

“Their plan was simple . . .”—DeBuys and Myers, p. 142.

Repetition of charge that CRLC did not pay for water—For instance, “by 1904, land below the Mexican border, much of it American owned, was consuming free of charge seven times as much Colorado River water from the Imperial Canal as was being used in the valley itself.”—E Clampus Vitus website (narrative by Milford Wayne Donaldson). The accusation is also leveled at Rockwood.

”It may be said that the Chandler interests are the largest cash customer . . .”—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 365.

Footnote: “The partners of IID . . .”—Munguía, pp. 142-43. In fact, relations between the Colorado River Land Company and the mostly bankrupt consortium of mutual water companies in Northside that preceded IID soon went bad. The consortium’s receiver, Holabird, and the Chandler Syndicate’s mouthpiece, the
Los Angeles Times
, found themselves in the peculiar position of promoting land speculation in American and Mexican Imperial while decrying the actions of the new Imperial Irrigation District, not to mention the supposed insults and slanders of various Imperial County journalists.

The sober citizen: “The most valuable portion of the valley . . .”—House of Representatives (1907), p. 20 (testimony of Mr. Newell).

Comparative acreages in 1908—Chamberlin, p. 44.

California-Mexico Land and Cattle Company holdings, 1910—Howe and Hall, p. 169.

“. . . this model ranch owned by a Los Angeles stock syndicate . . .”—Farr, p. 65.

Employment figures of CRLC, 1929—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 366.

Land claims of the Colorado River Land Company in 1904—
Los Angles Times
, July 27, 1904, p. 7 (“ARBITRATE AT IMPERIAL: Truce Arranged Between the Ranchers and Company. President Heber Faces Angry Crowd of Irrigators. Trouble Coming Out of Sale of Water Rights.”).

CRLC cotton production value after World War I—Dwyer, p. 41.

History of the Colorado River Land Company through 1920s—Kerig, pp. 58, 80, 82, 83, 275, 255, 269, 257-58, 274, 270, 260.

One of Los Angeles’s glorifiers on Chandler: “It was his inspiration . . .”—Carr, p. 324.

“The syndicate’s members viewed the entire Colorado River delta . . .”—Kerig, p. 84.

“There is no law nor revolutionary principles . . .”—Quoted in Dwyer, p. 18.