AN ASSESSMENT OF A HISTORIAN'S RESEARCH ON
THE FIGHT TO KEEP THE GRAND CANYON FREE OF DAMS
THE FIGHT TO KEEP THE GRAND CANYON FREE OF DAMS
To start his 2019 book on the Grand Canyon dams fight of the 1960s*, Byron Pearson describes interviewing David Brower in July 1997. Their only personal encounter, Pearson offers (p.xi) "graciously received", "patiently answered", "in frail health" (he died aged 88 on 5 November 2000), as descriptors of Brower to set the mood. During that interview, Brower suggested that Pearson might want to interview me**. He did so in March 1998.
At that interview, we discussed the 1966-8 political history as I remembered it of how this nation, acting through Congress, decided to keep the Grand Canyon free of any more dams. Pearson told me that he and his completed doctoral dissertation were fully committed to his idea that the Canyon was saved, not by "the massive public outcry" generated by the Sierra Club (led at that time by its Executive Director David Brower) and other environmental organizations, but because of the unyielding and insurmountable opposition of a key Senator, Henry Jackson of Washington.
I remember Pearson as somewhat surprised, even nonplussed, to learn from me that not only had advocates for the Canyon recognized Jackson's crucial role, but as a consequence of his overall conservationist stance, he and we worked extremely closely with his office and other key Northwesterners during this intense period of legislative struggles over the dams and other what are now called environmental issues.*** I think I would have tried to convey how important to me personally this sub rosa alliance was in our efforts. He expressed regret (I think it was regret) that he had already completed his writing and could not adjust his views.
His 2002 book remained fashioned as a refutation of the conclusion of "popular writers" and a "few environmental historians" (p.xiii) that the Sierra Club was responsible for saving the Canyon from dams by generating a "tremendous public outcry". This resulted in Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, a strong proponent of the dams, changing his support of them, and thus "helped the environmentalists to prevail" (p.xiii). Pearson propounds that this argument inadequately considers the "intricate and complex nature of the political aspects of the controversy", assigning "undue weight" to the Sierra Club. Yet I and the other pro-Canyon participants in the controversy were not only aware of this "nature", but gloried in joining in and understanding it -- politics is a strong and addictive brew.
Contrarily, Pearson as the outsider historian may say the controversy occurred on two levels (p.xiii): in the court of public opinion, and within the political process. However, for participants these "levels" do, and must, co-exist, living together. How they do so is part of the mystery of democracy, of how citizens judge and influence, of how office-holders sense and promote the public interest, of how a polity of a few hundred million arrives at decisions. The historian's test is to use the sources to de-mystify the story, to bring to bear the weight of the record.
In Pearson's case, the sources he depended on in his two books must carry the burden of his argument that is contrary to my experience; an argument that in his eyes was so strong as to leave him satisfied, 20 years later, to write a second book that, according to one cover blurb "is a very important corrective to the literature on the history of the Grand Canyon and for twentieth-century U.S. environmental history that for so long now has not told the complete story (and truth) on exactly how dams were kept out of the greater Grand Canyon" (Sterling Evans). Based on "twenty-five years of research", it is "the astonishing untold story of a century of attempts to save one of the world's seven natural wonders". Yet, on page xiii, Pearson only echoes his earlier theme: "I do not believe the massive public outcry the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations generated during the 1960s saved Grand Canyon."
So do these two books tell the same story? Twenty years later, the second book runs 100 pages longer than the first, and yet seemingly is driven by the same thesis: "the Gordian Knot of events that resulted in the defeat of the Grand Canyon dams cannot be explained by a simple heroic narrative". He charges "widely-distributed documentaries ... depart from the historical record ..., straying from what is documented". People "have almost universally contended that the environmentalists, the Sierra Club in particular, are responsible for 'saving' Grand Canyon." (Introduction to P2, p.xvi) "Most environmental historians" argue the "tremendous outcry" the Club generated against legislation to authorize dams changed the mind of a key figure, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, from support of the dams to backing a bill without dams.
Pearson rise about this crowd: the "most widely-believed version" fails to credit enough "the intricate and complex nature of the political aspects of the controversy" and overstates the Sierra Club's impact. Yet even if this erroneous conclusion of Pearson were fixed in the stone of his 1998 interview with me (and so supposedly in his 2002 book), how could it have remained unshaken in the years he continued and elaborated his research, only to produce in 2019 an enlarged repeat? After all, I had told him of the "intricate and complex nature" of our interaction, our alliance, with the Northwest. Surely there was time and space in that 20 years for him to investigate the strands of a story that was even more complex than the one he selected out? Did he take advantage of the cue I gave him, so that his narrative could be even richer and more revealing of the history of the American conservation movement as it matured in the 1950s and '60s, burgeoning under its new name of environmentalism in the 1970s and beyond?
My conclusion, as I meditate on why he remained stuck in his 1998/2002 error, is that the answer must lie in his selection of sources. Therefore, though it may be a somewhat dry and too-detailed effort, I want to turn to the sources he used in his two books, analyzing and comparing the fruits of his "twenty-five years of research". Lets start with simple lists of the kinds of material he used.
P1 (2002)
(End)Notes (pp 191-224). (Page range of the narrative to i.d. the notes; most satisfying)
Selected Bibliography (pp 225-236)
I. Primary Sources
Archival Materials (pp 225-227)
Sierra Club Members Papers
Sierra Club Records
Other
Interviews and Oral Histories (pp.227-228)
II. Newspapers (pp. 228-229)
III. Secondary Sources (pp 229-234)
IV. U.S. Government Documents, Publications, and Reports (pp 235-236)
V. Unpublished Sources (p 236)
Index (pp 237-246)
P2 (2019)
(End)Notes (pp 277-310) (No page range identification; most inconvenient)
Selected Bibliography (pp 311-330)
Abbreviations
Primary Sources (pp 312-316)
Manuscript Collections (pp 312-313)
Interviews and Oral Histories (pp 313-315)
Newspapers (pp 315-316)
Secondary Sources (pp 316-330)
Articles and Chapters (pp 316-320)
Books (pp 320-326)
Electronic Sources (pp 326-327)
Film/Videos (p 327)
Theses and Dissertations (pp 327-328)
U.S. Government Documents, Publications, and Reports (pp 328-330)
Unpublished Sources (p 330)
Index (pp 331-341)
Not unsurprisingly, the increase in bibliographic pages comes largely (from 6 to 12 pages) from secondary sources: articles, books, electronic sources, film/videos, theses and dissertations.
On the other hand, why "unsurprisingly"? If Pearson's research has been on-going for 25 years, shouldn't there have been additional primary sources? Was that research so thorough for the 2002 volume that there was little to add for its 2019 update? Both questions deserve an answer. So lets compare the two bibliographies, source type by source type, and see what has changed. Lets consider the question of whether any sources that should have been consulted were not.
