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Visit three areas of Southern New Mexico in the pages ahead:
Carlsbad
(this page and next) Silver City Sacramento Mountains
Carlsbad area
Carlsbad runs along the Pecos River, and has always relied on diverting the channel for its main form of business: agriculture.
Dams, canals and the unique Pecos Flume served to establish permanent communities in the 1800's. In the early 1900's, discoveries underground revitalized the area with new capital and tourist dollars.More about Carlsbad:
http://www.zianet.com/snm/carlsbad.htmMore about Christmas on the Pecos, a month-long event: http://www.caverns.com/~chamber/xmas.htm
McMillan Dam:
Rt285 north of CarlsbadThis was one of the earliest large projects to establish a reliable year round supply of water in New Mexico. Investors, including Pat Garrett and Charles Eddy, formed the Pecos Valley Land and Ditch Company in 1888 to divert water to their properties. Their plans materialized in a series of flumes, diversion canals, dams and the new town of Eddy, later renamed Carlsbad. At the time of its construction in 1893, McMillan Dam created one of the largest artificial reservoirs in the world. Although it was superseded in 1972 with Brantley Dam, parts of the original nine-mile earth fill dam and headgates are still standing.
Pecos River Flume:
By Phyllis Eileen BanksThe Pecos River Flume was probably the most complex part of the canal network, according to Mark Hufstetler and Lon Johnson who wrote The Turbulent History of the Carlsbad Irrigation District. The canal was split into East Side and Main Canals. At this bifurcation, Main (or Western) Canal crossed the Pecos River by means of a wooden flume, 475 feet long by 25 feet wide, carrying eight feet of water. The Flume was completed in 1890 but was destroyed by a flood in 1902. Rebuilt in concrete, at that time it was the largest concrete structure in the world. It is in use today as part of the Carlsbad Irrigation District. Once featured in Ripley's "Believe It or Not" as the river that crosses itself, it carries Pecos River water from Lake Avalon, just north of Carlsbad, for irrigation.
More about the Pecos Flume:
http://www.zianet.com/snm/flume.htmOther articles by Phyllis Eileen Banks:
http://www.zianet.com/snm/eileen.htmCarlsbad Caverns:
While you're in the area, you might want to catch the show.
For more information go to:
http://www.nps.gov/cave/
The same salt beds that gave you Carlsbad Caverns and the chambers of the WIPP site contain substantial amounts of potassium (K). Not long ago, about 240 million years back, a large inland sea floated across eastern New Mexico; and the salts left as it receded were rich in nutrients. The potassium ores, (sylvanite and langbeinite) are extracted for agricultural use. There is almost nothing about potassium that a plant does not like. According to one source, "potassium affects the life and lifestyle of every living being. For astronauts and asparagus, a daily dose helps bodies grow, resist disease and tolerate drought.
Anasazi Indians used wood ash and dead fish on the first crops produced in the Southwest. Settlers from the East thought to use it to make soap. Later, commercial use required mining, sometimes at depths of 3,500 feet, to meet agricultural demands for fertilizer. Until the discovery of beds near Carlsbad in 1925, potash was imported from Germany. The onset of World War II prompted the US government to subsidize exploration and development here. Vast horizons of potassium salts at relatively shallow depth, only 900 feet at present, have made the Carlsbad site the largest operation of its kind in the world. Comfortable sized rooms are blasted out; and ore is hauled twelve miles underground, then hoisted to the surface for processing.
IMC Kalium; about production:
http://www.imcglobal.com/potash/productiontechframe.htmlFacts about potash:
http://www.imcglobal.com/potash/historyframe.html
next page, the WIPP site 
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