PAST
Act followed by Buckeye farmers receiving water logging exemption status around the end of the decade. In 2006, the BWCDD claimed full management authority of the canal. Today, it consists of a 23-mile main stretch and a 7½-mile southern extension, providing water to nearly 22,000 acres. The canal remains an integral aspect of life in Buckeye, Carter said, sustaining the old and developing the new. Wood recalled family stories of how the canal wove its way into the thread of everyday life. Her grandfather cooled freshly picked watermelons in the water on summer afternoons, traded baskets along the riverbank with the Indigenous people and waterskied down the canal in the ‘60s and ‘70s. We asked: What would Wood’s life look like without the canal? She was speechless, unable to find an answer. The water is the mother, and Wood is a mother to three children she raised along the banks of the canal. The land’s ancient wisdom seeps through the soil and instills lessons she believes will carry with them no matter where they go in life. “The canal has been the life source of the entire Buckeye Valley from day one,” she said, finally finding words. “Water is life. I truly believe that. So, while water brings the
Buckeye in 1910. As such, the city itself is named for the canal. In 1907, the Buckeye Irrigation Company was founded to manage the water. “After 20 years of fits and starts, the Buckeye Irrigation Company emerged from the hopes and dreams of various irrigation speculators and would- be entrepreneurs and played a central role in this story of private capital harnessing the natural resources of the American West,” wrote I.H. Parkman in his book, The History of the Buckeye Canal . The canal carved Buckeye history — its fingerprints were on each drought, flood and economic downturn impacting the flow of development in the town and the lives of those who claimed the valley as their home. In 1922, a group of farmers founded the Buckeye Water Conservation and Drainage District to sustainably manage repairs and water use. Today, the district’s general manager, Noel Carter, carries on that century-old legacy as a fifth-generation Buckeye resident whose family homesteaded in 1899. The canal “was the function, the feature, that established the city of Buckeye,” Carter said. “It was essential to the farming community for many years and the water is really what has provided for and established for Buckeye to grow and bring it to where it is today.” Water supply rights for the canal were decreed just before 1920, securing water for the valley farms as the town continued expanding. One of the canal’s
“ It was essential to the farming community for many years and the water is really what has provided for and established for Buckeye to grow and bring it to where it is today. NOEL CARTER, GENERAL MANAGER BUCKEYE WATER CONSERVATION AND DRAINAGE DISTRICT
The Buckeye Canal, the community’s life source for centuries for which the city is named, was extended long ago to bisect Steven Bales’ Beloat Road alfalfa farm as pictured here.
opportunity to develop, it also brings the opportunity to grow things, and because we are able to grow things we are able to continue our business year after year.”
most pivotal moments was in 1944, Carter said, when the district won a lawsuit against upriver entities whose dams limited supply. Another important moment came in 1980 with the Groundwater Management
THE TRENCH REVOLUTION City of Buckeye named for the canal, not the other way around
BUCKEYE
BY HANNA GHABHAIN
T HE HISTORY OF IRRIGATION IS THE HISTORY OF THE BUCKEYE VALLEY ITSELF. Since humankind built settlements on the banks of the Gila River thousands of years ago, irrigating water has been integral to sustaining life through agriculture. Indigenous people lived in close relationship to the water as the civilization’s life force. However, after the Spanish invaded to establish colonies there, the land and its water were torn by conquest, eventually being absorbed into the U.S. in 1853. Two years later, three men named Malie M. Jackson, Joshua L. Spain and Henry Mitchell ventured into the desert with a vision of creating a canal for their crops. They identified the system’s head near the Agua Fria and Gila Rivers junction and named it the Buckeye Canal in honor
Liberty
of Jackson’s home state of Ohio, the Buckeye State. Construction began immediately. Fourth-generation Buckeye resident and farmer Shawn Dean Wood’s ancestors arrived not long after. She’s heard the stories all her life: How her great-grandparents were headed to California for the gold rush when their mule died in Buckeye, and they decided to stay; how they helped build the canal in those early days, creating the waterway that would nourish the family farm into what it is today. “Water is really a lifeline to the history of generations being able to continue to keep their livelihood in agriculture,” Wood said. The burgeoning farming community we now call Buckeye was originally founded as the town of Sidney in 1888. However, the canal’s impact was so powerful that the town eventually changed its name to
Palo Verde
Buckeye Hills Regional Park
The Buckeye Canal follows this yellow path.
InBuckeye.com | Fall 2024
Fall 2024 | InBuckeye.com
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