Nothing short of Providential was considered the finding of the canal,
dug by a prehistoric people into the edge of the mesa, which it gradually
surmounted. This canal, in all probability, had been cut more than 1000
years before. It could be traced from the river for twenty miles,
maintaining an even gradient, possibly as good as could have been laid
out with a modern level, and with a number of laterals that spread over a
country about as extensively cultivated as at present. A lateral served
the Lehi section and other ditches conducted water to the southwest, past
the famous ancient city of Los Muertos (later explored by Frank H.
Cushing) and then around the southeastern foothills of the Salt River
Mountains to points not far distant from the Gila River. The main canal
cut through the tableland for two miles, with a top width of even fifty
feet and a depth of twelve feet, chopped out in places, with stone axes,
through a difficult formation of hardpan, "caliche." The old canal was
cleaned out for the necessities of the pioneers, at a cost of about
$48,000, including the head, and afterward was enlarged. At the time,
there was an estimate that its utilization saved at least $20,000 in cost
of excavation. There were 123 miles of these ancient canals.
This canal undertaking was a tremendous one, especially in consideration
of the fact that for the first five months the Mesa settlers available
for work were only eighteen able-bodied men and boys. The brethren were
hardly strong enough in man power to have dug the canal had it not been
for the old channel. A small stream was led to the townsite in October,
1878, and in the same month building construction was begun. An early
settler wrote:
"We were about nine months in getting a small stream of water out at an
expense of $43,000 in money and labor, so that we could plant gardens and
set out some fruit trees. A man was allowed $1.50 and a man and team $3
per day for labor. Our ditch ran through some formation that would slack
up like lime; and as whole sections of it would slide, it kept us busy
nearly all the time the following year enlarging and repairing the canal.
Our labors only lessened as our numbers increased, and the banks became
more solid, so that today (1894) we have a good canal carrying about 7000
inches of water."
It would appear that a tremendous amount of optimism, energy and
self-reliance lay in the leaders of the small community, in digging
through the bank of a stubborn cliff, in throwing a rude dam across a
great flood stream and in planting their homes far out on a plain that
bore little evidence of agricultural possibilities, beyond a growth of
creosote bush, the Larrea Mexicana. There were easier places where
settlements might have been made, at Lehi or Tempe, or upon the smaller
streams, but there must have been a vision rather broader than that of
the original immigrant, a vision that later has merged into reality far
larger and richer than had been the dream.
Within this prosperity are included hundreds of Mormon pioneers and their
children. It often is said that the development of a country is by the
"breaking" of from three to four sets of immigrants. It is not true of
Mesa, for there the original settlers and their stock generally still
hold to the land.