In the summer of 1911 President Howard Taft was in the White House; the territory of Arizona was a frontier outpost, with a population of 205,000 scattered sparsely over its 113,575 lonely and arid square miles; and 34-year-old Sheriff Carl Hayden of Maricopa County, then a major in the National Guard, was at Camp Perry, Ohio, competing successfully in the national rifle matches.
A few Navajo Indians were pasturing their sheep on the scrub of Manson Mesa over there where Page now stands, and the Colorado River was much as Major John Powell had viewed it 42 years earlier, when he and his party first explored the dark deep gorges and unexpected rapids of the wild, mysterious river.
Noting in an Ohio newspaper that his territory was about to attain statehood, the crack marksman from Arizona went home to announce he would run for Congress. He did and with the same success he had experienced on the rifle range, in his Tempe flour mill, and throughout Maricopa County, where he had served as councilman, treasurer, and sheriff.
Today we see evidence of the wisdom displayed by the people of Arizona in sending Carl Hayden to Washington in 1912 to represent them and keeping him there ever since.
The former sheriff of Maricopa is the one person most responsible for transforming the raw frontier that was the Arizona of 1912 into the prosperous, progressive and popular state of 1968, the fastest growing of also states of the Union.
This great dam and lake and bridge are not unique in being monuments to the vision, ability and hard work of Senator Hayden and a long line of like-minded westerners in Congress. Throughout not only Arizona, but all the West there are literally hundreds of such monuments to Carl Hayden--dams, reservoirs, parks, highways, power lines, airports, crop lands on what once was desert, and thriving towns and cities.
Actually, as Senator Hayden completes his nearly 57 years' service in Congress, he could contemplate the great American West and see the good life it provides millions of men, women and children as a manifestation of his own handiwork. Not that he would so consider the results of his long-time efforts, of course. For Carl Hayden, a tough and able man, also is a humble and simple man.
When his colleagues in the Senate paid tribute to him recently, they stressed not only his many and varied accomplishments as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and as the senior and most powerful member of the Senate; they remembered his myriad kindnesses, his humility, and his tireless energy in advancing the welfare of all sections of the Nation.
Women's suffrage is an outstanding monument to this far-seeing American, who in 1919 sponsored the Constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote. The 1931 Hayden-Cartwright law marked the beginning of the Interstate Highway System. The Federal Home Administration, authorizing government-insured loans to farmers, and the G. I. Bill of Rights are other Hayden legislative milestones.
One could go on, literally for hours. As an inscription in St. Paul's Cathedral in London directs, on behalf of the renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren, "If you seek my monuments, look about you." Anywhere we look at the evidence of progress in this country we are likely to see evidence of the work of this son of Arizona, Carl Hayden.
President Johnson, paying tribute to his old friend, said: "His work was the arduous kind that is done in the committee rooms. It was long; it was painstaking; it was nighttime sessions. It was poring over testimony and figures of a thousand appropriation bills involving billions of dollars, trying to serve his main client: the people, the people of the United States -- serve them with integrity, with imagination, and always with great care.
"America is stronger for what you have done in these 56 years, and it is going to be poorer when you have left these halls," the President told Senator Hayden.
We Arizonans, along with most Westerners, are especially mindful of the force of Senator Hayden's efforts in promoting and bringing to fruition development of the Colorado River, lifeline a seven-state area of the arid West.
In 1920 he introduced a bill to apportion the waters of the "Big Red" between the upper and lower basin states, legislation which materialized into the Colorado River Compact of 1922. When the Boulder Canyon Project, including Hoover Dam, was proposed in 1927 Carl Hayden fought to include in the measure provisions that would protect the water rights of his state. As usual, he won.
He was a Co-sponsor of the first bill introduced in Congress to construct the Colorado River Storage Project, of which this Glen Canyon Dam, power plant and beautiful Lake Powell are key features. Before the Glen Canyon Dam was built the river ran through here, red with sediment, and the back-country was a no-man's land except for a handful of shepherds and those fortunate few visitors who were able to make their hazardous way through nearly impassable rugged terrain to Rainbow Bridge and other marvels of the side canyons.
Today, thanks to the dam, the Colorado flows clear, and boaters on jewel like Lake Powell may float up hidden canyons and feast their eyes on some of the most fantastic and gorgeous scenery in the world.
We are proud that Glen Canyon Dam was awarded the American Civil Society of Civil Engineers award for the outstanding civil engineering achievement of 1963. And while the Glen Canyon unit furnishes us superb scenery, glorious boating, and excellent fishing, it is also generating hydroelectric power that will pay for construction of the facilities and for other basin development to come.
The basis for this is a policy strongly supported and bolstered by Senator Hayden to permit commercial sale of surplus Reclamation hydropower to help pay the costs of Reclamation development. Through the years the Arizona solon sponsored several laws strengthening and expanding this policy.
Down river about 70 miles is another outstanding monument to Carl Hayden's foresight, the Grand Canyon National Park, featuring probably the most famous natural wonder of the world. In 1919 Representative Hayden introduced and ushered through the House the bill to establish this park so as to preserve for the enjoyment of all people that impressive stretch of the Colorado.
