The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 27

THE United States government is expected to allocate $2,000,000 this year to dam "America's goofiest river." is the Hassayampa in central Arizona, famous because: It has no ivaler in it. It cannot mal(e up its mind which Way to flow. It flows uphill. It conceals a heavy iron safe filled filh gold coins. Whosoever drinks of its Tvater will never tell the truth again.

The Honorable Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior and Public Works Administrator, is known never to have drunk of its water. He was quoted, in all seriousness, as authority for the statement that Uncle Sam will build the dam. Once upon a time $2,000,000 was big dam money, and would have been the big news of this announcement, but Boulder and Grand Coulee Dams (about $400,000,000 each, with allied works) have belittled that. The big news on the Hassayampa concerns the iron safe after being lost 48 years, it is now "sure" to be found The safe contains $5000. And there's no Hassayamplification to that statement, either.

Sixty-three graves on the river bank there would preclude any joshing in that connection. It is also true that the safe and its contents are yours for the finding. Many a man has already searched up and down the wild canyons there, hoping to claim the treasure. The new dam is designed to open 18,062 desert acres to irrigation farming, bringing new prosperity to a region already renowned for reclamation work. But it will not be the first dam on the goofy Hassayampa.

Henry Wick-enburg's henchmen built the first. Half a century or so ago, Wickenburg, a half-starved prospector dodging savage Indians, chanced to lose his pack burro. All one morning he searched. Toward noon he found the beast, and was so angry at it that he picked up a stone to hurl at the burro's head. As he threw the stone, the prospector caught in it a glint of gold.

On that spot he opened a mine, from which some $10,000,000 has been taken. In the subsequent gold rush to that new community of Wicken-buru. water was needed for hydraulic placer operations in the nearby Hassayampa river channel. So, in 1 888 a clam was built in Walnut Grove. It was 110 feet high, 400 feet long.

It was made of loose dirt and gravel, wih a thin coat of plaster outside. TT Winding through the mountains of Arizona, the mysterious Hassayampa appears, then dips underground. Map right, shows the river's course. W. C.

Lefebure, chief engineer of the Hassayampa project. 1 INCH q4 MILES TOMBSTONE It would never have passed any sort of engineering inspection, but because the Hassayampa is "always dry," the dam held up fine for two years. But on Washington's Birthday, 1890, a five-day rain was still pouring up in the hills, and while most of the community stayed in scattered cabins and saloons for celebration, logs and trash crowded the small spillway of Walnut Grove Dam. A few men were watching the flood rise. At 9 p.

m. or so they saw water start washing over the top of the dam. Soon cracks in the structure appeared. At once the men dispatched a horseman downstream to warn the settlers. "Ride like hell!" they commanded him.

"This thing'll go out and send a wall of water down before midnight!" He raced his horse. At the first few cabins he spread his alarm as Paul Revere had done, and rushed on. But when he reached Bob Brow's saloon he was tired. He paused for a drink. "Aw shucks, don't be silly!" the boys reassured the rider.

"Thet dam is 130 feet thick. It'll hold anything. Here have another drink, son. Rest yore bones from the cold rain." Somebody had a guitar and a fiddle. A barroom quartet boomed out its harmony.

The alarm rider lapsed into peace and ease, his panting horse hitched to the outside rail. An hour passed. Suddenly above the gentle purr of the rain there came a louder roar. Down Walnut Canyon snorted a water dragon 40 feet high! must have rent the midnight air. Brow's large cabin was broken to bits, as if it were no more than a doll house.

And in Brow's house had been an iron safe, locked for the night, containing the $5000 in golden coins. Historians of period estimate that 70 to 75 lives were lost. Sixty-three bodies were recovered. A MONTH later when water and tears had subsided, people began looking for Bob Brow's safe. They were still looking in 1 900, 1910 and 1915.

