Watering the Valley: Development along the High Plains Arkansas River, 1870-1950. James Earl Sherow. University of Kansas Press.

Sherow introduced the reader to a number of interpretations of water development formulated by William Smythe, Arthur Maass and Raymond Anderson, Karl Wittfogel, Donald Worster, Richard White, and J. Willard Hurst. The first, William Smythe viewed irrigation as an elemental component of water and capitalistic development. Maass and Anderson followed Smythe's economic orientation. Karl Wittfogel countered this argument by contending that irrigation resulted in despotism in the Far East, with the consequences of degradation of man and nature. White investigated the development of water systems from the social, economic, political, and environmental forces creating them. Hurst examined how law reinforced the dominant attitudes of citizens to water.

Sherow noted the myopic, exploitative mindset of settlers of the West, exploitative in their attitude of water as an extractable commodity and as a resource for engineers to control. Previous studies and theories, he contended, did not address "the niche of a water system and the fluctuation of economic conditions in the river basin" (p. 5). Although, industrial companies, municipal water providers, federal and state bureaus, and cities occupied their own niche, Sherow attempted to fill these gaps in his study of three mutual stockholding irrigation companies--the Rocky Ford Ditch, the Fort Lupton Canal, and the Bessemer Irrigating Ditch companies.

As companies owned by stockholders, they dictated the organization of ditich companies' social and economic structure. The ditch company's managed an unpredictable resource of varying quality and erratic and intermittant flows that depended mostly on the snowmelt during drought and wet conditions. At the headwaters of Leadville, the river had good quality water; "beyond Fort Reynolds, though, the river's quality began to change . . . the substrate and soils on the plains east of the foothills owed their alkaline nature to the ancient seas that once covered the region " (p. 10).

The Rocky Fork Ditch obtained its first water rights, the basis of its operations, in 1874 of 111.76 cubic feet of water per second, predating most water rights in the valley. This group of farmers grew cantaloupe, alfalfa, and sugar beets. The Fort Lyon Canal Company, constructed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the United States Army for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, conformed to the Fort Wise Treaty of 1861. Conflicts between nations caused the parties to sell in 1868 the ditch company to, evenually, Theodore C. Henry, who foresaw extending the ditch to the state line. With water rights junior to exisiting rights and insufficient to fulfill his ambitions, farmers realized water shortages during growing seasons. A merger with the Great Plains Storage Company ensued. After an early history of litigation, the Fort Lyon Canal Company continues to exist.

The Bessemer Irrigating Ditch Company began as a vision of William Jackson Palmer of an employee-owned company. Bought out by those with more capitalist interests in his commercial enterprises, Palmer let farmers own managing shares in the Bessemer Irrigating Ditch Company. Of the water rights acquired, 42 cfs had a priority dated pre-1871, 34 cfs dated pre-1882, and another 280 cfs dated 1887. Lacking adequate revenues, the company went bankrupt in 1894 and reorganized into a new company that same year under the same name.

With the increase of farming on both sides of the Colorado and Kansas border, the states engaged in an interstate conflict over the river. The nature of the land along the border--rising salinity levels, the vegetation that contributed to the salt levels--the salt cedar--drought, a growing number of pumps, and poorly managed irrigation systems, pitted the economic interests of farmers against their environmental realities. Legal suits of the riparian state of Kansas v the prior appropriation state of Colorado in 1902; the suit, Kansas v Colorado (1907), and Colorado v Kansas (1943), brought before the Supreme Court, demonstrated the contenious nature of the fight. The Army Corps of Engineers built the John Martin Reservoir, specifically mentioned in the Arkansas River Compact, to reduce the friction between the two states. Likewise, the Corps built a reservoir on the Purgatoire to "help prolong the life of John Martin Dam and Reservoir" (p. 170).

Sherow titled his last chapter 'False Expectations'. Since the signing of the Arkansas River Compact, President John F. Kennedy signed in 1963 the Frying Pan Arkansas transmountain diversion project, constructed in part to abet farming in the area. The sugar beet industry saw its decline in both Colorado and Kansas. The agricultural industry has been depressed. The CF&I Steel Corporation, in Pueblo, downsized and streamlined its operations, using less water, which it sold the rights to municipal water interests of Denver and Colorado Springs.

The subsequent law suit of Kansas, initiated in 1985, showed the tenuousness of agreements between Kansas and Colorado. The two states squabbled about the size of monetary damages. Sherow concluded that both parties lack a vision of stewardship of the river and doggedly adhered to the belief that engineering and technology alone would solve the basin's water problems.