Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege’s fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho’s Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces—one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology. Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999 Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the greater Northwest was ablaze with change and seemingly obsessed with progress. The promotional literature of the time praising railroads, population increases, and the growing sophistication of urban living, however, ignored the reality of poverty and ethnic and gender discrimination. During the course of the next century, even with dramatic changes in the region, one constant remained— inequality. With an emphasis on the region’s political economy, its environmental history, and its cultural and social heritage, this lively and colorful history of the Pacific Northwest—defined here as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and southern British Columbia—places the narrative of this dynamic region within a national and international context. Embracing both Canadian and American stories in looking at the larger region, renowned historians William Robbins and Katrine Barber offer us a fascinating regional history through the lens of both the environment and society. Understanding the physical landscape of the greater Pacific Northwest—and the watersheds of the Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath rivers—sets the stage for understanding the development of the area. Examining how this landscape spawned sawmills, fish canneries, railroads, logging camps, agriculture, and shared immigrant and ethnic traditions reveals an intricate portrait of the twentieth-century Northwest. Impressive in its synthesis of myriad historical facts, this first-rate regional history will be of interest to historians studying the region from a variety of perspectives and an informative read for anyone fascinated by the story of a landscape rich in diversity, natural resources, and Native culture.

Water and land interrelate in surprising and ambiguous ways, and riparian zones, where land and water meet, have effects far outside their boundaries. Using the Malheur Basin in southeastern Oregon as a case study, this intriguing and nuanced book explores the ways people have envisioned boundaries between water and land, the ways they have altered these places, and the often unintended results. The Malheur Basin, once home to the largest cattle empires in the world, experienced unintended widespread environmental degradation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After establishment in 1908 of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as a protected breeding ground for migratory birds, and its expansion in the 1930s and 1940s, the area experienced equally extreme intended modifications aimed at restoring riparian habitat. Refuge managers ditched wetlands, channelized rivers, applied Agent Orange and rotenone to waterways, killed beaver, and cut down willows. Where Land and Water Meet examines the reasoning behind and effects of these interventions, gleaning lessons from their successes and failures. Although remote and specific, the Malheur Basin has myriad ecological and political connections to much larger places. This detailed look at one tangled history of riparian restoration shows how—through appreciation of the complexity of environmental and social influences on land use, and through effective handling of conflict—people can learn to practice a style of pragmatic adaptive resource management that avoids rigid adherence to single agendas and fosters improved relationships with the land.

Cotton, crucial to the economy of the American South, has also played a vital role in the making of the Mexican north. The Lower Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) Valley irrigation zone on the border with Texas in northern Tamaulipas, Mexico, was the centerpiece of the Cardenas government's effort to make cotton the basis of the national economy. This irrigation district, built and settled by Mexican Americans repatriated from Texas, was a central feature of Mexico's effort to control and use the waters of the international river for irrigated agriculture. Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources, Casey Walsh discusses the relations among various groups comprising the "social field" of cotton production in the borderlands. By describing the complex relationships among these groups, Walsh contributes to a clearer understanding of capitalism and the state, of transnational economic forces, of agricultural and water issues in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands, and of the environmental impacts of economic development. Building the Borderlands crosses a number of disciplinary, thematic, and regional frontiers, integrating perspectives and literature from the United States and Mexico, from anthropology and history, and from political, economic, and cultural studies. Walsh's important transnational study will enjoy a wide audience among scholars of Latin American and Western U.S. history, the borderlands, and environmental and agricultural history, as well as anthropologists and others interested in the environment and water rights.