Oil, Potash and Caverns

  In the southeastern part of New Mexico, thirty miles from the Texas border, lies the town of Carlsbad. Carlsbad is principally known for the nearby Carlsbad Caverns, but it is predominantly an oil town, its fortunes rising and falling with the oil industry. There are also quite a few potash mines in the area. Potash is a substance that is used in a variety of things, such as making glass, but it is mainly used in making soap. The word "potassium" is a derivative of "potash." Carlsbad's fortunes are currently on the rise due to the ongoing oil boom. Its population hovered around 24,000 to 25,000 for about 60 years, with the exception of the 1960s when it dropped to around 21,000. The population of Carlsbad is currently
about 29,000.
  Carlsbad is a pleasant little town that is an oasis in the desert. There is a small lake in town,  Lake Carlsbad, that is the result of a small dam that was built across the Pecos River. There are two more lakes north of town, Avalon and Brantley, that are also the result of dams, much bigger dams, across the Pecos River. The lake in town is basically just a deep and full river channel, resembling what the Pecos River must have looked like in the distant past. It takes a dam to get the river to fill up its channel in this parched corner of the Chihuahuan Desert. 
When the Pecos River comes into Carlsbad from the north, it is just a dry channel, having been sucked dry by Avalon Dam upstream and also by the Pecos River Flume, which is considered to be an engineering marvel.
  Carlsbad is one of the hottest places in New Mexico, which is typically a high elevation state.
  I remember one time, in June of 1994, when I lived in Arizona, when I was on vacation and I met my family in Carlsbad and it was one of the most severe heat waves in a long time, with the high temperature in Carlsbad, over that stretch, averaging 118 degrees with the hottest temperature recorded being 121 degrees. The state record high temperature for New Mexico,
122 degrees, was recorded during that heat wave at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,
southeast of Carlsbad.
Even with its somewhat lofty elevation, Carlsbad is still at an elevation of 3,111 feet above sea level. Even though this elevation is rather high, Carlsbad is one of the lowest  towns in
New Mexico. In fact, the lowest point in New Mexico is south of Carlsbad at the Texas border at the point where Red Bluff Lake enters Texas. Red Bluff Lake was created by still another dam across the Pecos River. The elevation of the lowest point in New Mexico is 2,817 feet above sea level.
  With this introduction, I will now write a series about Carlsbad and its county, Eddy County.
 

Border Twins

  WOW! I cannot believe that I haven't written in this blog since February 23rd. Well, since I
am writing about the upper part of the Texas Panhandle in my other travel blog, I have decided to begin writing about an area on the western edge of the Texas Panhandle. Specifically, two "twin towns" that are only separated by a state border. Those towns are Farwell, Texas and Texico, New Mexico. Farwell is located on land that was formerly part of the XIT Ranch, that legendary, 3 million acre ranch that existed on the western edge of the Texas Panhandle in the late 1800s. In fact, Farwell is on the opposite end of the former ranch from Dalhart, which I have been writing about in my other travel blog. Farwell was named for two brothers who were part of the Capitol Syndicate, a group that received the land that would become the
XIT Ranch in exchange for building the state capitol in Austin. This deal was struck after the old capitol suffered a catastrophic fire in 1881.
  The town on the New Mexico side of the border is Texico. The town's name is rather obvious, it is a combination of "Texas" and "New Mexico."
  Farwell was platted as a townsite in 1905. I have not been able to find a founding date for Texico, but I believe it was established at about the same time. Most towns in this area were established in the first decade of the 1900s. Farwell was platted in 1905 at the point where two railroads entered New Mexico. One railroad ran southwest from Amarillo and the other one ran northwest from Lubbock. They meet just inside the state border, in Texas. The highways that were built in later years that parallel these two railroads, U.S. Highway 60 and
U.S. Highway 70, meet just inside New Mexico.
  Farwell and Texico are roughly the same size, with Farwell being a tiny bit bigger. In the
2010 Census, Farwell had 1,363 people and Texico had 1,130 people.

