Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Pomeroy stayed at the site for seven months, sending daily dispatches to the governor by radio. When the Bureau finally began to lay a trestle bridge to the Arizona shore, Moeur decided to demonstrate that he meant business. He declared the whole Arizona side of the river under martial law and sent out a hundred-man militia unit in eighteen trucks, some with mounted machine guns. According to residents of the town of Parker, who were watching a good joke turn sour in a hurry, the guardsmen seemed eager for a fight. By now, however, the imbroglio had became national news and a source of embarrassment to Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. Well aware that Arizona had at least a moral case to make, Ickes ordered construction halted on the dam while the dispute was settled in the courts. To its own surprise as much as everyone else’s, Arizona, which had already lost twice in the Supreme Court in its efforts to block Boulder Dam, was upheld. Parker Dam, ruled the Court, was technically illegal because it had not been specifically authorized by Congress. (That the Bureau could begin to put up a big dam without even asking Congress for formal approval says a lot about how far it had come in the intervening years.) Four months later, however, California’s Congressional delegation pushed a bill through Congress that specifically authorized the dam, and Arizona was left without recourse, unless it wanted to declare war on the United States.