Cadillac Desert

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

Cadillac Desert (1986), is a history by American Marc Reisner about land development and water policy in the western United States. Subtitled The American West and its Disappearing Water, it explores the history of the federal agencies, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and their struggles to remake the American West in ways to satisfy national settlement goals. The book concludes that the development-driven policies, formed when settling the West was the country's main concern, have had serious long-term negative effects on the environment and water quantity. The book was revised and updated in 1993.

Adaptations and representations in other media

A portion of the 1993 update was printed in the 1994 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 in 1996 by KTEH, the PBS affiliate in San Jose, California

This book has been referred to in 21st-century fiction about the effects of climate change (so-called climate fiction), such as Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015), a thriller set in the near-future. Several characters refer to Cadillac Desert as having anticipated the environmental decline they are living through. Claire Vaye Watkins refers to Cadillac Desert as a source in her acknowledgments for her novel, Gold Fame Citrus (2015).

Topics discussed

• Army Corps of Engineers
• Bureau of Reclamation
• California Aqueduct
• California Water Wars
• Central Arizona Project
• Colorado River
• Colorado River Storage Project
• David Brower
• Floyd Dominy
• Garrison Dam
• Glen Canyon Dam
• Grand Coulee Dam
• Hoover Dam
• Klamath Diversion
• Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
• Manifest Destiny
• Mono Lake
• Native Americans
• NAWAPA
• Ogallala Aquifer
• Owens Valley
• Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869
• "Rain follows the plow"
• St. Francis Dam
• Snail darter controversy
• Stewart Lee Udall
• Teton Dam
• William Mulholland

See also

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

External links

• "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2003-02-25. Retrieved 2005-12-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)