Idaho Revisited

  Well, my posts keep bringing me back to Idaho. Idaho is a state that I have not visited very often, but I absolutely loved it when I did! Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico are my three favorite states. What is amazing about Idaho is how much of it is still untouched wilderness. There are huge chunks of the state that are still roadless to this day.  This is especially true in the central part of the state and also in Owyhee County, which occupies the southwest corner of Idaho. But it holds true for the vast majority of the state.
  I have not personally visited Idaho since 2008 and I am having "withdrawals." I now live farther away from Idaho than I did in the past, so getting there would be a little more difficult.
  Idaho seems to have somewhat of an identity crisis. I don't mean that as a put down at all, but, in the past, whenever I would say "Idaho," people usually thought I was talking about Iowa or Ohio. Also, when people think of Idaho, they usually think of whitewater streams, dark, dense forests and mountain men. Well, that is true, but there is a lot more than that. The majority of southern Idaho is desert and a good sized chunk of northern Idaho is a lush  grassland that is part of the Palouse Region. The Palouse Region lies mostly in Washington and also occupies the northeast corner of Oregon, but it extends into Idaho as well. There is also a lush grassland in southern Idaho, near the Utah border. In fact, this area is part of
Curlew National Grassland, a system of protected grasslands that were established after the horrendous Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. Most national grasslands are in the Midwest, in the Plains states, but there is one in Idaho and one in Oregon. These are the farthest west of the national grasslands. National Grasslands are administered by the U.S. Forest Service, under the direction of the Department of Agriculture.
  In addition to Idaho's apparent identity crisis, it has recently been determined that the state's name is fictitious.  It was believed that "Idaho" was a derivative of "eda how," which was supposedly a Shoshone Indian word that meant "sun shining on the mountains."
This has recently been determined to be false. Yet this claim appeared in text books until very recently. George Willing, an eccentric lobbyist in the 1860s, suggested the name "Idaho" when Congress was considering creating a new territory in this area. This name was initially rejected, but would not go away. The Colorado town of Idaho Springs took this name and later a steamship took the name "Idaho." Eventually a county was created called Idaho County. This name later was applied to the new territory. The county named Idaho got its name before the territory/state did. George Willing even admitted later that he made the name up, because he liked the sound of it, but this evidently escaped the notice of historians until very recently. And yet, there is a Comanche Indian word "idaahe" that means "enemy." Hmmmm could there be a connection there? People don't seem to think so, but there might be. Maybe George Willing just made up a word without realizing the similarity it had to a Comanche word?
  Anyway, I am planning to write about Idaho for awhile.

An Iconic Bridge

  There are two attractions that come to mind when most people think of Yuma. One is the
Old Yuma Territorial Prison, which is now a state park, and the other is the Ocean to Ocean Highway Bridge. The Ocean to Ocean Highway Bridge was the first automobile bridge over the Colorado River. It opened to traffic in 1914. Since this bridge was the only river bridge over a huge area, it forced many people who were driving from east to west or west to east, to make a big detour to the Yuma area so they could cross the Colorado River safely on a bridge. At the time, the Colorado was a huge, wide, deep and cantankerous river that was very difficult to cross. That is no longer the case, since the river has been over allocated and over irrigated to provide water to a thirsty population in an arid climate.
  Nevertheless, this is still an iconic bridge and is a marvel of early bridge building techniques. 
  The Ocean to Ocean Highway Bridge and the adjacent railroad bridge, were built where the Colorado River squeezes between bluffs on each side, at least it used to squeeze between bluffs.
The bridge is 444 feet long, but these days, the majority of that span is over a dry riverbed with just a narrow stream snaking through the historic river channel. The bridge opened to automobile traffic in 1914. It was completely rehabilitated in 1943, during World War II, as a  "national necessity" because, at the time, a major federal highway went over the bridge, providing a crucial link between California and the rest of the nation. Over the years, this bridge was bypassed by a new U.S. Highway 80 bridge, farther west on North 4th Avenue and then it was replaced again by the towering, twin bridges of Interstate 8 a short distance away.  The bridge was eventually closed to automobile traffic in 1988 and became a pedestrian-only bridge. I have heard conflicting stories about why the bridge was closed. I have been told that it was functionally obsolete since there were newer and wider bridges nearby, I was told that the physical condition of the bridge deteriorated to the point that it had to be closed due to safety concerns and I was also told that there was nothing structurally wrong with it, it was just too narrow to accommodate modern traffic. After all the bridge was only 16 feet, 9 inches wide, barely wide enough for two cars. In that era, bridges were typically narrow, but the standard width was 18 feet, so this bridge was narrower than most bridges of its day. It was impossible to two trucks, or buses, to pass each other on this extremely narrow bridge. Maybe all three scenarios played a part in the bridge's closing, that is my personal opinion. At any rate, the bridge was reopened to vehicular traffic in 2002 after an extensive rehabilitation. I remember reading about the rehabilitation project in the newspaper when it was still in the planning stages. The California side of the river is the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation and an Indian casino had already opened for business while the bridge was closed. The hotel/casino is just a short distance north of the bridge. The reopening of the bridge greatly facilitated traffic flow to and from the hotel/casino to Yuma and from the reservation, in general to Yuma. Although the bridge is carrying automobile traffic again, there is one major difference. It is open to only one direction of traffic at a time. Traffic goes down the middle of the bridge while both sides are used as pedestrian walkways. The direction of traffic flow is controlled by traffic lights on each end of the bridge.  The traffic alternates between northbound and southbound, depending on who has the green light.
  One iconic feature of this century old bridge is the fact that the words "OCEAN TO OCEAN BRIDGE, YUMA" are on the side of this iron truss bridge and the letters are lit up at night. 

