Embudo, NM the rest of the story By Arthur Scott

Transcription

1 Embudo, NM the rest of the story By Arthur Scott Embudo station on the Denver Rio Grande (nicknamed The Chile Line) railroad about Photo from State Historical Society of Colorado. Many of us know that Embudo, the tiny village on the banks of the Rio Grande along US Highway 64 about 50 miles north of Santa Fe, means we are getting close to Taos. We know the bridge across the river as an approach to the various incarnations of restaurants that occupied the old stone station house of the Denver and Rio Grande narrow gauge railroad. But few know the prominent place Embudo had in the settlement of the west. In Spanish, Emnudo means funnel. It is aptly named. It is located in a canon of the Rio Grande rift bounded by the San Juan Mountains to the west and the Culebrra Range of The Rocky Mountains to the east which converge to form a gigantic funnel through which the Rio Grande flows. In 1881 Major John Wesley Powell was appointed head of two Bureaus, The Bureau of Ethnology in the Smithsonian Institution and as Director of the US Geological Survey in the Department of Interior. He was well suited to these positions as the United States was trying to populate the arid west. Major Powell lost an arm fighting with the Union during the civil war. He traversed widely throughout the west, researching the American Indian s language and culture; he was also famous for his trips by boat down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. Major Powell was at odds with the General Land Office practice of apportioning homestead in the arid west using political boundaries of sections and townships which allowed people to claim a section with a stream running through it and denying neighboring sections use of the water. He proposed that farming in the arid zone was dependant on irrigation and that to be fair all should have access. To accomplish this he 1

2 thought that the flow and quantity of streams needed to be measured as an inventory of water resources and that mapping of all watershed boundaries were required. It is notable that, at the time there was no thought given to the lands and steams held by Native Americans. Topographic engineers with expertise in mapping were easy to recruit, however, Civil Engineers with any experience in hydrographic surveying were difficult to find. Methodology and instrumentation for measurement of western streams which tend to fill and cut at will were non existent. His plan was to set up a training camp in the west to develop and twst instrumentation and train engineers to measure water in western streams. Embudo was chosen as the training site because: 1.Funds made available by Congress were intended for use in the arid zone. 2. The program had to start as soon as possible after October 2. Streams in the north would soon be frozen over so that the only streams in the southwest were left for consideration, and 3. Convenient railroad directly to the site was required. Additionally, the site and the rio Grande were justified because the river was about the right size for the purpose. Stream flow information would prove valuable as a large irrigation dam near Santa Fe was being talked about and internationally, Mexican farmers were complaining of the amount of water available to irrigate their crops after upstream US farmers made withdrawals. In December 1888 the camp at Embudo was established. The men were provided Army tents and cots. However, the men found sleeping in a cot was too cold so most dug shallow trenches in which to sleep to stay warmer. US Irrigation Survey camp at Embudo

3 Initially there were eight engineers, graduates of eastern universities. There was only one westerner among the group. Imagine the culture shock upon arrival at Embudo. Later six more joined and one more instructor. Total personnel numbered twenty one including a cook, packer and two laborers. Their assignment required practicing stream gauging by various methods, measuring the rise and fall of the stream fro day to day, measuring daily evaporation, and making observations with meteorological instrumentation. Part of the group at Camp Embudo, 1888 The training session ended in April Personnel were reassigned with ten of these students becoming classified as Hydrographers and Assistant Hydrographers They were transferred to the Arkansas river Basin, Upper Rio Grande Basin, Rio Grande at El Paso, Gila River Basin, Truckee-Carson River Basin, Utah Territory, Snake river Basin and Upper Missouri River Basin. Among the remaining engineers, one had left camp before completing the course, another was ready to resign, and a third claimed that he did not care to spend the rest of his life jiggling a meter. 3

4 The Irrigation Survey later became part of thee US Geological Survey which now (when I retirred0 operates around 3200 streamflow gages in the United States and its territories. Most of this data is available online in real-time so that users can access data on flow occurring practically anyplace in the country. Most data is provided through a satellite uplink. Embudo has become known as the birthplace of of systematic stream gaging. The gaging station at Embudo in 1914 (same approximate location as present) seen on the river bank in front of thee second locomotive. The gaging station at Embudo continued to be operated by railroad station agents until 1904 when data collection ceased. In 1912 the duties were resumed, the station moved to its present location and a cobblestone veneer applied to the gage house to match the railroad station. From the station was operated by the State of New Mexico. In operation was returned to the US Geological Survey through a state-federal cooperative agreement and continues today. 4

5 Operation of the railroad in this area ceased in The Albuquerque Journal reported that 55 miles of track were lifted and sold to China for use in construction of the Burma Road. Some of the locomotives were sold in 1942 to the US Army for use in the Yukon on the White Pass and Yukon. (Additional information may be found in the US Geological Survey Professional Paper 778, Embudo, New Mexico, Birthplace Of Systematic Stream Gaging by Arthur H. Frazer and Wilbur Heckler) Photos courtesy of the US Geological Survey.. 5