Rio Grande

a well known river of the Southwest. The name is Spanish for great river. The Rio Grande rises between the folds of the Rocky Mountains in the southwest of Colorado. It flows in a southeasterly direction, 1,800 miles into the Gulf of Mexico. For 1,100 miles it forms the boundary between Mexico and the United States. Shallow draft steamboats come up to a point 450 miles from the Gulf. The river is flooded at seasons by melting snows and by rains about its upper course. The main portion of the stream lies in a semi-arid region, through which it is reduced in the dry season almost to a series of gravel bars. The plains on both sides of the Rio Grande were, until of late, the undisputed kingdom of the cattlemen, but the gardener and farmer are pressing in. The lower part of the valley is declared the most favorable region on the North American continent for the production of the Bermuda onion and vegetables for the early market. The waters of the Rio have been impounded by dams and turned into irrigating canals. One of these canals, near San Benito, Texas, fills a basin a mile and a half long, water from which is distributed by 114 miles of irrigating ditches. Before the water reaches the Rio again it has irrigated 30,000 acres, converting an area of sparse grass, arid sagebrush, and mesquite into fertile farms. Main line railroads reach the river at Brownsville, Laredo, Eagle Pass, and El Paso. Labor of all kinds is performed chiefly by Mexicans who work under their own foremen. Lands in the best part of the valley are now worth as many dollars per acre as they were worth cents twenty years ago.