Old Town Yuma

  Yuma, Arizona is a city with more than 100,000 people, but its downtown area is very peaceful. If downtown is the only part of Yuma that a person saw, the person would most likely get the impression that Yuma is a very small town, but that is not the case.  The only traffic lights in downtown Yuma are along the outer edges, 2 intersections on 4th Avenue, one intersection on 
East Harold Giss Parkway and some on North Penitentiary Avenue and these traffic lights control traffic flow across a one way bridge.  I will write about that bridge soon. It is one of the oldest automobile bridges in the western part of the United States. For the most part, traffic is very light in  downtown Yuma and the streets are narrow. There are alot of adobe buildings. The entire town of Yuma was completely built out of adobe in the early years, but the adobe buildings would melt away during floods, since the town was located at the confluence of two rivers. The principal street of Yuma in the town's early years was Main Street. Main Street is still the heart of downtown Yuma, but is no longer the city's primary business street. In the early days of Yuma, Main Street was one of the widest streets in the United States. It was so wide that a team of horses pulling a buggy could turn completely around in the street. The street remained this wide through the early days of the automobile, but eventually, the growth in Yuma shifted away from downtown and, in 1969, a two block stretch of South Main Street was closed and turned into a pedestrian mall. It was thought at the time that eliminating vehicles from the street and allowing people to visit the stores without having to watch for traffic would revitalize the downtown area, but, as in most cases around the country, this pedestrian mall failed miserably.  
The two block stretch of South Main Street between Second Street and Harold Giss Parkway was reopened to motorized traffic in 2002. I remember seeing South Main Street when it was a pedestrian mall. Most of the businesses had closed and the former street was lined with vacant storefronts. There were very few people walking around the area visiting the few businesses that were still open.  Reopening the street to cars has brought the street back to life and nearly every business has reopened and people have returned to downtown Yuma. While the downtown area is coming back to life, it is still not as busy as other parts of the city. One look at Main Street in Yuma, either in person or on an aerial map, will reveal how wide the street once was. Today the street is lined with extremely wide sidewalks, grassy strips in front of the stores and large concrete boxes that are filled with desert plants or trees. In addition, there is angled parking on both sides of the street. Main Street has been reduced to a single lane of traffic each direction and that is all it needs, since the majority of the city has spread southward and westward from here.

Arizona on the West Bank of the Colorado River?