Herewith, a bit of 1960's political geography with respect to that vital Western matter of water: The Colorado River Basin (CRB) involves seven southwestern U. S. states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming. The Columbia, for our purposes, lies within the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Idaho. In the development of water in both Southwest and Northwest, the Department of the Interior and its then most-muscular agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, were central and geographically widespread. Where scenic and natural resources were the object of admiration, the National Park Service would be involved. In all of the states, there were water bureaucracies and interest groupings, concerned with claiming, apportioning, and exploiting the resource.
The Sierra Club had been started by Californians and was still dominated by them, even as the 1960's saw its spread to become an organization with a national appeal. Like-minded organizations were already national: Audubon, National Parks Association, Wilderness Society, and more. Conservation groups and hiking and climbing clubs were also active locally and regionally, some just to fight the dams: Colorado Open Space Coordinating Council, chapters of the Sierra Club, Save Grand Canyon Committee, and again more--a research topic all its own would be a compendium of those who took a stand and organized to try to make an impact.
My list is not exhaustive, but indicates the proliferation -- national, state, regional, special-use, non-governmental -- of individuals, agencies, organizations, associations, who claimed the right to petition the government on behalf of their water-affected wants and needs. Such a list is hardly surprising, in this federal and interest-driven polity of ours. Navigating this welter of entities must be an exciting challenge for the many historians and buffs seeking to understand Western water politics, in whole or just a part.
Pearson's bibliographies start with the Primary sources of Archival Materials (2002), then Manuscript Collections (2019). Though organized & alphabetized differently both group Sierra Club members papers and Club records; these are identical in both books. There are, however, no papers from Club staff members (like me, the Northwest and eastern Representatives, the Washington office). Further on, "Unpublished Sources" lists correspondence from a close Club ally, Stephen Jett, and in 2019 adds his manuscript on the dams fight.
All the other archival manuscript listings are the same in both books, except 2019 adds the papers of Senator Henry Jackson, which Pearson did not access for the 2002 book. This is such a noteworthy omission, that I scanned the 2019 endnotes to see where they were consulted. In fact, they only appear to back up Pearson's story about Jackson's National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) legislation of 1967-70 that involved Interior Committee counsel Wm. Van Ness. There is nothing in the book's sections on Jackson's reaction to the CRB legislation that is endnoted. In short, although there is plenty of Pearson rhetoric about Jackson, none comes from archives set up by northwesterners: Jackson, his House leader Thomas Foley, his longtime Administrative Aide Sterling Munro. etc. Rhetoric?: Start with "the wrath of" and "raise the hackles of", "feared" California, "the mighty Hayden", "an angry Jackson", (p.133), "avoiding Jackson's ire" (p.134), "Jackson suspected" (p.143), "soothe Jackson's fears" (p.150), with Jackson out of the way" (p.152), and so on and so on. My point here is that none, NONE, of these characterizations of Jackson is grounded in having consulted sources generated by the Senator, and stored in archives etc. Pearson did not even consult the papers of Jackson, Munro, Foley, et al. All of his "story-telling" comes from others, either his favorite, Secretary Udall, or the even more remote retellings in secondary writings.
As one instance, I have in my files a key Jackson address he delivered 5 Nov 1965 "to water leaders of California" in Antioch, California. He speaks as a friend and neighbor, recalling the many battles "we ... together" fought for Central Valley waterworks. He lists four recent California projects he has moved on. This year, he continues, Americans nationwide have experienced water crisis, so the problems of the West are only one aspect. He wants to speak "candidly and openly" about "a subject that threatens to divide the West--the proposals for importing water into the Colorado River." Various plans to deal with the Southwest's water situation have been advanced with the claim that "speedy action" is needed to get water importation works underway. "I am disturbed by the demands for hasty commitment". Why? 1. I believe the claim that only a small amount of water is wanted has been shattered. 2. Only "unneeded" water will be taken is the claim; but the Columbia water being discussed "could not possibly go unnoticed". 3. The place talked about for taking water, below Bonneville Dam, is unlikely and suspect. 4. "Iron-clad" protections, it is said, will cut off water to the Southwest if necessary, but frankly the value of such a guarantee must be discounted, as shown by current discussions over Arizona-California sharing Colorado River water. The electricity Intertie between our regions is two-way; water import "would always be a one-way street". So "the Northwest is not going to be lulled into a false sense of security about a proposal which casts such a long and dark shadow on its future." Proposed studies will confuse policy-makers because of the temptation to ignore conservation and management and go right for water diversion. Our regions are bound together; mutual agreement is essential. There are many questions still to be answered, and a study to find answers will have my "full and immediate support." The administration has recommended a National Water Commission, and this proposal has considerable merit. I am open to alternative suggestions. Whatever we do we must do together.
I have reviewed this entire speech, first as an example of what Pearson did NOT do, namely seek out the primary Jackson sources to set the scene in which the CRB legislation would be played. Second, this is the speech, not of an angered defender with his hackles up, but of a beautifully placed policy-maker aware of and touting the benefits of two regions working with and helping one another. He is speaking directly to those most likely to push for "hasty" action, when what is needed is to seek answers to fundamental questions about water use. He cites the benefits his listeners have reaped from his wielding power. Moreover, there is not one mention or hint of anything to do with dams or cash registers (a malaprop phrase) or funding. His concern is to convey his stand: Slow down; you have not even been able to agree among yourselves. It is the time for objective study of water need, rather than asking "an agency whose business is to construct water projects whether it is necessary to divert the Columbia".
Had Pearson spent the time and effort to search the Northwestern sources, he might well have found more indications of how they framed and intended to pursue the issues and the advantages they had to deal with them. The rhetoric Pearson offers above is simply not suited to the way these people were and worked, as I learned in the time I spent visiting with them as the CRB legislation wended its cranky way. Had he followed up on the information I gave him decades ago, and proceeded on the lines of understanding the de facto alliance that the Northwesterners and we Canyon advocates -- and conservationists in general -- were working out of, he would have told a story, not just about a dam, but one with an understanding of how politics and government were carried on in that vanished time of mid-twentieth-century America.
Back to sources: the situation with the category "Interviews and Oral Histories" is much the same as above, with a few interesting twists. There are 23 items in P1, 26 in P2. Certain people appear more than once; the majority of the entries were done by other interlocutors in the oral history setting. For P1, Pearson personally talked with 9; these interviews would be under Pearson's control, unlike the oral histories: Brower, Secretary Udall, Dominy (Reclamation), Hartzog (NPS). Four of the others worked with Udall.
In P2, the total is 30; Pearson did 11, although two of these were done before P1 and not listed. He conducted three more for P2: adding another interview with Udall (3 total) and Dominy. Van Ness was interviewed for his NEPA pages.
