Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West

Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books

by Mark Fiege, William Cronon (Foreword)

Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege's fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho's Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces--one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. "Irrigated Eden" vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology.

Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999

Genres: History, Environment, School, Nonfiction, American History, Nature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[N.]

Great book. I really appreciated the approach toward describing a hybrid landscape existing in a dialectic with a network of human social forces: "A network of social organization, a dense human ecology, accompanied the creation of the irrigated landscape." The book demonstrates that the best efforts to control and conquer the land resulted in unanticipated results, which then required adaptation.

It was also satisfying to read this book in conversation with Donald Worster's Rivers of Empire, which suggests that irrigation in the West proceeded toward hierarchy and coercion. In some places, maybe. But for Fiege, "Multifarious environmental organizations often exhibited elements of voluntarism, cooperation, bureaucracy, and attachments to the federal government... Idahoans established an array of economic associations and labor systems." This reads more true to my experience and study of Utah and the Mountain West.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great environmental history that really captures the mythology of the American West as conceived by white Idahoans who are engaging in the western experiment by transforming their arid land into an Eden all their own. However, indigenous voices are entirely absent from this, presenting a white-washed version of the history of the Snake River.

One historian put it best: "Environmental change imposed upon nature to the benefit of (mostly) white Americans is not neutral when salmon no longer swim up river to feed your people and when the elk you depend on for winter no longer have wintering habitats thanks to damming."

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book paints a picture of the irrigated landscape in Southern Idaho at the turn of the last century. Although it is interesting and informative, the writing kind of sucks. It is short and repetitive. He could have said everything in half the pages he did.

[Mathew Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite environmental history books ever written -- terrific work. I can't say enough about both how incredible the arguments are within this book and how great the writing is. 100% love this book.