  For the most part, the Colorado River forms the western border of Arizona. First it separates Arizona from Nevada and then it separates Arizona from California and, with a few exceptions, the border does not leave the river. One of those exceptions is near the city of Yuma. When the Colorado River flows past Yuma, it briefly flows west for about ten miles before turning south again.  It is in this brief east-west pattern where the border between Arizona and California deviates from the river. There is an old loop of the river on the north side of the present river channel, a short distance northeast of Yuma. I believe the river cut its new channel sometime during World War II, from what I have been told. This old river channel is still very visible on aerial maps and it can be seen from the ground really well to because there is still a line of trees lining the old river channel, with their roots spread wide to suck in the subterranean water. In places, the trees have cut down and part of the old river channel has been plowed up and farmed to take advantage of the high water table that still exists beneath the abandoned river channel. Most of the old river channel is still there, though. In fact, there are  four lakes that exist in the upper part of the old river loop, Haughtelin Lake, Bard Lake and two much smaller lakes that appear to be unnamed. Haughtelin Lake is by far the biggest, it occupies the northwest corner of the loop, the part where the river briefly flowed west and then turned and flowed back south. All of these four lakes are at the upper part of the old river loop.   There is some marshy land between these lakes as well. The line of trees along this old river channel is visible from over a mile away in this desert environment. The subterranean water table beneath the old channel of the Colorado River must be extremely high because it evidently drains a large amount of water into the new channel. The current channel is reduced to almost nothing at Imperial Dam, about 30 miles upstream from Yuma, because two canals, on each side of the river, siphon off 96% of the river's flow, leaving only 4% of the river's flow to continue downstream. After the river passes Imperial Dam and Laguna Dam, just a few miles apart,
 the river is only a few feet wide, with the narrow stream meandering its way in a much wider channel that was formed over the eons. Yet, as the river flows past Yuma, it is wider than it is after it leaves the two dams, but still paltry when compared to the way it used to be. The
Gila River does meet the Colorado River between the dams and Yuma, but the Gila is usually dry.  The Colorado is evidently receiving quite a bit of water from its abandoned channel.
This old river channel is really wide, but then nearly the entire length of the Colorado River was once really wide, before it was siphoned off to nothing to satisfy man's insatiable thirst and need for water.
  I have personally driven across this old river channel. I drove down a well maintained dirt road, on the California side, north of Yuma. I was heading for the line of trees that I mentioned. When I got to the line of trees, I saw an obvious river channel, with deep silt deposits, on the south side of the road, but, on the north side of the road, the old riverbed has been plowed up, so I just saw farmland.
  Usually, when a river, which forms a state or county border, the border stays in the old channel when the river shifts its course. There are a lot of places along the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio  and Red Rivers, for example, where the state border deviates from the current river channel because the channel shifted over time and the border stayed in the
old channel.
Well, when the Colorado River shifted its course just outside Yuma, it evidently set off a boundary dispute between Arizona and California. Sometime in the 1960s, the two states came to an agreement over how to divide the area within the old river loop. As a result, the state border does not follow the old river channel. Instead, it cuts across the loop with a series of straight lines that make several 90 degree turns.
  Maps of this area do not agree, but most maps show that the land within this old river loop is not part of the adjacent Fort Yuma Indian Reservation, while other maps say it is part of the reservation. Most maps show the Indian reservation encircling this loop of three sides.
  There are other places along the Colorado River in which the state border does not follow the river channel, despite what is shown on maps.

 

Nogales

  Downtown Nogales is right next to the international border. It is typical of most downtown areas of border towns. That is, the majority of the signs are in Spanish and most store owners have tables set up on the sidewalk in front of their stores to lure passersby to purchase their products. The downtown businesses in Nogales line Morley Avenue, Grand Avenue and Arroyo Boulevard, right next to the international border. The former train station in Nogales is now the Pimeria Alta Historical Museum. This is a great museum that displays the history of this area that was called "Pimeria Alta" by the Spanish government when this entire area was a colony of Spain. What is now Nogales was the major entry point for explorers, traders and anyone else who ventured into this area. There was literally a plethora of missions and presidios that were established in this area beginning in the 16th century. Nogales and its accompanying county, Santa Cruz, is a vital part of Arizona's history and any history book about Arizona focuses on this area. 
The Pimeria Alta, or "upper land of the Pimas." was named for the Pima Indians and their close relatives, the Sobaipuri and the O'odham, who resided in this area when the Spanish 
explorers arrived.   
  Nogales has about 22,000 people and is one of the busiest border crossing points on the entire United States/Mexico border. In fact, there are four border crossings connecting Nogales, Arizona with Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The crossing at the end of South Grand Avenue, called the 
Grand Avenue Gate, is the busiest. In very close proximity to this crossing is the Morley Gate, which, I believe, is the only pedestrian only crossing on the entire Mexican border. This pedestrian crossing lies two blocks east of the Grand Avenue Gate between the ends of South Morley Avenue, in the United States and Calle Plutarco Elias Calles in Mexico. Between the Grand Avenue Gate and the Morley Gate is a railroad crossing. A movable gate usually lies across the multiple railroad tracks that cross the border here. On the west side of town, in a very rural area, is the Mariposa Gate, which is mostly used by trucks. There is alot of truck traffic in Nogales. It is a major point for cross-border trucking traffic and trucking companies are located all over town.
  As I said in the last blog post, Nogales is a rather pleasant town and I like it. It is a very hilly town(though not as hilly as its counterpart south of the border) and there are quite a few streets in town that are very steep. the southern part of town definitely has the look and feel of being in Mexico, but that is typical of most border towns in the United States.