And then there is me. My conversation with Pearson on 12 Mar 1998 listed in P1, does not appear in P2's list. Is this a very nice ante-facto retort to my thought that if he had taken the information I gave him as a guide, he could have written, not a repeat of his rant and screed trying to demean the Sierra Club, but a valuable expansion of knowledge of how Congress did, once upon a time, work to accomplish things. Could he think this blog is enough notoriety for me; he lists it in P2 under Electronic Sources. In any case, he seems to be contracting his reach over the years.
Identifiable oral histories total 6 for NPS, 6 for Sierra Club figures, Interior 5, and a new one in P2, Senator Hayden's chief aide, R. Elson, though he could have interviewed him and other key Arizonans for the 2002 book. Yet, p. xvii of P2, Pearson claims, "This book offers a more balanced account that remains true to documented events." "I have been privileged to meet, through my own interviews and interviews others have conducted, an amazingly eclectic case of characters". He lists Morris Udall, John Rhodes, Carl Hayden (second-hand), Wayne Aspinall, Jackson (second-hand), Northcutt Ely; none of whom appear in the interview list, and some not even in the archive lists. The named interviewees in his "privileged" list are Dominy, Brower, S. Udall, Van Ness, and Martin Litton; hardly a comprehensive or even representative list to produce a "balanced account", and one where "documented" refers to a very narrow selection of sources, and one that is not widened, even after 20 more years of research. He must have read a lot of other people's books. Selectively.
As this analysis of his primary sources shows, especially in the multiple interviews, Pearson did not write a book substantively about how Senator Jackson was the key obstacle responsible for stopping the dams -- most of the detail to support such a claim is not present since he did not do the research. What Pearson actually wrote is centered on the materials he did do his research, and depended, on: Stewart Udall and the Interior Department, and secondarily, the Sierra Club.
A third section of his primary sources concerns newspapers. In P1, he lists 24, with year ranges attached. In P2, there are 23, with specific dates, I suppose of articles he consulted. Having saved and summarized clippings from the main regional papers of the time, I am aware of how such a stream can convey a feel for the times, the journalists, and the ephemerality of judgments expressed. I wonder if Pearson underwent a similar experience, a kind of once-removed immersion, or if he just consulted articles here and there.
I am astonished that he does not list the Grand Junction Sentinel in either book. It was the principal paper in Congressman Wayne Aspinall's district, and a major source of informed reporting and analysis on water matters. He also did not consult two Arizona papers that broadened the debate. Well, omission of sources is the other side of his problems with sources.
I have already indicated that both his books are bare of basic research on the dam controversy in the Northwest. The archives of Jackson, his aide Munro, and principal Northwesterner in the House Foley are egregious omissions. He could not have interviewed Jackson or Munro, but Foley lived until 2013. I know from my many conversations with him in the 1960's and 70s that had Pearson talked with him, his view would have been widened and enriched, for Foley was, like Jackson, a man of formidable intellect and clear thinking.
Coming to the Colorado Basin itself, I dont understand how Pearson has the cheek to brag (p.xix) that he had "a chance for me to add eighteen years of research to what I wrote more than a decade ago, to reinterpret this evidence, and to assess and expand my previous conclusions." Yes, he had the chance, but did he take it? There are seven states in the Colorado River Basin, seven states with their own congressional delegations, politics, and water bureaucracies. Coming to this review 50 years later, I still have confidence that the assessment that follows makes sense of the actors on that stage, of whom should have been in his research source listing.
Wyoming and Utah now and again made some noise; largely ignorable. Likewise Nevada, but more because of its size and the willingness of its weighty Senators to go along, letting others contend. Useful for rhetoric, for color.
New Mexico is quite different, though it did not have to play a lead role. Its major asset was the long-term, very weighty, Senator Clinton Anderson. A senior member of the Interior Committee, he was quite comfortable standing aside and letting Jackson run the show, especially in the wind-up years of 1967-8 (as was Senator Hayden, the most senior Senator). New Mexico wanted and got a somewhat enlarged stake in the water division. Since it came from Arizona, and concerned only the Gila River, that state reluctantly went along. A second joint issue, that of the Wilderness-invading Hooker Dam, was finessed, this time because Anderson ( who had inserted it into the Wilderness bill when he was marshaling it through the Senate) felt benign when petitioned by a set of conservationist New Mexicans. As well, Morris Udall was a crafty legislator and wanted to keep control of "his" Central Arizona Project bill, without the distraction of conservationist congressman John Saylor amending it, and possibly irritating Anderson.
Pearson conducted no research in the materials relating to these four states. Except for Anderson, no big deal. However, since the relationships among Senators Jackson, Hayden and Anderson were key in the legislation's progress, Pearson might have checked these out, if only for Anderson stepping aside to let Jackson control the early stages of Senate committee consideration.
But now. Two puzzles: How could Pearson even suggest his research was adequate when he spent no time in the resources Colorado or California? The former, of course, was the secure bastion of Democratic chair of the House Interior & Insular Affairs Committee, Wayne Aspinall. Almost literally at his side was Colorado's top water bureaucrat, Felix (Larry) Sparks, who drafted, over and over, many of the provisions of the legislation as it made its battered way, first to an embarrassing death in 1966, and then, stripped and modified, diminished from the grand dreams of dam-financed import of Columbia River water to keep southern California verdant and ever-growing, to final compromise with the Senate two years later. He lived until 90 in 2007. One never knows with these old men, but had Pearson made the effort, Sparks might have spread out the canvas of that central legislation effort, concentrating on the internal CRB squabblings and compromising in a way no one else could have. Then there are Aspinall's papers in Colorado. Do they contain anything to enlighten an analysis of this last gasp of old-timey Aspinall-style Reclamation law-making? The times they were a-changing, and Aspinall was soon to be washed away by the changes, but he is as important in this narrative as the more forward-looking Jackson in understanding how conservation transmuted into environmentalism, even against the resistance of wily, well-situated, development-loving policy-makers typified by Aspinall.
Ah, now California, the bete noire of the Arizonans. The players here are beyond count. Pearson certainly could have aimed for the Northcutt Ely papers, and maybe that would be enough; so many of the Californian legislators were simply minor players, going along or being dragged along as the legislation trundled its way. On the other hand, the sidelining of Ely in 1967-8, with a new governor and water guru in the state, may well have been key in winding down the big state's resistance and another round of obstruction. Beyond the individuals, the role of the Los Angeles Dep't of Water and Power certainly deserved deeper consideration in a story of dams on the Colorado River. I know I found its files a source of endless fascination; these were people used to getting their way. Who did the LADWP consult all those times, from the 1920's, the 1950s, and the final battle? Were they an Ely ally? Or an independent actor?
