Of all these eight thousand gold-seekers or pioneers, only one seems to have been impressed by the agricultural possibilities of the Salton Sink. Dr. O. M. Wozencraft, who has been described as “a man of marked personality and far-reaching vision who lived a generation before his time,” crossed the Sink on his way to San Bernardino sometime in the early fifties; noticed the deposit of silt in the bed of the ancient lake; observed that the shallow basin lay so far below the level of the Colorado River that it might easily be irrigated therefrom; and reached the conclusion, previously stated by Professor Blake, that the arid waste of the Sink, if adequately supplied with water, could be made to “yield crops of almost any kind.” This idea so took possession of his mind that, during the next five or six years, he spent much of his time and a large part of his private means in promoting schemes for the irrigation of this desert area. His engineer, Ebenezer Hadley of San Diego, made a preliminary survey of the Sink, and recommended a canal location practically identical with that which forty years later was adopted. In 1859, upon the initiative of Dr. Wozencraft, the California legislature asked Congress to cede to the State 3,000,000 acres of arid land, including the Salton Sink, for irrigation purposes. The bill was favorably reported by a House committee, but failed to pass. The Congressmen of that time regarded the reclamation of the Colorado Desert as a subject for jocular rather than serious treatment, and most of them were in sympathy with the California humorist, J. Ross Browne, who said: “I can see no great obstacle to success except the porous nature of the sand. By removing the sand from the desert, success would be insured at once.” With the failure of Dr. Wozencraft’s attempt to bring about the reclamation of the Colorado Desert, interest in that region gradually waned. The Butterfield Overland Mail service to the Pacific Coast was discontinued; a new “Pony Express” line to San Francisco, by way of Salt Lake City, was established; and before 1865, the southern route, via Yuma and the Colorado Desert, had been practically abandoned. Dr. Wozencraft continued talking, to all who would listen, about his scheme for the irrigation of the Salton Sink; but most people regarded it as visionary, and nobody seemed inclined to take it up. Only in 1891, thirty eight years after Professor Blake first suggested irrigation, and twenty nine years after Dr. Wozencraft’s bill failed in Congress, was a serious attempt made to realize the “dream” of turning water into the Salton Sink and creating a fertile oasis in the heart of the Colorado Desert. FOOTNOTES: [1] Rep. of U. S. Geolog. Survey for 1916.