Ditches across the desert : irrigation in the lower Pecos Valley /

Efforts to irrigate the Pecos Valley in southeastern New Mexico began in the 1870s, when Pat Garrett (better known as the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid) and eastern promoter Charles Eddy planned to dam the Pecos River. Bogener's fine narrative carries the story of private and public irrigation projects over the next half century, culminating in the creation of the Pecos River Compact Commission in 1923. This is a story of visionaries and speculators, greed and naivete, power and politics, which explores themes common to the arid West. Investors from Colorado Springs and the East poured millions of dollars into the construction of privately funded dams, canals, and reservoirs, but faulty construction, porous soil, salinity, and the national economic crisis of 1893 doomed the project. Farmers from points as distant as Italy and Switzerland were ill-prepared for the vagaries of irrigation farming. By century's end, private ventures had failed. Valley residents convinced the newly organized Bureau of Reclamation to take over, but only after a former Rough Rider convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to direct a reluctant Bureau to act. Even then, the project sputtered along, as former mining engineers learned on-the-job the trade of reclamation engineer. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels and libraries. A. J. Dunar University of Alabama in Huntsville