And that is the kind of question that could be pivotal in understanding the machinations of August 1966, if there is more to be found out about those tense weeks when the top-heavy kitchen-sink CRB bill was stifled and smothered. Did the Californians regret taking control of his committee away from Aspinall? Did it damage his control in the final stages in 1968? Did they even hope they could keep their waterdog-in-the-manger tactics up forever? What if they had shifted their view a bit, and as they could have with their numbers, helped drive the 1966 bill through the House, providing Aspinall & Udall with solid backing? Did they not even contemplate what that would mean in the next Congress? They must have sifted the alternatives in discussions and meetings. If Aspinall could have commanded successful passage in 1966, in September or even in a lame-duck session, wouldnt the Senate prospects have been calculated quite differently by all concerned? Were there really no Californian voices arguing it was worth the risk? What would the files have told us had they been researched? Or perhaps there is a comprehensive history of Californian water politics -- quite a story.
The end is the beginning, as we come to Arizona. Here, I guess, Pearson can hold up his head. His work concentrated on the Stewart Udall story, and there may not be much more to learn there. He could have interviewed more people, like Hayden's aide Elson. (An oral history has the drawback that someone else controls what questions are asked. Maybe Pearson would have shaped an interview to be more revealing on the disposition of the dams.) A shrewd guy, Elson wanted the dam; was he convinced Jackson would not have allowed it? Nice if he had been asked. There were several other lesser players in the state, but Pearson's failings as a researcher do not lie here, but in the fact that his conclusion that the Sierra Club was a Potemkin-Village opponent to the dams blocked his ability to see the opportunity he had to take advantage of all the other resources.
Yet even here, among the movers and shakers in Interior and Reclamation he did concentrate on, it is still apparent that much of the out-of-sight goings-on has not been made apparent. The period of August 1966 to January 1967 is one when decisions were made by Udall. Although he is much featured, there is little sense of the consultations that must have gone on. The meetings, phone calls, notes and conversations; all those items that gave Udall and the Senators he depended on for his audacious initiative to work -- is there no record? There is at least one key meeting I know of that Pearson ignores. His fabric just has too many holes. Sure, he could write up a plausible scenario, and his show has gotten two made twice. Yet the idea that there are possible voice-overs, or voice-unders, where matters are more laid out and nods and winks are given? Do we really, even in his Udall-centric account, experience how events could play out as they did?
That is why I so greatly appreciated my contacts with such as Dan Dreyfus, in 1966 at Reclamation. I was trying to get information out of Reclamation, and Dan was appointed to "help" me. And he did, with all kinds of information that enabled me to reach the conclusions about the dams' importance in the legislation. And later, his letting me know that there was a big shift coming in what Interior was going to offer to get the legislation going in 1967. Still later, in the mid 70s, he moved to the Senate Interior Committee staff, and was a source of support when I was lobbying on legislation to enlarge Grand Canyon National Park. Not interviewed, no papers, barely mentioned. Why bother; -- Pearson had his conclusion and his rhetoric. More comprehensive research and a more open mind were not really necessary to produce P1 and its re-make, P2.
This has been an extra-long entry. I apologize, if you have stuck it out to here. I am not going to consider any of the secondary sources; what they are and to what degree they were consulted by an author is too unknowable. The more pressing question is accuracy.
I challenge the very orientation of Pearson's work. I think I have indicated above that his research was not nearly as intensive, much less comprehensive, as he avers and as it should have been. He has not done the work to support the reality of his thesis. I have written other blog entries that come at his supposition from different directions. I suspect I have suggested that his over-heated rhetoric and his evident animus toward the Sierra Club seems more like the polemicist I have often been in the service of causes, than the credentialed historian he claims his book proves he is. Perhaps then, it is best to end this evaluation here, and return in a later blog to consider more closely the accuracy of the story he tells. I know there are omissions; I suspect the commission of errors. Yet, accuracy may not be all that important where so much has been left unresearched, and where, for Pearson, the important goal is present in his rhetoric and his shaded narrative.
(See after notes for additional, uninorporated material.)
===============================================
*In 2002, the University of Arizona Press published Byron E. Pearson's Still the Wild River Runs, based on his doctoral dissertation. The subtitle of the book (247 + xxii pages) is "Congress, the Sierra Club, and the Fight to Save Grand Canyon".
In Pearson's case, the sources he depended on in his two books must carry the burden of his argument that is contrary to my experience; an argument that in his eyes was so strong as to leave him satisfied, 20 years later, to write a second book that, according to one cover blurb "is a very important corrective to the literature on the history of the Grand Canyon and for twentieth-century U.S. environmental history that for so long now has not told the complete story (and truth) on exactly how dams were kept out of the greater Grand Canyon" (Sterling Evans). Based on "twenty-five years of research", it is "the astonishing untold story of a century of attempts to save one of the world's seven natural wonders". Yet, on page xiii, Pearson only echoes his earlier theme: "I do not believe the massive public outcry the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations generated during the 1960s saved Grand Canyon."
So do these two books tell the same story? Twenty years later, the second book runs 100 pages longer than the first, and yet seemingly is driven by the same thesis: "the Gordian Knot of events that resulted in the defeat of the Grand Canyon dams cannot be explained by a simple heroic narrative". He charges "widely-distributed documentaries ... depart from the historical record ..., straying from what is documented". People "have almost universally contended that the environmentalists, the Sierra Club in particular, are responsible for 'saving' Grand Canyon." (Introduction to P2, p.xvi) "Most environmental historians" argue the "tremendous outcry" the Club generated against legislation to authorize dams changed the mind of a key figure, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, from support of the dams to backing a bill without dams.
Pearson rise about this crowd: the "most widely-believed version" fails to credit enough "the intricate and complex nature of the political aspects of the controversy" and overstates the Sierra Club's impact. Yet even if this erroneous conclusion of Pearson were fixed in the stone of his 1998 interview with me (and so supposedly in his 2002 book), how could it have remained unshaken in the years he continued and elaborated his research, only to produce in 2019 an enlarged repeat? After all, I had told him of the "intricate and complex nature" of our interaction, our alliance, with the Northwest. Surely there was time and space in that 20 years for him to investigate the strands of a story that was even more complex than the one he selected out? Did he take advantage of the cue I gave him, so that his narrative could be even richer and more revealing of the history of the American conservation movement as it matured in the 1950s and '60s, burgeoning under its new name of environmentalism in the 1970s and beyond?
My conclusion, as I meditate on why he remained stuck in his 1998/2002 error, is that the answer must lie in his selection of sources. Therefore, though it may be a somewhat dry and too-detailed effort, I want to turn to the sources he used in his two books, analyzing and comparing the fruits of his "twenty-five years of research". Lets start with simple lists of the kinds of material he used.
