Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

The only way to steer reclamation away from utter financial disaster in the Missouri Basin was to subsidize it with hydropower revenues. Hydroelectric output being a function of two variables—volume of water and height of drop—it made good sense, from the Bureau’s point of view, to build high dams along the upper tributaries to generate as much power as possible. The stored water could then be used to irrigate adjacent agricultural land, and hydropower revenues would cover the inevitable losses. Glenn Sloan, an assistant engineer in the Billings office, had begun to draw the outlines of such a basinwide project in the late 1930s, and was reasonably close to finishing his report in 1943, when the Missouri decided to go on a rampage. It produced three big floods—in March, May, and June—and during the last one Omaha and Kansas City were navigable by boat. The Corps’ regional office happened to be in Omaha, and its petulant director, Lewis Pick, who would later become the Chief of Engineers, was nearly chased by the river to higher ground. To a military man like Pick, it was an unforgivable insult. “I want control of the Missouri River!” he is said to have barked at his subordinates. Before the end of the year, Pick had dispatched to Washington a twelve-page report on harnessing the Missouri, which was to become known as the Pick Plan.