Meanwhile, large-scale development was also beginning on the opposite end of the Colorado River. In 1900, entrepreneurs of the California Development Company (CDC) looked to the Imperial Valley of southern California as an excellent location to develop agriculture irrigated by the waters of the river. Engineer George Chaffey was hired to design the Alamo Canal, which split off from the Colorado River near Pilot Knob, curved south into Mexico, and dumped into the Alamo River, a dry arroyo which had historically carried flood flows of the Colorado into the Salton Sink. With a stable year-round flow in the Alamo River, irrigators in the Imperial Valley were able to begin large-scale farming, and small towns in the region started to expand with the influx of job-seeking migrants. By 1903, more than in the valley were under cultivation, supporting a growing population of 4,000.