Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Although Tulare and Buena Vista lakes were privately owned, for the most part, the rivers that fed them were in the public domain. The four big farming companies held rights to a substantial amount of their water, but there were still big surpluses in all but the driest years—especially in the larger rivers, the Kings and the Kern. Had those surpluses been directed elsewhere in the valley, they could have created a great many small irrigated farms. If the rivers were going to be developed—if any agency of government was to develop them—it was a job for the Bureau of Reclamation. The only problem with that rationale was that the big growers wanted all of the water for themselves, they wanted the government to develop it for them, and they didn’t want to have to pay for it. Someday, if anyone has the inclination or the ability to penetrate the wall of secrecy behind which the Corps of Engineers has always managed to carry on its affairs, we may hear from its own mouth—from incriminating letters, memoranda, or confessions of its officials—why it was so eager to develop the Kings and the Kern—to ally itself unabashedly with a handful of huge land monopolies and, in the process, shove the Bureau off two made-to-order small-farm irrigation projects. The only obvious explanation (which is probably the correct one) is that it sensed the growing unpopularity of the acreage limitations of the Reclamation Act. Here was an unparalleled opportunity to establish a beachhead in a region ...