Cadillac Desert

This article is about the book. For the documentary, see Cadillac Desert (film).

Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner, is a 1986 book published by Viking (ISBN 0-14-017824-4) about land development and water policy in the western United States. Some scholars have described the book as Reisner's magnum opus. Subtitled The American West and its Disappearing Water, it gives the history of the Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and their struggle to remake the American West. The book's main conclusion is that development-driven policies, formed when settling the West was the country's main concern, are having serious long-term negative effects on the environment and water quantity. The book was revised and updated in 1993. A portion of the 1993 update was printed in the inaugural edition of the Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy.

A four-part television documentary based on the revised book was produced by KTEH-TV, the PBS affiliate in San Jose, California, in 1996. The parts are entitled Mulholland’s Dream, An American Nile, The Mercy of Nature, and The Last Oasis.

Topics discussed

• Rain follows the plow
• Army Corp of Engineers
• Bureau of Reclamation
• California Aqueduct
• California Water Wars
• Central Arizona Project
• Colorado River Storage Project
• Floyd Dominy
• Garrison Dam
• Grand Coulee Dam
• Glen Canyon Dam
• Hoover Dam
• John Wesley Powell
• Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869
• Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
• Mono Lake
• NAWAPA
• Owens Valley
• St. Francis Dam
• Stewart Lee Udall
• Teton Dam
• William Mulholland

See also

• Cadillac Desert, a 1997 documentary based mostly on this book.