''Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water '' is a 1986 American history book by Marc Reisner about

land development Land development is the alteration of landscape in any number of ways, such as: * Changing landforms from a natural or semi-natural state for a purpose such as agriculture or House, housing * subdivision (land), Subdividing real estate into Lot ( ...

and

water policy Water politics, sometimes called hydropolitics, is politics affected by the availability of water and water resources, a necessity for all life forms and human development. Arun P. Elhance's definition of hydropolitics is "the systematic study ...

in the

western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. As American settlement i ...

. The book largely focuses on the history of two federal agencies, the

Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it ...

and the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wor ...

, and their struggles to remake the American West in ways to satisfy national settlement and energy generation 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, with a new Afterword by the author. The book was again reissued in 2017, with a lengthy Postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the

Natural Resources Defense Council The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States–based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicag ...

Topics discussed

* Army Corps of Engineers *

California Aqueduct The Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct is a system of canals, tunnels, and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California. Named after California Gov ...

* California Water Wars *

Central Arizona Project The Central Arizona Project (CAP) is a 336 mi (541 km) diversion canal in Arizona in the southern United States. The aqueduct diverts water from the Colorado River at the Bill Williams Wildlife Refuge south portion of Lake Havasu n ...

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

Colorado River Storage Project The Colorado River Storage Project is a United States Bureau of Reclamation project designed to oversee the development of the upper Colorado drainage basins, basin of the Colorado River. The project provides Hydroelectricity, hydroelectric powe ...

* David Brower * Floyd Dominy * Garrison Dam * Glen Canyon Dam *

Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, built to produce hydroelectric power and provide irrigation water. Constructed between 1933 and 1942, Grand Coulee originally had two powerhous ...

Hoover Dam The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado, Black Canyon of the Colorado River (U.S.), Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, d ...

* Klamath Diversion *

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal Public utility, utility in the United States with 8,100 megawatts of electric generating capacity (2021–2022) and delivering an average of 435 million gallons of wat ...

Manifest Destiny Manifest destiny was the belief in the 19th century in the United States, 19th-century United States that American pioneer, American settlers were destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious ("''m ...

Mono Lake Mono Lake ( ) is a Salt lake, saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin. The lack of an outlet causes Hypersaline lake, high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake ...

* Native Americans * NAWAPA *

Ogallala Aquifer The Ogallala Aquifer () is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately in po ...

Owens Valley Owens Valley (Mono language (California), Mono: ''Payahǖǖnadǖ'', meaning "place of flowing water") is an arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States. It is located to the east of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra ...

* Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869 *" Rain follows the plow" * St. Francis Dam *

Salmon run A salmon run is an annual fish migration event where many salmonid species, which are typically hatched in fresh water and live most of their adult life downstream in the ocean, swim back against the stream to the upper reaches of rivers to s ...

* Salton Sink * Snail darter controversy * Stewart Lee Udall * Teton Dam * William Mulholland

Reception

In a review written shortly after publication, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' described the book as "a revealing, absorbing, often amusing and alarming report on where billions of their dollars have gone – and where a lot more are going." In 1986, ''Cadillac Desert'' was a finalist for both the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award (BABRA). In 1999, a

Modern Library The Modern Library is an American book publishing Imprint (trade name), imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Moder ...

panel of authors and critics ranked it 61st on a list of the 100 most notable English-language works of nonfiction of the 20th century. The Property and Environment Research Center reviewed the book 25 years after first publication, calling it a "masterpiece" and saying that it is "compelling today as it was on publication in 1986". It praised the research that went into work, calling out the interviews performed by Reisner to produce the book. '' Summit Daily News'' has also praised Reisner's research and called out Reisner's framing of the Bureau of Reclamation as the "clear villain" and the

as its "most abused victim", ultimately calling the book "prophetic."

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''.Marc Reisner, "Deconstruction in the Arid West," ''1 West-Northwest 1'' (1994) A four-part television documentary based on the revised book was produced in 1996 by KTEH, the PBS affiliate in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

. This book has been referred to in 21st-century fiction about the

effects of climate change Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to the climate system include an Instrumental temperature record, overall warming trend, Effects of climate change on the ...

(so-called

climate fiction Climate fiction (sometimes shortened to cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change.Glass, Rodge (31 May 2013).Global Warning: The Rise of 'Cli-fi' retrieved 3 March 2016 Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science ...

), 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. The physical book also plays an important role. Claire Vaye Watkins refers to ''Cadillac Desert'' as a source in her acknowledgments for her novel, '' Gold Fame Citrus'' (2015).

References

1986 non-fiction books Books about California Environmental non-fiction books History books about the United States Viking Press books Water and the environment Water in California {{US-hist-book-stub

Topics discussed

Reception

Adaptations and representations in other media

See also

References