Watering the Valley

"This is a most important book. Sherow's thesis is compelling. He provides a definitive study for the period, . . . examining water use affecting agriculture, industry, and urban areas in Colorado and agriculture in Kansas. This book will be worthy of a place beside Don Pisani's From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850-1930 and Norris Hundley's Water in California. It adds an important new dimension to the discussion of water in the West, a topic that is no longer one of merely regional concern."--Richard Lowitt, author of The New Deal and the West "Following the philosophical lead of new western historians Richard White, Donald Worster, and others, Sherow focuses on the failure of the Arkansas Valley residents to achieve nirvana through development of irrigated agriculture. The failure of ditch companies and municipalities to consider 'ecological niches' and their dependence on a market culture mentality produced environmental degradation, social conflict, and seemingly endless intra- and interstate litigation. This provocative study will challenge water buffaloes to rethink some of their basic premises."--Daniel Tyler, author of The Mythical Pueblo Rights Doctrine: Water Administration in Hispanic New Mexico