People figured that when the region was settled, rainfall would magically increase, that it would “follow the plow.” In the late 1800s, such theories amounted to Biblical dogma. When they proved catastrophically wrong, Powell’s irrigation ideas were finally embraced and pursued with near fanaticism, until the most gigantic dams were being built on the most minuscule foundations of economic rationality and need. Greening the desert became a kind of Christian ideal.
