The Salton Sea: An account of Harriman's fight with the Colorado River
Kennan, George, 1845-1924
Harriman was not a man to be daunted or “rattled” by a sudden and menacing emergency. “There, in the bustle and confusion of temporary offices, with the ruins of San Francisco still smoking, with the facilities of his roads taxed to the utmost in carrying people away from the stricken city, with the wonderful railway system which constituted his life work crippled to an unknown extent, and with the financial demands resulting from the disaster impossible to determine,” he consented to advance an additional sum of $250,000 for controlling the Colorado River and protecting the Imperial Valley. “It has always seemed to me,” writes Mr. Cory, “that this was really the most remarkable thing in the whole series of extraordinary happenings.” With the promise of this additional sum of $250,000, President Randolph returned to the Imperial Valley to take up again the fight with the runaway river. The flood, at that time, was steadily rising; the width of the crevasse had increased to a quarter of a mile, and the Colorado was pouring into the Salton basin more than four billion cubic feet of water every twenty four hours. On the 19th of April, 1906, the day after the San Francisco earthquake, Mr. C. R. Rockwood, who had been the chief engineer of the California Development Company for about four years, tendered his resignation, and
