James Earl Sherow contends that a vast network of problems in the arid West has sprung from the mistaken notion that water is a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded. This ill-conceived approach to water development, he argues, has resulted in social problems as well as abuse of the environment. In this volume he tells the story of the inhabitants of the "Valley of Content," the High Plains section of the Arkansas River Valley, during the formative period of settlement and development. It was their desire for growth, he maintains, that spurred the construction of the very dams, reservoirs,...

Grandiose plans for land retirement and expanded irrigation have been frequently proposed for the northern Great Plains, but they have not significantly affected agricultural practices in the region.

Those major readjustments to farming methods that did occur in the region evolved out of local initiative in response to drought and depression during the 1920s. With some refinements but few amendments, procedures remain basically the same today.

In Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains, Mary Hargreaves reviews the changes in agricultural technology and farm management through...

Snaking 2,540 miles from Montana to the Mississippi River, the Missouri is the longest waterway in the nation. Its basin--stretching 530,000 square miles--extends broadly into ten states and twenty-five Indian reservations. For millions of years the river and its tributaries meandered untamed. But that irrevocably changed with the passage of the Pick-Sloan Plan, part of the Flood Control Act of 1944.

In River of Promise, River of Peril, John Thorson takes the first comprehensive look at how and why the Missouri River basin-now with six major dams and hundreds of miles of navigation...

This collection provides a context for the best and most informative letters written by early foresters. The writers illuminate how they were forced to balance the agency's regulatory impulses with the needs of rural communities that depended upon forests for their livelihood.

Three decades ago-years after most tribes had filed land claims-the Zuni initiated legal battles related to aboriginal claims, rights, and use that few experts thought they could win. Yet by 1991 they had achieved three major victories.

In the first case, the Zuni sued the United States seeking payment for aboriginal territorial lands taken without adequate compensation. In the second, also against the United States, the tribe sought compensation for environmental damages to Zuni trust lands caused by the U.S. Government and by private industry where the federal government should have...

Endangered ecosystem or renewable resource? How we feel about forests has to do with more than trees.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the history of forestry in the United States, exploring the impact of the discipline on natural and human landscapes since the mid-nineteenth century. Through important articles that have helped define the field, it assesses the development of the forestry profession and the U.S. Forest Service, analyzes the political and scientific controversies that have marked forestry's evolution, and discloses the transformations in America's...

Near the end of the nineteenth century, the cities of Boston and Oakland each faced environmental crises of water contamination and shortages that existing regional agencies could not solve. How these two cities resolved their water problems is the basis of a comparative history that provides valuable insights into urban development and explores the political implications and environmental impacts of regionalism.

Water defined the limits to growth of these bay cities and, as Sarah Elkind demonstrates, water supply and sewage disposal were two aspects of a single problem. Each city opted...

The West is popularly perceived as America's last outpost of unfettered opportunity, but twentieth-century corporate tourism has transformed it into America's "land of opportunism." From Sun Valley to Santa Fe, towns throughout the West have been turned over to outsiders--and not just to those who visit and move on, but to those who stay and control.

Although tourism has been a blessing for many, bringing economic and cultural prosperity to communities without obvious means of support or allowing towns on the brink of extinction to renew themselves; the costs on more intangible levels may...

While electricity held considerable promise for residents of the American West throughout the 1920s, it did not come with the flip of a switch. That dream could not be realized until it was first determined who would manage the resources from which power was generated.

Westerners were at the forefront of the debate over electric power development even before the construction of large, federally owned dams in the 1930s. At the heart of this debate was a conflict between public power advocates and the private utility industry over control of the environment, a struggle that was played out...