In 1915 searchers found a skeleton, which was identified as that of John Silsbee, a noted pioneer musician who had been helping celebrate that Washington's Birthday in 1890. In the 1920's several men are known to have looked for the safe, and in the depression years of the 1930's even more hopefuls have probed up and down the canyons. Somehow the safe was buried under rocks and mud, evidently. mm 1 Ernest Douglas, farm paper editor, is They meet annually Trees a hundred years old were swept ahead like straw. Great boulders were bounced around as corks.

Logs and planks and animals and men were churned in the black macl- strom. In a minute or less the gang in Brow's saloon knew what the approaching noise must be. But that minute was too short. High ground was several hundred yards away. Night was black.

Ground was muddy and slick. Doubtless all of the men made a dash for safety, but doom itself was striking. Screams (Every Weok Magazine rrlnted In V. 8. OTvitfriMitiiitl president of the Hassayamplifiers.

to spin tall yarns. But now Uncle Sam is expected to build a new dam, to control the water in a new way; will dig new channels, new canals, new laterals; will have explorers and engineers and workmen all up and down the canyons there. Some of the old-timers around Wickenburg will offer you five to one thai Bob Brow's safe will be found! And even if it isn't, the new dam project is reviving all the old stories, the old dramas and heartbreaks that attended pioneering there, and that have colored Hassayampa River history since the first white man saw it. screamed, ran for pvftO nv Opph Arnnlrl higher ground. g'-i jSjs7 Dy Uldl Arnold Then the flood Wty fi struck.

The cabin iJr 1 was broken to bits. o's I "America's I VSoJ' Vs- GOOFIEST (J 9 GIL BENO Vv' Maybe they'll find the gold-choked safe when they go to work on the waterless Hassayampa can be riding across country and come 1 to a highway sign that says "Hassayampa River." But you see no river. No water, Nothing that suggests river, but the sign. Eventually you discover that you are riding right down the riverbed itself. It is sandy, rocky, dry as a bone.

You decide the Southwest is a peculiar region. Then, as sure as fate, you move on up or downstream a mile and come onto a healthy flow of water! A live crystal stream, maybe 100 feet across! Then you decide that maybe) you are peculiar! But it isn't you, it's the Hassayampa. For no good reason it flows part of the time on th surface then dives underground for a while, alternating at will. Of course, in the flood season it goes berserk on the surface. Strangely, too, it can do that under bright sunshine, as does many another stream out west.

Flash rainstorms up in the mountains 20 miles away will show no sign of clouds in the lower valley and canyons. But if you are parked there below, dozing or sketching or sun bathing, you may suddenly find water over your car running board. In that case don't try to save the car. Get out and up fast! It may be just a freshet, or it may be the water dragon on rampage. It is these sudden floods which the new dam will catch and store for irrigation.

The new lake could store 1 60,000 acre feet of water. It is a fact, too, that the Hassayampa can't make up its mind which way to flow. You may cross it at one point and see its water if you see water at all there flowing south. Three miles farther you'll find it flowing north. It winds worse than any snake.

But this phenomenon also is fairly common with western rivers. More startling is the "fact" that the Hassayampa flows uphill. In many places the grade of the skirting highway, and the ancient tilts in soil and rock strata, do create perfectly the illusion that the water flows uphill. Hassayamplifiers (yarn spinners) have long since explained that, however. They say that the waters of the Hassayampa are heavy with iron content, and that the rocks and canyons on higher ground are magnetic, wherefore the high land just naturally "draws" the water uphill.

Secretary Ickes has not made an official report on this detail, though. rPHE fifth point in the Hassayampa's goofi-ness is subject to limitless amplification: "Whoever drinks here will never tell the truth again." Dare you describe the fish you caught last Saturday up in Lake Mary? Listen, friend, you've been drinking Hassayampa water! Were you, you say, busy at the office last night when your wife wanted you at home? Ha! You old Hassayamplifierl Every so often, usually on April 1, the Hassayamplifiers meet in solemn conclave as the newspapers say and make the darndest "reports" you ever heard. Ernest Douglas, a farm paper editor, is their current president. A dozen or two men from the four corners of Arizona make it a point to be there. They are highly imaginative men..