One of the greatest monuments to Senator Haydn is still to be built, the Central Arizona Project. The crowning achievement of this Westerner's outstanding public service was the recent passage by the Congress of legislation authorizing the Colorado River Basin Project, which will so greatly advance the economic growth of Arizona and the west.
This legislation is the result of nearly two decades of unrelenting, and frequently discouraging, effort -- by Senator Hayden and many other Westerners in Congress; in the White House---President Johnson urged its enactment in his 1968 Budget message to Congress---; and in the Department of the Interior, where it has been a chief objective during my administration.
Senator Hayden sponsored and guided through the Senate bills to authorize the Central Arizona Project in 1950, 1951, and 1967, but not until this year did the bill make it to the floor of the House. All through these years the Senator and hundreds of others, in and out of government, worked arduously to perfect a bill that would meet the objections of the different states in the basin, the opposition of some who at times seemed to be pure obstructionists for the sake of obstructing, and others who, mostly, simply did not, or would not, comprehend the great need of the parched Southwest for water. But now a good bill has been hammered out and is about to become 1aw--President Johnson is expected to sign the legislation within a few days.
It is landmark legislation which constitutes an historic breakthrough in the water thinking of the West. It initiates a new brand of water resource development, bold and broad-gauged. And it marks the opening of an era of water cooperation in the West, replacing the bitter rivalries of the past. This embodies a regional concept, working toward the best possible solutions for the mounting water supply problems of the states of the Colorado basin and setting a pattern for solution of the problems of other regions.
The $1.3 billion Colorado River Basin project authorization is the largest; single-package Reclamation authorization bill ever approved. It not only implements the Supreme Court Decree of 1964 by making it possible for Arizona to utilize an average of 1.2 million acre-feet of water annually from the Colorado main stem; it also approves participating projects in other states of the basin and directs studies to solve chronic water problems of the West.
The $832 million Central Arizona project will pump water from Lake Havasu on the Colorado River and transport it by aqueduct some 300 miles to the burgeoning Phoenix-Tucson area, one of the fastest growing sections in the Nation. We are all aware of the fabulous expansion of this sun-drenched area during the past decade and of the prospects for even greater growth in the future. Reclamation has made the past progress possible, and this Reclamation project will help it to continue. A $100 million distribution system will convey the water from the aqueduct system to thirsty farmlands/and communities.
A dam on the Gila River in New Mexico, and five irrigation projects in Colorado and New Mexico are also authorized for construction by the new law. In addition the Dixie Project in Utah is reauthorized and another Utah project conditionally authorized. Other provisions of the legislation establish a basin fund to finance water development in the basin; provide for participation in a non-Federally built steam electric plant and transmission facilities to furnish low-cost pumping power; give California a priority to use 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually; make the delivery of the 1.5 million acre-feet of water for Mexico, as required by treaty, a national obligation; and provide for a reconnaissance study by the Secretary of the Interior, leading to a general plan to meet the water needs of the western United States.
Those of us who have labored long for this Central Arizona project are now permitting ourselves a look in the crystal ball at the changes it will foster in what most surely would have been our dark future without it. We see tremendous economic and social progress.
The Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Arizona estimates that the economy of the State would lose $1,364 million if the means to prevent the ultimate disappearance of that part of its agriculture now dependent on pumped water were not supplied by the Central Arizona Project. Prevention of such a loss far surpasses the cost of building the project.
But our crystal ball shows us much more than a measurable economic gain to be reaped from this great Reclamation development. It shows us lovely shaded city streets, with trees nourished by CAP water; cool, green public parks; gardens of colorful flowers; hundreds of men and women employed in project construction and operation, and also in project-related business and industry; happy people enjoying the carefree outdoor life in the sunny Southwest--people who could not migrate to the area without this water supply provided by the CAP.
It shows us, too, Department of the Interior officials and members of Congress working in harness during the early years of construction to assure that appropriations closely follow authorization. The example of Senator Hayden will stand us in good stead here, as new men pick up where he left off to keep the construction of the project facilities moving at a proper pace.
It is most fitting that we name the visitor center here at Glen Canyon in honor of Senator Hayden, for, if it were not for him, this complex--like many other water resource facilities through the West--might not exist.
It will not be the first place to bear the long-time solon's family name, however. He was born in 1877 on the Salt River near Phoenix at Hayden's Ferry, which was named for his father, Charles Trumbull Hayden, son of a soldier who fought in the American Revolution. Mr. Hayden founded a flour mill and merchandising business in Tempe. He also founded Arizona Territorial Normal school in Tempe, from which his son Carl was graduated in 1896 before entering Stanford University. And far to the north and nearly a continent's span west of Hayden's Ferry, there is a Hayden's Landing on the Connecticut River, named for Charles Trumbull Hayden's family long before he began the westward trek, which took him finally to Arizona.
All of Senator Hayden's friends--among whom I have been privileged to count myself ever since I can remember--hope that he will come to this center many times to enjoy the fine view of some of his work.
In closing, I submit it is most appropriate that implementation of Carl Hayden's Central Arizona project is starting today and will continue tomorrow. Although now his life span has stretched to nearly half that of this nation, he has always been a young man in his vision, a sage in his wisdom. We read in the Bible, "Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions."
Carl Hayden has done both all of his life, and he has translated both dreams, and visions into realities. The State and the Nation are looking forward to many more years of his counsel and guidance.
