Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Besides the hazards of the construction work (the falling rock, the explosives, electrocution, behemoth machines); besides the hazards of off-hours (fist fights, drunken binges, social diseases from the whores who camped about); besides all this, there was the heat. The low-lying parts of the Colorado and Sonora deserts are the hottest corner of North America, and we are speaking of temperatures in open, ambient air. The Colorado’s box canyon held heat like an oven with the door open about an inch. Workers sometimes sacrificed eggs to see if they would actually fry on a sun-fired rock. The first death from heat prostration occurred a few days after construction began, and so many men collapsed that some of the crews finally forced a shutdown, demanded a pay raise, and ultimately staged a strike. The strike, however, did no good. Next to Boulder City was an encampment of tents and shanties known as Ragtown, where the unemployed waited by the hundreds for someone to give up, be fired, or die. “One of the myths about the Depression,” Arthur Miller, the playwright, once said, “is that it brought everyone closer together. Actually, it just made everyone more voracious.” “They will work under our conditions, or they will not work at all,” proclaimed W. H. Wattis. And they did, at a base pay of $4 per day.