The Avalon Dam: Water That Gave and Water That Took Away

Water made Carlsbad possible, and water nearly unmade it more than once. The irrigation system that Charles Eddy built in the late eighteen eighties depended on a dam upstream on the Pecos River called the Avalon Dam, which diverted water into the network of canals supplying the farms around town.

The first Avalon Dam was built in the late eighteen eighties. In eighteen ninety-three, a flood on the Pecos destroyed it. The dam was rebuilt by a new investor named James Hagerman. In nineteen oh four, another flood destroyed the rebuilt dam. The pattern of construction, destruction, and reconstruction reflected a basic tension in the Pecos River valley between the water that made farming possible and the floodwater that periodically erased the infrastructure built to control it.

After the second flood, the Bureau of Reclamation took over the project and began rebuilding the dam in nineteen oh six and finished it in nineteen oh seven. The Bureau brought federal engineering expertise and federal money that the private investors had been unable to sustain through two cycles of catastrophic flooding. The federally rebuilt dam held, and the irrigation system it supported continued to supply water to Carlsbad's farms.

The story of the Avalon Dam is the story of western water development in miniature. Private enterprise opens a project. Floods reveal the inadequacy of private capital to sustain it. The federal government steps in with the resources to make it work. The Pecos River gave Carlsbad its reason to exist, and federal engineering gave it the infrastructure to survive.