Reporting supported with a grant from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder. Aerial photography support provided by LightHawk.
FAR WEST TEXAS—The year was 1897. Flood waters from the Rio Grande submerged entire blocks of downtown El Paso.
The New York Times described the crash of crumbling houses and the “cries of frightened women and children” on its May 26 front page. The raging river displaced hundreds of people and destroyed scores of adobe homes.
In Mexico, the Rio Grande is known as the Rio Bravo—the rough, or wild, river—signifying the force that caused several devastating floods in El Paso and neighboring Ciudad Juárez.
Today these historic floods are hard to imagine. The river channel in El Paso-Juárez now only fills during the irrigation season. Further downstream, the river is frequently dry in a 200-mile section known as the Forgotten Reach.
Inside Climate News documented this remote stretch of the river in July on a flight with the non-profit Light Hawk. Other than limited flows from springs and creeks, known locally as arroyos, this section of the Rio Grande barely has water.