P1 (2002)
(End)Notes (pp 191-224). (Page range of the narrative to i.d. the notes; most satisfying)
Selected Bibliography (pp 225-236)
I. Primary Sources
Archival Materials (pp 225-227)
Sierra Club Members Papers
Sierra Club Records
Other
Interviews and Oral Histories (pp.227-228)
II. Newspapers (pp. 228-229)
III. Secondary Sources (pp 229-234)
IV. U.S. Government Documents, Publications, and Reports (pp 235-236)
V. Unpublished Sources (p 236)
Index (pp 237-246)
P2 (2019)
(End)Notes (pp 277-310) (No page range identification; most inconvenient)
Selected Bibliography (pp 311-330)
Abbreviations
Primary Sources (pp 312-316)
Manuscript Collections (pp 312-313)
Interviews and Oral Histories (pp 313-315)
Newspapers (pp 315-316)
Secondary Sources (pp 316-330)
Articles and Chapters (pp 316-320)
Books (pp 320-326)
Electronic Sources (pp 326-327)
Film/Videos (p 327)
Theses and Dissertations (pp 327-328)
U.S. Government Documents, Publications, and Reports (pp 328-330)
Unpublished Sources (p 330)
Index (pp 331-341)
Not unsurprisingly, the increase in bibliographic pages comes largely (from 6 to 12 pages) from secondary sources: articles, books, electronic sources, film/videos, theses and dissertations.
On the other hand, why "unsurprisingly"? If Pearson's research has been on-going for 25 years, shouldn't there have been additional primary sources? Was that research so thorough for the 2002 volume that there was little to add for its 2019 update? Both questions deserve an answer. So lets compare the two bibliographies, source type by source type, and see what has changed. Lets consider the question of whether any sources that should have been consulted were not.
Herewith, a bit of 1960's political geography with respect to that vital Western matter of water: The Colorado River Basin (CRB) involves seven southwestern U. S. states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming. The Columbia, for our purposes, lies within the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Idaho. In the development of water in both Southwest and Northwest, the Department of the Interior and its then most-muscular agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, were central and geographically widespread. Where scenic and natural resources were the object of admiration, the National Park Service would be involved. In all of the states, there were water bureaucracies and interest groupings, concerned with claiming, apportioning, and exploiting the resource.
The Sierra Club had been started by Californians and was still dominated by them, even as the 1960's saw its spread to become an organization with a national appeal. Like-minded organizations were already national: Audubon, National Parks Association, Wilderness Society, and more. Conservation groups and hiking and climbing clubs were also active locally and regionally, some just to fight the dams: Colorado Open Space Coordinating Council, chapters of the Sierra Club, Save Grand Canyon Committee, and again more--a research topic all its own would be a compendium of those who took a stand and organized to try to make an impact.
My list is not exhaustive, but indicates the proliferation -- national, state, regional, special-use, non-governmental -- of individuals, agencies, organizations, associations, who claimed the right to petition the government on behalf of their water-affected wants and needs. Such a list is hardly surprising, in this federal and interest-driven polity of ours. Navigating this welter of entities must be an exciting challenge for the many historians and buffs seeking to understand Western water politics, in whole or just a part.
Pearson's bibliographies start with the Primary sources of Archival Materials (2002), then Manuscript Collections (2019). Though organized & alphabetized differently both group Sierra Club members papers and Club records; these are identical in both books. There are, however, no papers from Club staff members (like me, the Northwest and eastern Representatives, the Washington office). Further on, "Unpublished Sources" lists correspondence from a close Club ally, Stephen Jett, and in 2019 adds his manuscript on the dams fight.
All the other archival manuscript listings are the same in both books, except 2019 adds the papers of Senator Henry Jackson, which Pearson did not access for the 2002 book. This is such a noteworthy omission, that I scanned the 2019 endnotes to see where they were consulted. In fact, they only appear to back up Pearson's story about Jackson's National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) legislation of 1967-70 that involved Interior Committee counsel Wm. Van Ness. There is nothing in the book's sections on Jackson's reaction to the CRB legislation that is endnoted. In short, although there is plenty of Pearson rhetoric about Jackson, none comes from archives set up by northwesterners: Jackson, his House leader Thomas Foley, his longtime Administrative Aide Sterling Munro. etc. Rhetoric?: Start with "the wrath of" and "raise the hackles of", "feared" California, "the mighty Hayden", "an angry Jackson", (p.133), "avoiding Jackson's ire" (p.134), "Jackson suspected" (p.143), "soothe Jackson's fears" (p.150), with Jackson out of the way" (p.152), and so on and so on. My point here is that none, NONE, of these characterizations of Jackson is grounded in having consulted sources generated by the Senator, and stored in archives etc. Pearson did not even consult the papers of Jackson, Munro, Foley, et al. All of his "story-telling" comes from others, either his favorite, Secretary Udall, or the even more remote retellings in secondary writings.
As one instance, I have in my files a key Jackson address he delivered 5 Nov 1965 "to water leaders of California" in Antioch, California. He speaks as a friend and neighbor, recalling the many battles "we ... together" fought for Central Valley waterworks. He lists four recent California projects he has moved on. This year, he continues, Americans nationwide have experienced water crisis, so the problems of the West are only one aspect. He wants to speak "candidly and openly" about "a subject that threatens to divide the West--the proposals for importing water into the Colorado River." Various plans to deal with the Southwest's water situation have been advanced with the claim that "speedy action" is needed to get water importation works underway. "I am disturbed by the demands for hasty commitment". Why? 1. I believe the claim that only a small amount of water is wanted has been shattered. 2. Only "unneeded" water will be taken is the claim; but the Columbia water being discussed "could not possibly go unnoticed". 3. The place talked about for taking water, below Bonneville Dam, is unlikely and suspect. 4. "Iron-clad" protections, it is said, will cut off water to the Southwest if necessary, but frankly the value of such a guarantee must be discounted, as shown by current discussions over Arizona-California sharing Colorado River water. The electricity Intertie between our regions is two-way; water import "would always be a one-way street". So "the Northwest is not going to be lulled into a false sense of security about a proposal which casts such a long and dark shadow on its future." Proposed studies will confuse policy-makers because of the temptation to ignore conservation and management and go right for water diversion. Our regions are bound together; mutual agreement is essential. There are many questions still to be answered, and a study to find answers will have my "full and immediate support." The administration has recommended a National Water Commission, and this proposal has considerable merit. I am open to alternative suggestions. Whatever we do we must do together.
I have reviewed this entire speech, first as an example of what Pearson did NOT do, namely seek out the primary Jackson sources to set the scene in which the CRB legislation would be played. Second, this is the speech, not of an angered defender with his hackles up, but of a beautifully placed policy-maker aware of and touting the benefits of two regions working with and helping one another. He is speaking directly to those most likely to push for "hasty" action, when what is needed is to seek answers to fundamental questions about water use. He cites the benefits his listeners have reaped from his wielding power. Moreover, there is not one mention or hint of anything to do with dams or cash registers (a malaprop phrase) or funding. His concern is to convey his stand: Slow down; you have not even been able to agree among yourselves. It is the time for objective study of water need, rather than asking "an agency whose business is to construct water projects whether it is necessary to divert the Columbia".
