The Veins Of The Earth

The Southern California desert flows with arid sweeps of sand, running down the bones of the mountains and rocks and forming the skin of the earth in the valleys below.

But in this seemingly lifeless wilderness of curving buff and tan and beige appears a thin straight line of deep blue, rising from the nothingness and running for miles before disappearing again into the empty sand.



This is the Colorado River Aqueduct bringing water, the lifeblood of Los Angeles, 242 miles across the desert to nourish a thirsty city.





On its journey across the Mojave Desert and the Coachella Valley, along the Little San Bernardino Mountains and through the San Jacinto Mountains, the water travels through 92 miles of tunnels, 63 miles of concrete canals, and 55 miles of concrete conduits from its starting point on the Arizona border at Lake Havasu.



Lake Havasu is a 45 mile long reservoir on the Colorado River, named after a Mohave word meaning "blue water".



It is formed by the water trapped behind Parker Dam, one of the deepest dams in the world, extending 235 feet into the sand and gravel of the riverbed into the bedrock below.



Every day a billion gallons of the Colorado running across the wasteland, water in the wilderness, shining in the sun, flowing through the man-made veins of the earth.