Cadillac Desert
chapter Summaries
Overview:
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner was published in 1986 and updated in 1993. The book’s purpose is to illuminate just how unnatural and dependent the West’s system is on water supply and how the system’s design and operation has been driven from the beginning by big-money politics and macho rivalries (particularly between the bureau and the Army Corps of Engineers) much more for the common good, than for healthy ecosystems.
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Chapter 1: A Country of Illusion
Historians of the West have typically focused on events that opened the great landscape of the American Desert to settlers. Such events included the Lewis and Clark Expedition, wars with the Indians of the Great Plains, and the Homestead Act of 1862. Much importance is placed on the expedition of John Wesley Powell. Powell wanted the settlement in the West to be environmentally successful. He believed that building reservoirs would be beneficial to have water in the spring. However, no one had the money to do so and also was bothered by the fact that states were divided by fences and boundaries instead of being divided as per water shed (geographical feature).
Chapter 2: The Red Queen
In chapter 2, Mr Reisner traces what is perhaps the most famous water story of them all: how LA stole the Owens River, and eventually how it led to the decline of Owens Valley, and so on.