Had Pearson spent the time and effort to search the Northwestern sources, he might well have found more indications of how they framed and intended to pursue the issues and the advantages they had to deal with them. The rhetoric Pearson offers above is simply not suited to the way these people were and worked, as I learned in the time I spent visiting with them as the CRB legislation wended its cranky way. Had he followed up on the information I gave him decades ago, and proceeded on the lines of understanding the de facto alliance that the Northwesterners and we Canyon advocates -- and conservationists in general -- were working out of, he would have told a story, not just about a dam, but one with an understanding of how politics and government were carried on in that vanished time of mid-twentieth-century America.
Back to sources: the situation with the category "Interviews and Oral Histories" is much the same as above, with a few interesting twists. There are 23 items in P1, 26 in P2. Certain people appear more than once; the majority of the entries were done by other interlocutors in the oral history setting. For P1, Pearson personally talked with 9; these interviews would be under Pearson's control, unlike the oral histories: Brower, Secretary Udall, Dominy (Reclamation), Hartzog (NPS). Four of the others worked with Udall.
In P2, the total is 30; Pearson did 11, although two of these were done before P1 and not listed. He conducted three more for P2: adding another interview with Udall (3 total) and Dominy. Van Ness was interviewed for his NEPA pages.
And then there is me. My conversation with Pearson on 12 Mar 1998 listed in P1, does not appear in P2's list. Is this a very nice ante-facto retort to my thought that if he had taken the information I gave him as a guide, he could have written, not a repeat of his rant and screed trying to demean the Sierra Club, but a valuable expansion of knowledge of how Congress did, once upon a time, work to accomplish things. Could he think this blog is enough notoriety for me; he lists it in P2 under Electronic Sources. In any case, he seems to be contracting his reach over the years.
Identifiable oral histories total 6 for NPS, 6 for Sierra Club figures, Interior 5, and a new one in P2, Senator Hayden's chief aide, R. Elson, though he could have interviewed him and other key Arizonans for the 2002 book. Yet, p. xvii of P2, Pearson claims, "This book offers a more balanced account that remains true to documented events." "I have been privileged to meet, through my own interviews and interviews others have conducted, an amazingly eclectic case of characters". He lists Morris Udall, John Rhodes, Carl Hayden (second-hand), Wayne Aspinall, Jackson (second-hand), Northcutt Ely; none of whom appear in the interview list, and some not even in the archive lists. The named interviewees in his "privileged" list are Dominy, Brower, S. Udall, Van Ness, and Martin Litton; hardly a comprehensive or even representative list to produce a "balanced account", and one where "documented" refers to a very narrow selection of sources, and one that is not widened, even after 20 more years of research. He must have read a lot of other people's books. Selectively.
As this analysis of his primary sources shows, especially in the multiple interviews, Pearson did not write a book substantively about how Senator Jackson was the key obstacle responsible for stopping the dams -- most of the detail to support such a claim is not present since he did not do the research. What Pearson actually wrote is centered on the materials he did do his research, and depended, on: Stewart Udall and the Interior Department, and secondarily, the Sierra Club.
A third section of his primary sources concerns newspapers. In P1, he lists 24, with year ranges attached. In P2, there are 23, with specific dates, I suppose of articles he consulted. Having saved and summarized clippings from the main regional papers of the time, I am aware of how such a stream can convey a feel for the times, the journalists, and the ephemerality of judgments expressed. I wonder if Pearson underwent a similar experience, a kind of once-removed immersion, or if he just consulted articles here and there.
I am astonished that he does not list the Grand Junction Sentinel in either book. It was the principal paper in Congressman Wayne Aspinall's district, and a major source of informed reporting and analysis on water matters. He also did not consult two Arizona papers that broadened the debate. Well, omission of sources is the other side of his problems with sources.
I have already indicated that both his books are bare of basic research on the dam controversy in the Northwest. The archives of Jackson, his aide Munro, and principal Northwesterner in the House Foley are egregious omissions. He could not have interviewed Jackson or Munro, but Foley lived until 2013. I know from my many conversations with him in the 1960's and 70s that had Pearson talked with him, his view would have been widened and enriched, for Foley was, like Jackson, a man of formidable intellect and clear thinking.
Coming to the Colorado Basin itself, I dont understand how Pearson has the cheek to brag (p.xix) that he had "a chance for me to add eighteen years of research to what I wrote more than a decade ago, to reinterpret this evidence, and to assess and expand my previous conclusions." Yes, he had the chance, but did he take it? There are seven states in the Colorado River Basin, seven states with their own congressional delegations, politics, and water bureaucracies. Coming to this review 50 years later, I still have confidence that the assessment that follows makes sense of the actors on that stage, of whom should have been in his research source listing.
Wyoming and Utah now and again made some noise; largely ignorable. Likewise Nevada, but more because of its size and the willingness of its weighty Senators to go along, letting others contend. Useful for rhetoric, for color.
New Mexico is quite different, though it did not have to play a lead role. Its major asset was the long-term, very weighty, Senator Clinton Anderson. A senior member of the Interior Committee, he was quite comfortable standing aside and letting Jackson run the show, especially in the wind-up years of 1967-8 (as was Senator Hayden, the most senior Senator). New Mexico wanted and got a somewhat enlarged stake in the water division. Since it came from Arizona, and concerned only the Gila River, that state reluctantly went along. A second joint issue, that of the Wilderness-invading Hooker Dam, was finessed, this time because Anderson ( who had inserted it into the Wilderness bill when he was marshaling it through the Senate) felt benign when petitioned by a set of conservationist New Mexicans. As well, Morris Udall was a crafty legislator and wanted to keep control of "his" Central Arizona Project bill, without the distraction of conservationist congressman John Saylor amending it, and possibly irritating Anderson.
Pearson conducted no research in the materials relating to these four states. Except for Anderson, no big deal. However, since the relationships among Senators Jackson, Hayden and Anderson were key in the legislation's progress, Pearson might have checked these out, if only for Anderson stepping aside to let Jackson control the early stages of Senate committee consideration.
But now. Two puzzles: How could Pearson even suggest his research was adequate when he spent no time in the resources Colorado or California? The former, of course, was the secure bastion of Democratic chair of the House Interior & Insular Affairs Committee, Wayne Aspinall. Almost literally at his side was Colorado's top water bureaucrat, Felix (Larry) Sparks, who drafted, over and over, many of the provisions of the legislation as it made its battered way, first to an embarrassing death in 1966, and then, stripped and modified, diminished from the grand dreams of dam-financed import of Columbia River water to keep southern California verdant and ever-growing, to final compromise with the Senate two years later. He lived until 90 in 2007. One never knows with these old men, but had Pearson made the effort, Sparks might have spread out the canvas of that central legislation effort, concentrating on the internal CRB squabblings and compromising in a way no one else could have. Then there are Aspinall's papers in Colorado. Do they contain anything to enlighten an analysis of this last gasp of old-timey Aspinall-style Reclamation law-making? The times they were a-changing, and Aspinall was soon to be washed away by the changes, but he is as important in this narrative as the more forward-looking Jackson in understanding how conservation transmuted into environmentalism, even against the resistance of wily, well-situated, development-loving policy-makers typified by Aspinall.
