Folks, folks, folks…Why would you take Phoenix out of the running? The Salt River that runs through it never really runs. It is dry as a bone!! Case in Point:
Little Known Fact – Back in the early 50’s late 40’s they brought Nazi prisoners of war to Phoenix to sit in war tribunals in Phoenix. Apparently the prisoners were constently hearing that they were right on a river, the Salt river, and they staged an escape. They actually made it out with a make shift raft only to their dismay, because when they reached the river, guess what, it was bone dry!! and they were caught soon there after.
So folks the Salt river is not navigable, 99% of the time. I vote Phoenix hands down…
I don’t think there are any cities not on water. I don’t think there are even any small towns not around water at all. They would tend to die because everybody would go somewhere else.
Before we extend to other locations, we should clarify exactly what it is meant by NO water:
Does it have to be year-round water? If not, and seasonally dry creek/river beds count, do they have to be running a significant portion of the year? Or do we accept watercourses that only exist because of occasional flood runoff as “water”.
How small can the “water” get? Does a tiny little creek two feet across count? Or a small pond at the city limits? We COULD say that it has to be a significant enough feature to be named on maps, but people give names to some very tiny little creeks and puddles.
Since people presumably live in the place, and need water on a day-to-day basis, I think we have to disallow man-made structures to deliver water, such as aquaducts, man-made watercourses like ditches, artificially created reservoirs, etc. Large dams can make this problematical - I would say being on the edge of Lake Mead, for instance, counts as being “on the water”, although Lake Mead is man-made.
How close to the city does it have to be to count?
IIRC Tucson was, before it got CAP canal water, was the largest city in the US that relied solely on groundwater. The Santa Cruz river bed is empty except during very heavy rains. It’s unusual in that it flows north from the Mexican border and doesn’t flow into another body or river. The streambeds branch and just kind of peter out in the desert. The Rillito river comes from the Catalina mountains overlooking Tucson and joins the Santa Cruz but it also only flows during heavy rainstorms.
I vote to exclude Phoenix because the Salt flows enough to have filled the artificial Tempe town lake.
I guess the criteria I was wondering about is the necessity of a river for a major city.
Like Indianapolis was built there not only because it was central but because they (at the time) thought the river would be navigatable for boats.
I would think the question I would want to know is, if the city wasn’t river dependent. For example got it’s wells from water or could not (not does not but could not) use their river for commerical or pleasure craft.
Based on the new criteria, I still say Dallas/Ft. Worth. Im pretty sure that area is more populated than Vegas or Phoenix, and nobody uses the Trinity River for anything, other than gangbanging.
I don’t think navigable water is as important for developing a city as having potable water is.
Las Vegas doesn’t have anything navigable closer than the Colorado river (and then there’s that big dam thingee), but there were enough water wells to keep the city going in its early years.
L.A. despite being on the ocean didn’t have a useful harbor until the late 19th century and got most of its drinking water from the Los Angeles River, which wasn’t paved at the time. But then the city found ways of getting more waters. And the rest is history.
Re the “Great Salt River Escape Caper” :
The prisoners escaped from a WWII German POW camp in Papago Park which is now the site of the Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Gardens.
Phoenix was founded on the site of the Hohokam ruins along the Salt River; Tempe (then known as Hayden’s Ferry) was founded on the other bank and upstream a little ways. As the population of Phoenix grew, the Salt was dammed upstream to provide water for agriculture and power primarily and as a means of flood control secondarily (yeah, the Salt flooded even before it was dammed. Phoenix is built on a slope and washes run downstream into the river; also, washes and ‘irregular’ streams feed the Salt with runoff in its upper course).
So, although the Salt is now dry through Phoenix, it still exists as a river and Phoenix is dependent on it.
In other words: <pout, pout, pout> “We do so have a river!”
I’m sure the Trinity is navigable at certain times of the year (eg. most of this spring); but it sure has heck wasn’t navigable the summer before last, when we didn’t get any measurable rainfall for three months straight … Those traders probably would want something a bit more consistent than that.
