Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

116 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. and Second Attempts to close the Breach. neers realize that more aggressive measures were needed for the conquest of the river, though further operations were postponed until the following May. Two rows of piles, 15 feet apart, were then carried out from the right bank of the the obstruction served only to Company, owing to exhaustion of funds, could no longer conduct. Colonel Randolph, Vice- President of the railway, resident at Tucson, an eminent engineer with a wide experience of river work, was put in command, with Mr. C. E. Rockwood, the engineer who had conceived the irrigation scheme, as chief executive. channel ; but STEAMBOAT AND CREW PREPARING TO DAM THE INTAKE : FIRST ATTEMPT. make the river erode the other bank, so that the gap was not lessened. After a month’s work the attempt had tc be abandoned. By this time the Salton Sink had become a great lake, forty miles long. Destruction threatened the track of the Southern Pacific Railway, which skirted the northern edge of the lake and the railway management, urged by the law of self-preservation, had to take hold of the business which the Development Their predecessors had not realized fully the strength of the Colorado. Fed by melting snow, the river naturally floods in the season —May to September—when the sun has greatest power. Like other rivers traversing arid regions with no vegetation to regulate the off-flow of the water, the Colorado has a maximum flow many times—about fifty— greater than the minimum. During a flood period the quantity of water passing a given