"But while the city of Roosevelt, with the homes of its two thousand inhabitants, is doomed, a fair valley is to be redeemed in which the agricultural possibilities are not exceeded anywhere in the world. Under almost tropical skies, with a soil of wonderful fertility, the farmer in Salt River Valley will cultivate his orange groves, his fig trees, his vines, while his broad meadows will yield him heavy harvests of alfalfa six and seven times a year.
"The great lake which will be created by the Roosevelt dam is to be tapped by canals hundreds of miles long and extending all over the broad valley around Phoenix. Vast areas now absolutely worthless will be transformed quickly into blossoming orchards and purpling vineyards, and hundreds of happy homes will dot a plain where now the giant saguaro rears its spiny head and the Gila monster roams at will."
Life in the Far West is a continual series of the occurrence of such events as these. Its problems are largely solved by the civil engineer and the irrigation expert, who transform vast deserts to regions of blossoming beauty, change the course of a river, send railroad trains climbing the mountain peaks or penetrating beneath the range, and who are, in short, the modern magicians who work their will with the forces of nature. The National Reclamation Act is fairly recreating the entire Southwest.
The Gila River, which is the largest tributary of the Colorado, flows through the regions south of Florence, Arizona, and affords water to many fertile and beautiful valleys; and Florence, with the towns of Yuma, Tucson, Glendale, Bisbee, Winslow, and others, is fully abreast in modern life. Large department stores, public libraries, schools and churches, women's clubs, daily newspapers, good railroad facilities, free postal delivery,--all these make up the environment of a splendid and progressive citizenship. As the Governor of Arizona, Hon. Joseph H. Kirley, has recently said:
"Nowhere can a man who respects his neighbor's rights, with reasonably strict attention to his own business, go about with more freedom and with greater confidence of personal safety than in Arizona. Locked and barricaded doors are in most parts of Arizona a novelty. The professional thief is almost unknown in the territory."