Steve Bogener - Ditches Across the Desert.jpg
 | Steve Bogener - Ditches Across the Desert.jpg Rozmiar 179 KB |
Wealthy easterners invested in its development in the great traditions of American capitalism. Farmers laboring side by side to transform the desert into productive cropland represented the ideals of Jeffersonian yeoman democracy. These people, and the change of the Pecos Valley from rustic cattle territory to towns and irrigated farmland, form the framework for this rich story of the American West. By the end of the nineteenth century, investors led by James John Hagerman had poured more than $2.5 million into the Pecos ditches. Following episodes of violence, a natural disaster, and the financial downturn of 1893, settlers and capitalists deserted the valley, making its future uncertain. A series of financial reorganizations to raise much-needed capital attracted a major railroad to the valley, but the heyday of corporate irrigation was over. Instead, the irrigators turned to the federal government, and the U.S. Reclamation Service, although reluctant to rehabilitate the valleys irrigation system, agreed to take on the project and began a long, sometimes contentious relationship with water users in the valley.
Today the once formidable Pecos River has become a mere shadow of its former self. Dammed in many places for irrigation, its springs pumped dry in others, the Pecos today leads a precarious existence. Yet the contest over its water within New Mexico and between New Mexico and Texas through the Pecos River Compact continues.