East Verde River Cascade | Jason Robert O'Kennedy

"The Verde River is the only perennial waterway remaining in Arizona. Though its flow is puny in many places, it is never dry. It drains more than 6600 square miles of Arizona’s high Colorado Plateau and mid-level river basin region and records show that over an eighty-eight-year period of time it discharged 657 cubic feet per second near its mouth, making it second only to the Salt in annual intra-Arizona drainage. For many thousands of years its waters, a critical source of food, drink and shelter, have been a magnet for all animals, man included. Prehistoric people channeled the water to grow irrigated crops. Modern newcomers felt that they could do the same. And so they set about transforming nature by “taming” the “raging” floods and by “harnessing” the “fitful” streams and rivers, forgetting that Nature did not design Arizona to support farms and fountains, cities and subdivisions, smelters and swimming pools…"
~Jason Robert O'Kennedy