Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

The Corps of Engineers and the region’s public utilities played a big role in the damming of the Pacific Northwest because it had in abundance what the rest of the region lacked—water—so many of the dams were built for flood control, navigation, or power. Everywhere else in the West, however, where deserts were the rule and irrigation was the be-all and end-all of existence, the Bureau reigned supreme. Within its first thirty years, it had built about three dozen projects. During the next thirty years, it built nineteen dozen more. The Burnt River Project, the Cachuma Project, the Mancos Project, the Ogden River Project, the Collbran Project, the Gila Project, the Pine River Project, the Palisades Project, the Weber Basin Project, the Columbia Basin Project, and the Central Valley Project. Shasta Dam, Parker Dam, Friant Dam, Davis Dam, Laguna Dam, Canyon Ferry Dam, Cascade Dam, Flaming Gorge Dam. Cedar Bluff Lake, Paonia Reservoir, Kirwin Reservoir, Webster Reservoir, Pathfinder Reservoir, Waconda Lake, Clair Engle Lake, Lake Berryessa, Lake C. W. McConaughy, Enders Reservoir, Box Butte Reservoir. The Tucumcari Project, the Palo Verde Project, the San Angelo Project, the Canadian River Project, the Crooked River Project, the Kendrick Project, the Hubbard Project, the Hyrum Project, the Eden Project, the W. C. Austin Project, the Colorado–Big Thompson Project, the Pecos River Basin Water Conservation Project (“conservation” meaning, in this case, the virtual drying-up of th...