in Wyoming impounds
sufficient water to irrigate one hundred and fifty thousand acres in
the valley below. This dam was completed January 10, 1910, and is the
highest in the world, its height being three hundred and eighty-four
feet. Twelve miles below the dam proper a diversion dam was built across
the river which turns the stream into a tunnel connected at the other
end with a canal, which delivers water upon one hundred thousand acres
of fertile land.

The Rio Grande Dam involving the construction of a storage dam opposite
Eagle, New Mexico, across the Rio Grande River will irrigate one hundred
and eighty thousand acres of land in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico.

CHAPTER II

THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO

Nowhere else on the face of the globe is one so vividly impressed by the
vastness of the work of corrasion as in the northwestern part of
Arizona. Here the mutilated breast of Mother Earth discloses a chasm
from three thousand feet to seven thousand feet deep, cut through
horizontal strata of sandstone, shale, limestone, and granite, chiefly
by the agency of water.

This stupendous chasm is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. It is
more than two hundred miles long; and from rim to rim its walls measure
in places twenty miles across. It is not a clean-cut open channel from
wall to wall, but, on the contrary, it is filled with castellated peaks,
buttes, pinnacles, ridges, seams, and lesser canyons. Down deep in its
lowest part, hurrying onward with impetuous speed, is the river itself.

Geologists tell us that this stream was an ancient river before the
Mississippi was born and that it formerly watered a valley as fertile.

Ages ago when Time was young the river found its channel closed by an
obstruction--just how, or where, or by what, no one knows. So it spread
out into a great lake, or, perhaps, into an inland sea several thousand
feet deep. The rock waste carried into its basin hardened into
sandstone--red, pink, and white of many shades.

After this great inland sea had become dry the Colorado River was
born--just how, or when, or because of what, one can only guess. But
when it was born it began to undo what its predecessor had done. It cut
a channel in the surface of the sandstone and then began business in
earnest. It loosened little pieces of sharp flint from the sandstone and
swept them along with such force that each became a tiny mallet and
chisel combined to cut and carry away other