elivering
water enough to generate four thousand two hundred horse-power. A mill
was built and an electric plant installed which ran the mill and machine
shops besides furnishing power for laying the heavy stones, lighting the
works and town, and leaving a large surplus amount for pumping water
from numerous wells in the Salt River Valley fifty miles away. By the
economy of self-manufacturing, the cost of the cement to the government
was but two dollars per barrel, thereby making a saving of nearly half a
million dollars.

[Illustration: Shoshone Project, Wyoming Shoshone Canyon, looking
upstream toward the dam. Dam, 328.4 feet high; storage capacity, 456,000
acre-feet]

To provide proper accommodations for all of the employees and their
families, a regular town was built on the floor of the reservoir, to be
submerged when the works should be completed and the flood gates closed.
The town, which was christened Roosevelt, contained a population of
upward of two thousand, and bore the reputation of being the best
behaved in all Arizona.

The dam, also named after Colonel Roosevelt, then President of the
United States, floods two valleys, one twelve and the other fifteen
miles long and each from one to three miles wide. The reservoir is
nearly two hundred feet deep on the average. It is two hundred and
eighty feet high, and the thickness of the dam ranges from one hundred
and seventy-five feet at the bottom to twenty feet at the top, where its
length is one thousand and eighty feet. Massive iron gates weighing
sixty thousand pounds guard the outlet of the flood. To do the
preliminary work and construct the dam nearly eight years were required,
and during a part of this time a thousand men were employed both night
and day, several hundred of whom were Apache Indians.

This region was previously the haunt of Chief Geronimo and his murderous
band of Apaches. Near by are two groups of cliff dwellings formerly
occupied by a race now extinct.

The capacity of this immense reservoir exceeds that of the Nile pent up
by the Assouan dam, and the water would be sufficient to fill a canal
two hundred feet wide and twenty feet deep, extending entirely across
the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When full there is
sufficient water to submerge the city of Washington to the depth of
thirty-four feet.

Among the other many important irrigation works may be mentioned the
Shoshone and Rio Grande Dams. The Shoshone Dam