Ah, now California, the bete noire of the Arizonans. The players here are beyond count. Pearson certainly could have aimed for the Northcutt Ely papers, and maybe that would be enough; so many of the Californian legislators were simply minor players, going along or being dragged along as the legislation trundled its way. On the other hand, the sidelining of Ely in 1967-8, with a new governor and water guru in the state, may well have been key in winding down the big state's resistance and another round of obstruction. Beyond the individuals, the role of the Los Angeles Dep't of Water and Power certainly deserved deeper consideration in a story of dams on the Colorado River. I know I found its files a source of endless fascination; these were people used to getting their way. Who did the LADWP consult all those times, from the 1920's, the 1950s, and the final battle? Were they an Ely ally? Or an independent actor?
And that is the kind of question that could be pivotal in understanding the machinations of August 1966, if there is more to be found out about those tense weeks when the top-heavy kitchen-sink CRB bill was stifled and smothered. Did the Californians regret taking control of his committee away from Aspinall? Did it damage his control in the final stages in 1968? Did they even hope they could keep their waterdog-in-the-manger tactics up forever? What if they had shifted their view a bit, and as they could have with their numbers, helped drive the 1966 bill through the House, providing Aspinall & Udall with solid backing? Did they not even contemplate what that would mean in the next Congress? They must have sifted the alternatives in discussions and meetings. If Aspinall could have commanded successful passage in 1966, in September or even in a lame-duck session, wouldnt the Senate prospects have been calculated quite differently by all concerned? Were there really no Californian voices arguing it was worth the risk? What would the files have told us had they been researched? Or perhaps there is a comprehensive history of Californian water politics -- quite a story.
The end is the beginning, as we come to Arizona. Here, I guess, Pearson can hold up his head. His work concentrated on the Stewart Udall story, and there may not be much more to learn there. He could have interviewed more people, like Hayden's aide Elson. (An oral history has the drawback that someone else controls what questions are asked. Maybe Pearson would have shaped an interview to be more revealing on the disposition of the dams.) A shrewd guy, Elson wanted the dam; was he convinced Jackson would not have allowed it? Nice if he had been asked. There were several other lesser players in the state, but Pearson's failings as a researcher do not lie here, but in the fact that his conclusion that the Sierra Club was a Potemkin-Village opponent to the dams blocked his ability to see the opportunity he had to take advantage of all the other resources.
Yet even here, among the movers and shakers in Interior and Reclamation he did concentrate on, it is still apparent that much of the out-of-sight goings-on has not been made apparent. The period of August 1966 to January 1967 is one when decisions were made by Udall. Although he is much featured, there is little sense of the consultations that must have gone on. The meetings, phone calls, notes and conversations; all those items that gave Udall and the Senators he depended on for his audacious initiative to work -- is there no record? There is at least one key meeting I know of that Pearson ignores. His fabric just has too many holes. Sure, he could write up a plausible scenario, and his show has gotten two made twice. Yet the idea that there are possible voice-overs, or voice-unders, where matters are more laid out and nods and winks are given? Do we really, even in his Udall-centric account, experience how events could play out as they did?
That is why I so greatly appreciated my contacts with such as Dan Dreyfus, in 1966 at Reclamation. I was trying to get information out of Reclamation, and Dan was appointed to "help" me. And he did, with all kinds of information that enabled me to reach the conclusions about the dams' importance in the legislation. And later, his letting me know that there was a big shift coming in what Interior was going to offer to get the legislation going in 1967. Still later, in the mid 70s, he moved to the Senate Interior Committee staff, and was a source of support when I was lobbying on legislation to enlarge Grand Canyon National Park. Not interviewed, no papers, barely mentioned. Why bother; -- Pearson had his conclusion and his rhetoric. More comprehensive research and a more open mind were not really necessary to produce P1 and its re-make, P2.
This has been an extra-long entry. I apologize, if you have stuck it out to here. I am not going to consider any of the secondary sources; what they are and to what degree they were consulted by an author is too unknowable. The more pressing question is accuracy.
I challenge the very orientation of Pearson's work. I think I have indicated above that his research was not nearly as intensive, much less comprehensive, as he avers and as it should have been. He has not done the work to support the reality of his thesis. I have written other blog entries that come at his supposition from different directions. I suspect I have suggested that his over-heated rhetoric and his evident animus toward the Sierra Club seems more like the polemicist I have often been in the service of causes, than the credentialed historian he claims his book proves he is. Perhaps then, it is best to end this evaluation here, and return in a later blog to consider more closely the accuracy of the story he tells. I know there are omissions; I suspect the commission of errors. Yet, accuracy may not be all that important where so much has been left unresearched, and where, for Pearson, the important goal is present in his rhetoric and his shaded narrative.
(See after notes for additional, uninorporated material.)
===============================================
*In 2002, the University of Arizona Press published Byron E. Pearson's Still the Wild River Runs, based on his doctoral dissertation. The subtitle of the book (247 + xxii pages) is "Congress, the Sierra Club, and the Fight to Save Grand Canyon".
September 2019, the University of Nevada Press published Pearson's Saving Grand Canyon with the subtitle "Dams, Deals, and a Noble Myth" at 345 + xxii pages. I refer to them hereafter as P1 and P2, respectively.
**I first saw the Grand Canyon in 1962; it was my "on the road to Damascus" moment. This instant conversion was accompanied by coming to learn about schemes to dam the Canyon, a project I instantly despised even knowing little more than the dam's location. I started learning in 1962-4, and in November of the latter year, encountered the Sierra Club, its campaign against the dams, and David Brower. Steepening my learning curve, I tried to educate myself on the complex of issues involved in Colorado River Basin development and the place of hydroelectric dams in the past and future of the Pacific Southwest.
In January 1966, the Sierra Club hired me as its Southwest Regional Representative, with strong emphasis on intensifying the fight to "Save Grand Canyon" from dams. My experience in 1966 -- the swing year of the dam controversy as well as the time when Americans reordered our priorities -- was an intricate involvement in the legislative, public, and administrative aspects of the controversy. I stayed so involved through 1968-9 as the Colorado River Basin legislation was shaped and passed by Congress -- without dams.
In the 1970's, the Grand Canyon issues altered, the major questions dealing with expansion of Grand Canyon National Park, Wilderness designation, and management of river traffic. The question of damming the Canyon came up, and quickly went down; no one had any real desire to re-ignite the controversy settled in the 1960's. Again, my involvement in congressional, administrative, and public arenas was close and intense. However, an entire new dimension was added as I became addicted to learning all I could about the several aspects of the Canyon's political history.
