Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

All of these problems were compounded by the fact that few settlers had any experience with irrigation farming—nor were they required to. They overwatered and mismanaged their crops; they let their irrigation systems silt up. Many had optimistically filed on more acreage than they had resources to irrigate, and they ended up with repayment obligations on land they were forced to leave fallow. From there, it was a short, swift fall into bankruptcy. Fifty years earlier, the ancestors of the first Reclamation farmers had endured adversity by putting their faith in God and feeding themselves on game. But this was the twentieth century; the game was vanishing, and government was replacing God as the rescuer of last resort. As Michael Robinson wrote, “Western economic and social determinants were changing rapidly. Nineteenth-century irrigation pioneers were better suited to endure hardships than settlers who struggled to survive on Federal Reclamation projects after 1902. In the nineteenth century, wild game was plentiful, livestock could graze on the public domain outside irrigated areas, and the settlers were inured to privation.” And so, after a few years of trial and a lot of error, the Reclamation Act began to undergo a long and remarkable series of “reforms.”