Qualla: Laguna Diversion Dam

Laguna Diversion Dam: Introduction

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Spl553, Public domain. The contract to build the first dam on the Colorado River was awarded to J.G. White and Company on July 6, 1905. The Bureau of Reclamation took over the project in 1907. The dam was completed in 1909. When it was finished, the era of steamboat travel on the lower Colorado River was over — the shallow-draft vessels that had supplied military posts, mining camps, and frontier settlements up and down the river for decades could no longer pass. The Laguna Diversion Dam was modest in scale but absolute in consequence.

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Image: Spl553 | Public domain

Laguna Diversion Dam: The First Dam on the Colorado

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Reclamation, Public domain. The Colorado River had been running to the sea without artificial obstruction since the last ice age. In 1909, that changed. The Laguna Diversion Dam, built at a location called Laguna approximately 13 miles northeast of Yuma, was not the towering structure that Hoover Dam would ...

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Image: Bureau of Reclamation | Public domain

Laguna Diversion Dam: The End of the Steamboats

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Renjishino, CC BY 3.0. Colorado River steamboats had operated since the 1850s. They were the supply line for Fort Yuma and the military posts of the Southwest, the transport system for mining operations up and down the river, the connection between the Pacific Coast and the desert interior in an era be...

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Image: Renjishino | CC BY 3.0

Laguna Diversion Dam: The Workers and the Bridge

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Laguna Diversion Dam was built by a labor force that included Mexican-American workers and some Native American workers — the population available and willing to take the dangerous, low-paid work of dam construction in a desert climate. Their presence in the historical record...

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Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Laguna Diversion Dam: A Structure That Shaped the River

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Perdelsky at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Laguna Diversion Dam served the Yuma Project's irrigation system for decades, diverting water from the Colorado into the canals that made the Imperial Valley and the Yuma area agriculturally productive. It was eventually supplemented and in some functions replaced by other in...

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Image: Perdelsky at English Wikipedia | Public domain