Editing Colorado River (section)

===The Imperial Valley and the Salton Sea ===
{{main|Alamo Canal|Salton Sea}}
The Colorado River delta region in Mexico became a favored place for Americans to invest in agriculture in the late 19th century when Mexican President [[Porfirio Díaz]] welcomed foreign capital to develop the country. The Colorado River Land Company, formed by [[Los Angeles Times]] publisher [[Harry Chandler]], his father-in-law [[Harrison Gray Otis (publisher)|Harrison Gray Otis]], and others, developed the [[Mexicali Valley]] in [[Baja California]] as a thriving land company. The company headquarters was nominally based in Mexico, but its real headquarters was in Los Angeles, California. Land was leased mainly to Americans who were required to develop it. Colorado River water was used to irrigate the rich soil. The company largely escaped the turmoil of the [[Mexican Revolution]] (1910–20), but in the postrevolutionary period, the Mexican government expropriated the company's land to satisfy the demand for [[land reform in Mexico|land reform]].<ref>Dwyer, John J. ''The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico''. Durham: Duke University Press 2008</ref><ref>Kerig, Dorothy P. "Yankee Enclave: The Colorado River Land Company and Mexican Agrarian Reform in Baja California, 1902-1944." PhD diss. University of California, Irvine 1988.</ref><ref>Castillo-Muñoz, Verónica. ''The Other California: Land, Identities, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands''. Oakland: University of California Press 2017.</ref>

In 1900, the [[California Development Company]] (CDC) envisioned irrigating the [[Imperial Valley]], a then dry basin on the California–Mexico border, using water from the Colorado River. Due to the valley's location below sea level, water could be diverted and allowed to flow there entirely by gravity. Engineer [[George Chaffey]] was hired to design the [[Alamo Canal]], which split from the Colorado near [[Pilot Knob (Imperial County, California)|Pilot Knob, California]] and ran south into Mexico, where it joined the [[Alamo River]], a dry arroyo which had historically carried overflowing floodwaters from the Colorado into the [[Salton Sink]] at the bottom of Imperial Valley. The scheme worked initially; by 1903, about four thousand people lived in the valley and more than {{convert|100000|acre|ha}} of farmland had been developed.{{sfn|Billington|Jackson|Melosi|p=140|2005}}<ref name="Alamocanal">{{cite journal |author=Sperry, Robert L. |url=https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/1975/january/imperial-2/ |title=When The Imperial Valley Fought For Its Life |publisher=San Diego History Center |journal=The Journal of San Diego History |date=Winter 1975 |volume=21 |access-date=June 25, 2023 |issue=1 |archive-date=June 26, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230626013218/https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/1975/january/imperial-2/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The Alamo Canal experienced continual problems due to the Colorado's high sediment content and its varying water levels. During low flows, the river often dropped below the level of the canal intake, while high flows silted up the intake, forcing the repeated excavation of new cuts. In early 1905, flooding destroyed the intake gates and water began to flow uncontrolled down the canal towards the Salton Sink. By August, the breach had grown large enough to swallow the entire flow of the river, which began to flood the bottom of the valley. The [[Southern Pacific Railroad]] attempted to dam the flow in order to protect their tracks which ran through the valley, but was hampered by repeated flooding.<ref name="Alamocanal"/> It took seven attempts, more than $3&nbsp;million, and two years for the railroad, the CDC, and the federal government to permanently block the breach and restore the river's original course – but not before part of the Imperial Valley was flooded under a {{convert|45|mi|km|adj=mid|-long}} lake, today's [[Salton Sea]]. The Imperial Valley fiasco demonstrated that further economic development of the region would require a dam to control the Colorado's unpredictable flows.<ref>Patten, McCaskie and Unitt, pp. 4–5</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=505 |title=Origin of the Salton Sea |publisher=Suburban Emergency Management Project |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718140458/http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=505 |archive-date=July 18, 2011}}</ref>{{sfn|Billington|Jackson|Melosi|2005|pp=141–142}}