An hour and half drive northeast of Phoenix, you’ll find yourself among the mesquite bosques and Sonoran desert of the Tonto National Forest, a region home to the Verde River and one of Arizona’s Important Bird Areas (IBA), the Salt and Verde Ecosystem. Here, you can find enchanting birds like Phainopepla, Vermilion Flycatchers, and Lucy's Warblers. It’s also home to the Horseshoe Reservoir, formed in 1944 when Horseshoe Dam was built by the United States Government and Phelps Dodge corporation to provide a water supply to help meet the water needs of industries (like mining), agriculture, and the Phoenix area's growing population. When it was built, along with its sister dam, Bartlett (built in 1939), the Verde River behind the dams turned into reservoirs, flooding the native riverside trees and shrubs, submerging archaeological and Indigenous sites, and transforming the landscape. As you will see in the StoryMap, Horseshoe Reservoir is upstream of Bartlett...