Reclaiming the American West: An Historiography and Guide. By Lawrence
B. Lee. Santa Barbara, California: American Bibliographic Center-Clio Press, 1980.
Selected Bibliography. Biographical Profiles. Directory of Water Resource
Associations and Agencies. Glossary. Index. 131 pages. No price given.
Reviewed by Judith Austin, research historian and archivist
at the Idaho State Historical Society and editor of Idaho Yesterdays.
Recent efforts to "return" the ownership of federal lands to
the western states, more familiarly known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, and
challenges to the 160-acre ownership limit under the Reclamation Act of 1902
have focused the public attention all over the country on issues of reclamation
and public-land policy. While there is a great deal of background material
available, it has not been very accessible to any but the diligent scholar.
Lawrence Lee's essay-guide, Reclaiming the American West, is an effort
to improve access by identifying the best and most significant studies of
reclamation in the West. Materials cited include not only the standard historical
monographs and journal articles (most of them dating from what Lee calls the
"second era of American reclamation history," between 1928
and 1978) but also works by professional scientists, engineers, and administrators
that may be unintentional history but provide much of the data available from
the first half-century of reclamation.
By an accident of timing, Lee's survey predates both the
Sagebrush Rebellion and the acreage-limitation's most recent discussion. It will
nonetheless be useful to those wishing a better background on both controversies.
Such usefulness does not mean the book is without flaws.
The greatest problem presented by Reclaiming the American West is whom it
is written for. If it were only a bibliography—if all the articles and books and
documents cited in the text and the footnotes were simply listed and annotated—it
would be a very useful compilation. It still is. But Lee's historiographic essay
is so condensed (and written by someone with so much expertise in the field) that
it is likely to be beyond the neophyte student of reclamation in its tracings of
concepts, theories, and viewpoints.
In his introduction, Paul Gates urges the reader to read the
footnotes because "Lee's judgments are more freely made there and he cites
additional and important studies in them" (p. xix). The assessment is accurate,
but the user who tries to cope with an historiographic essay that is not
smoothly written while simultaneously skipping to the amplifying footnotes risks
double vision, a total loss of the flow of the narrative, and great confusion.
The problem is compounded by a lack of good copy editing and proofreading. The
unprepared reader will be likely to think that Oscar Winther was a graduate
student in 1953, that Frederick Mark wrote an essay (uncited) on Paul Gates,
and that there are scholars in the Northwest variously named Calvin B., C.B.,
and C. Brewster Coulter (all in fact one man—and not all the items by Coulter
are cited in the form of name used in them).
Such points may seem picky; but a bibliography and historiography
should be dependably accurate and, insofar as there is a narrative, easy to
get through. A more substantive question may be raised about a gap in Lee's
sources. There are almost no state publications listed except
historical quarterlies (and the only one listed for Idaho is incorrectly
described as unpublished). The most detailed study of the impact of reclamation
in Idaho, for example, a lengthy work on the Boise Project incorporating several
disciplines including history, does not appear; presumably other state
departments of water resources or equivalent have done similar studies over the
years. These are not always readily accessible bibliographically, but a survey
of the relevant departments should have turned up material that could well have
been included. State agencies' views of their work may well be at least as
useful as federal agencies'.
A glossary at the end of the book, which attempts to define
twenty-two terms ranging from acre-foot through benefit-cost analysis and
historiography to the Winters doctrine, is nearly written in jargon. It is
preceded by a series of biographical notes on 121 people. Some are significant
in the history of reclamation and conservation in the West, e.g. John Wesley
Powell and Elwood Mead. Some are scholars who have written significant material
on the history of conservation and reclamation, e.g., Paul Gates and Leonard
Arrington. Still others, while perfectly competent scholars, are identified here
chiefly by their institutional affiliation, professional memberships, and works
having no immediate obvious connection to the history of reclamation. It is a
list puzzling to expert and newcomer alike.
Reclaiming the American West contains much useful information.
But it and its users would have benefited from a sharper focus on
its audience or audiences, from a better editing job by ABC-Clio, and from
the inclusion of state as well as federal materials in its section on government
sources.
