The Real Bonanza: Water in the Desert

A century before the extreme drought issues in the West, Arizona was experiencing one of its wettest springs in 1915. Just a month past four years after the historic dedication of Theodore Roosevelt Dam on March 18, 1911, Roosevelt Lake was full and the spillways of the largest masonry dam in the world overflowed for the first time. According to Salt River Project, more visitors traveled out to the dam to see the manmade waterfall flowing twice as high as Niagara Falls.  Arizona temperance leaders also collected water flowing over he spillway into a special bottle for the U.S.S. Arizona christening two months later in Brooklyn, New York.