Author: Harry Roland Johnson

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2016-08-15

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9781333231088

Excerpt from Water Resources of Antelope Valley, California Before the problem of making productive the waste spaces of the great West had been attacked with the vigor which during the last 20 years has wrought so great a change in portions of the western States and Territories, the term desert, carrying a picture of utter desolation - oi miles of treeless sand or, at best, of waterless sage brush plains and barren mountains - was applied to great stretches of country having unrecognized potentialities, so that the idea he came fixed in the public mind that such areas were practically worth less. This idea was re ected in the maps of the period, on which vast areas having vaguely defined limits were labeled desert. Thus an extensive region in southeastern California lying east of the southern end of the Sierra Nevada and of the Tehachapi Range and north of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges became known as the Mohave Desert. This great area, however, lying between the more favored coastal region south of the Sierra Madre and the agri cultural and mining districts of the San Joaquin Valley, Sierra Nevada, and Colorado River, became in time the highway of overland travel, and its true character gradually became better known. Potable underground waters were discovered, the desert' s agricultural value was recognized, settlement was begun, and the available surface water supplies were developed. With the growth of fixed population, distinctive names were applied to different parts of what was origi nally known merely as the desert. Thus an area extending along the north side of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges in the southwestern part of the region became known as Antelope Valley. At first the extent of this valley was not clearly outlined, but during recent years its limits have become more strictly defined. In like manner, the term Mohave Valley is applied even to - day, rather elastically, to the broad alluvial region on both sides of Mohave River from the margin of the San Bernardino Range northward. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."