The Salt River Runs Wild

A year ago I only saw dry riverbed when I peered over the walkway from the bridge on the east side of McClintock Drive in Tempe. Quite a few camps of homeless people littered a dry landscape peppered with mesquite trees. A coyote meandered from the shoreline of Tempe Town Lake fifty feet behind me, where the man-made lake began at a concrete barrier spanning most of the width of the waterway. However last week, at the end of an exceptionally wet winter across the state, only treetops remained visible as the Salt River ran unimpeded. It was as free and wild as the coyotes and the campers who had escaped the deluge.

Only birds were on the scene, but not the winter-visiting species I observed on my last visit. Gone were the northern shovelers and gadwalls that skimmed the shallow ponds edging the exposed river bottom as it feebly fed the lake. Of course, the ponds were now obliterated, merged into one wide, raging river. Amidst the eddies and low rapids were instead numerous cormorants, diving deep below the water's surface in search of fish. Closer to shore, pied-bill grebes and American coots plied calm inlets. Along the riverbanks, a variety of herons - namely great blue herons, white egrets, and snowy egrets - patiently eyed their prey in the depths below. Peering from high in the air, a lone osprey soared in looping arcs.

After a while, I drove a couple miles east, below the lake, where I observed the Rio Salado, as the river is also called, near Priest Drive. Normally the waterway is bone dry except for a trickle that runs down a narrow channel. The minimal flow eventually reaches the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area, a five-mile long corridor of restored native habitat in Phoenix.

Water cascaded over Tempe Town Lake's lower dam, situated less than a quarter mile up the river behind me, filling the normally dry riverbed. Below, I watched the river run wide and fast between the north and south banks, more than five hundred feet across. I could only imagine the skinny stream that typically winds between the trunks of the currently inundated mesquite trees.

The reddest of male house finches called out in loud, cheery songs from a tree branch. Nearby were a pair of black-phoebes, a riparian-loving flycatcher species. Northern rough-winged swallows swooped in over the river when they weren't resting on the fence poles that delineated a bike path. Herons lined the riverbanks eyeing their next catches.

It was easy to ignore Phoenix's busy Sky Harbor Airport dominating the horizon a mile away, its jets thundering overhead every minute. I was focused on the Salt River in all its glory, witnessing how it would have looked before the nearby dam and the long stretch of much larger twentieth century up-river dams were constructed. The expanse of water made it easy to imagine the extensive canals the ancient Hohokam people built to direct the year-round water to their far-reaching settlements and farms. The roar of the water and the bird song only sharpened my senses, finetuning an image of the variety of life and culture that thrived along these banks over the millennia, when the Salt River ran free.

Not long before Columbus reached the Western Hemisphere, the Hohokam civilization collapsed, possibly after a period of climate change that resulted in flooding that deepened the Salt River and destroyed canal heads. The local population dispersed; some groups maybe even seeded modern tribes like the nearby Pima and O'odham. Archaeology, science, and oral traditions still leave questions about the original population's fate. Recent weather, however, at least paints a picture of how a small section of their water landscape would have appeared to their ancient eyes.