INDUSTRIALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 163With the Homestead Act as an incentive, Americans
flooded into the Great Plains and the interior West
after the Civil War. The 1890 Census counted over a
million residents in Nebraska, and close to 1.5 million
in Kansas, many of whom had been attracted by the
persistent but false hope that rain follows the plow.
One of the few to voice skepticism about the capacity
of the West to support large-scale farming was
John Wesley Powell, director of the United
States Geological Survey. Powell had lost an arm
fighting rebels at Shiloh, and thereafter led several
western surveys and a heroic expedition down the
Colorado River.
In the 1870s he began to articulate what
generations of explorers, settlers, and Native
Americans had long known: that the regular rainfall
and humidity that characterized the eastern United
States evaporated west of the one-hundredth
meridian. In the West, precipitation concentrated
in the high country and fell irregularly elsewhere.
Outside the Pacific Northwest and a few other spots,
the western half of the country could not be farmed
unless it was irrigated. Without water, the land had
no agricultural value.
Powell was no enemy of western settlement,
and in fact optimistically believed that this vast arid
region could be redeemed through the systematic
management of water. To that end, in 1888 he
undertook an ambitious survey of irrigation practices
throughout the West, and then testified at length
before Congress to warn of the dangerous trends that
were already in place. Migrants assumed that streams
flowed year-round, only to find themselves facing
dry creeks and little rain. Competition over water led
settlers to continuously move upstream into zones
of elevation with limited potential for cultivation.
Conflicts over water led to endless litigation
between individuals, counties, and states.
Unpredictable rainfall and recurrent drought led to
the abandonment of homesteads, and sometimes
entire communities.
In contrast, Powell detailed successful examples
of irrigation throughout the arid West that could
be scaled up to expand the region’s potential.
AN ALTERNATIVE VISION FOR THE AMERICAN WEST
John Wesley Powell, “Arid Region of the
United States Showing Drainage
Districts,” 1890
Without reservoirs, canals, and other techniques
of redistributing water, he argued, the West could
sustain neither settlement nor agriculture.
In this respect, Powell’s observations were hardly
controversial. Since the 1820s American schoolbooks
and maps had labeled much of the West the “Great
American Desert.” If Powell’s diagnosis of the
problem was correct, however, his solution was far
more difficult for Congress to accept. Through maps
such as this, Powell proposed a West organized not
around the logic of the grid, but around watersheds
that he distinguished with brilliant color. He then
divided those watersheds into regional communities,
such as the Platte River basin. In Powell’s view,
only with the community control of water would
individuals be forced to collectively determine the
best use of this precious resource. This principle had
long been practiced in the Mormon settlements of
Utah and older Hispano communities of southern
Colorado and northern New Mexico. The premise was
that water was not a private right but a public good,
and that local control and investment ensured the
best outcome. In Powell’s mind, this reorganization
of water rights was a necessary remedy for a system
where corporations and speculators had historically
cornered the best land, resources, and water rights.
Yet Powell was testifying before a Congress that
had created the very problem he sought to address.
In the 1860s the federal government had made
extraordinary land grants to the railroads in an effort
to encourage the construction of transcontinental
routes that might invite settlement, despite the
aridity of these regions. By 1890 the newly organized
Bureau of Indian Affairs had forcibly placed Native
Americans on reservations shown here in order
to liberate land for homesteaders. These and
other federal policies were directly at odds with
Powell’s vision of planned growth. His own outsized
confidence—some might say arrogance—did little
to help his cause, and after his testimony Congress
terminated his irrigation survey altogether.
Powell’s vision proved too disruptive to existing
patterns and practices. Western cities continued
to grow and homesteaders continued to settle on
marginal land. In fact, by promoting irrigation Powell
inadvertently influenced the rise of California’s
agricultural empire as well as its subsequent water
woes. Yet his map remains a challenging reminder
of decisions made and paths not taken, and a very
different vision for the American West.