| The Verde River: Bartlett and
Horseshoe Dams by Gerard
Giordano (Released September 20, 2010)  As noted in the
editorial review, the Salt River Project began in
1903, and in 1939 the first lake on the lower
Verde River was formed with the completion of
Bartlett Dam.
My
grandfather, V.W. “Dave” Davidson, was
one of the thousands who came out to work on the
Arizona dams. He came from Luverne, North Dakota
in 1935 and was later accompanied by his wife
Connie and other family members from North Dakota
and Minnesota.
Through a
written interview, Connie has recounted to
Giordano their life on the dams, a portion of
which is included in the book along with some
rare photos of construction at Barlett, taken by
my grandparents while they lived and worked
there.
Available
on Amazon, you may pre-order by clicking the
below. If the Amazon.com price decreases between
your order time and the end of the day of the
release date, you will receive the lowest price.
Although
Connie recently celebrated her 97th birthday, her
keen recollection of the dam days has allowed
Giordano to share with us how Phoenix was able to
rise up from a sparsely populated desert to
become one of the largest cities in the nation.
Please join me in celebrating my grandmother's
role in Arizona history!
REVIEW BY P.
DAVIDSON-PETERS - October 23, 2010
"The Verde
River: Bartlett and Horseshoe Dams" by
Gerard Giordano is not simply a history of the
dams' near-miraculous construction engineered
into the forgiving mountainsides, but also a
glimpse into the area's ancient past whose
dwellers foretold of the desert's ability to
disperse the river's resources.
Like a time
traveler photographing his journey along the way,
author Gerard Giordano takes us seamlessly
through the river's history, touching on the
harsh removal of those who had long inhabited the
land and ceased to exist, and those
"modern" men who came from the east
whose names are now a permanent part of our
forts, mountains, lakes, roads, and dams.
Enlightening the
reader, he explains how the Colorado Plateau was
formed about eight million years ago, but by 1840
hunting and herding had radically transformed the
lush marshes and significantly altered the
terrain and the flow of the rivers. Visible
remnants of what had once been a sophisticated
canal system built by the Hohokam (and beavers
before them) to irrigate their crops between the
7th and 14th centuries would, however, bring life
to the valley once again with the arrival of Jack
Swilling and his canal company which laid the
foundation of what would become the agricultural
city of Phoenix.
As the Verde River
has painted a time line of Arizona history,
Giordano has intricately threaded the land,
inhabitants, and history of the dams into a
tightly woven handbook of Arizona's ability to
thus far survive and sustain a population of more
than four million people.
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