This is the story of one of the outstanding achievements in the winning of the American South West. It isn't a story of a victory over the native Americans, but of a victory over a more relentless foe - the desert. Long ago the scorching heat of the desert made Phoenix, Arizona an impossible place to live. The early settlers found themselves faced with a major problem, water. In 1867 one of the early American settlers in the valley organised an irrigation company and for several years the Salt River Valley prospered. This story takes us back to 1889 and the droughts that followed.