Historical Marker · No. 948
Site of Blythe Intake
Blythe, Riverside County · California
Erected by The State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with E Clampus Vitus - Billy Holcomb Chapter, Palo Verde Valley Historical Society, and Riverside County Parks Department, 1986
Thomas Blythe filed on 17 July 1877 for the right to take water out of the Colorado, and it was the first legal claim anybody had made on that river. Oliver Callaway laid out the diversion and the canal opened the same year, which is the only reason there is farming in the Palo Verde Valley. Everything downstream in time from that filing, the compacts, the seven-state allocation, the aqueducts, the river that no longer reaches the sea, began with one San Francisco financier and one piece of paper at this bend.
What the plaque says
On July 17, 1877, Thomas Blythe, a San Francisco financier, filed the first legal claim for Colorado River water rights. Oliver Callaway planned a diversion dam and canal which opened in 1877 to irrigate the Palo Verde Valley. This made possible the settlement and development of the valley.
Where it stands
33.73178, -114.51580 · Directions
More markers nearby
- Giant Desert Figures — 4.8 mi