These years were ones in which, to use the quote above, I consulted archives all across the country. In this I was enabled by the openness that federal agencies felt they were obligated to practice because of the effects of NEPA and the new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These were door openers to agency files, and it is a measure of how effective they were that the agencies have spent years and much rule-making to limit and constrict the public's ability to use those Acts to oversee the making of public policy--in brief, NEPA & FOIA were meant to involve the public more and more easily in policy-making. The situation today is just the reverse; the two are used to shut down public involvement. But that is another history.
In this story about the Grand Canyon and dreams of dams in it, I have offered this little biography to make a point: My knowledge about events and people is grounded in personal experience (with all its drawbacks and advantages) as well as archival research. (Two tools I failed to pick up and exploit were keeping a journal and conducting personal interviews. It is a lack in my research resources that I greatly lament.)
In contrast, Pearson's knowledge, that of a trained historian (which I am not), lies in archives, interviews, oral histories, secondary sources. Born in 1960, he was 8 when the damless Colorado River Basin legislation was signed into law. So two different paths to knowledge, two kinds of knowledge, are involved here. Lets agree neither is superior, both are legitimate, and most important, both allow the practitioners to have and depend upon their beliefs and prejudices.
***For a wider view of Senator Jackson and his relations with the conservation activities of that time, read my summation here.
=====================================================
Additional unincorporated material:
12 Sep Sentinel D.C. bureau: N.M. Sen. C.P.Anderson, chair of the subcommittee on water & power, said he would introduce and hold hearings on a restricted bill, since the 1966 bill was too big. No import study, no California guarantee, and likely omitting two dams & four upper basin projects; just Arizona and N.M. benefit.
18 Sep Sentinel D.C. bureau: New UnderSec. Luce asked if area utilities ready to set aside some power from their huge new coal plants for preference customers. Udall suggestion to consider nuclear power shot down by Rhodes and others.
7 Oct Science reports July speech of UnderSec Carver: Congress and public should be informed of alternatives to dams in federal projects as part of process instead of leaving this up to outside "countervailing powers".
LOOKING AT SECONDARY SOURCES: WHATS NEW
His dissertation was 1998; the first book, 2002. So, strong assumption is that "new material" had to come from sources dated >= 2002. Everything else could have been in P2.
Note: All U. S. publications were from the time.
Note: All U. S. publications were from the time.
BOOKS
J August on Hayden, 2005
D Beard anti-Reclamation & Glen, 2015
Billington et al on Big Dams, Reclamation, 2005
Boggs et al on Dirty Coal Plants, 2013
Boyer & Webb on 1923 USGS expedition, 2007
K Brower on D Brower,2012
S Dant on Env Hist of West, 2017
S Einberger on S Udall, 2018
K Engel-Pearson on AZ history, 2017
J Fleck on Western Water Politics, 2016
M Hiltzik on Hoover dam, 2010
Ingram on Canyon river politics, 2004
D Lago on GCNP history
R Lifeset on Storm King, 2014
C McMillen on Hualapai Case, 2007
R Nash on Wilderness, 2014
A Needham on Phoenix and southwest, 2014
T Palmer on Endangered rivers, 2004
D Robinson on Glacier N P, 2017
S Schulte on Aspinall, 2002
J Shepherd on Hualapai,2010
T Smith on Saylor, 2006
T Smith on S Udall, 2017
H Steen on U S Forest Service, 2004
S Sturgeon on Aspinall, 2002
A Summitt on Env Hist of Colorado R, 2013
T Turner on Brower, 2015
USInteror on Reclamation essays, 2017
E Ward on Pol Ecology of CR Delta, 2003
D Worster on Muir, 2008
D Worster on Power, 2001
R Wyss on Brower, 2016
Articles
B Drake on Goldwater, 2010
S Gilman on dam removal, 2016
S Jett on Navajo role in dams fight (n.d.)
K Langlois on Glen removed, 2017
J Leshy on wilderness, 2014
A Lustgarten on dams and C R, 2016
R Miller review of P1, 2003
D Dewitt on NAWAPA, 2011
O'Connor et al on dam removal, 2015
N Paumgarten on Rio Grande, 2018
Pearson: Forest Service saved Canyon, 2012
P on S Udall, 2012
P on Jackson on NEPA origin, 2011
D Pisani on Dominy, 2018
C Pope on Canyon, 2011
J Rainey, coal plant shutdown, 2018
Dissertations
S Dickey on Navajo and Glen dam, 2011
G Stack on Brower and rhetoric, 2017
Silliness and misses
xvi: Policy is not made when people put bumper stickers on their cars saying "Save Grand Canyon" ... "Laws are crafted in isolation, especially" to 1960
"chance for me to add eighteen years of research" xix
conservation, preservation, and environmentalism "are used interchangeably because their meanings have changed over the past century." xix (This makes NO sense.)
xx: "relatively few connections" between Wilderness Act and dam fight. Anderson? Aspinall?, part of the developing zeitgeist?
xx: misses that "low" Bridge Canyon dam was only one considered by FPC because of Monument.
xxii "mere preservation of natural curiosities such as the Grand Canyon had become outdated". "Last major campaign of XXth century conservation" OR first and iconic of the new national orientation?
1 TR gave speech on "porch of hotel close to the brink". Doesnt know he was speaking against El Tovar, which was built shortly after his visit in spite of his being told that day that it would not be.
3-4 on Powell doesnt mention his being author of original GCNP legislation introduced by B.Harrison.
D Lago on GCNP history
R Lifeset on Storm King, 2014
C McMillen on Hualapai Case, 2007
R Nash on Wilderness, 2014
A Needham on Phoenix and southwest, 2014
T Palmer on Endangered rivers, 2004
D Robinson on Glacier N P, 2017
S Schulte on Aspinall, 2002
J Shepherd on Hualapai,2010
T Smith on Saylor, 2006
T Smith on S Udall, 2017
H Steen on U S Forest Service, 2004
S Sturgeon on Aspinall, 2002
A Summitt on Env Hist of Colorado R, 2013
T Turner on Brower, 2015
USInteror on Reclamation essays, 2017
E Ward on Pol Ecology of CR Delta, 2003
D Worster on Muir, 2008
D Worster on Power, 2001
R Wyss on Brower, 2016
Articles
B Drake on Goldwater, 2010
S Gilman on dam removal, 2016
S Jett on Navajo role in dams fight (n.d.)
K Langlois on Glen removed, 2017
J Leshy on wilderness, 2014
A Lustgarten on dams and C R, 2016
R Miller review of P1, 2003
D Dewitt on NAWAPA, 2011
O'Connor et al on dam removal, 2015
N Paumgarten on Rio Grande, 2018
Pearson: Forest Service saved Canyon, 2012
P on S Udall, 2012
P on Jackson on NEPA origin, 2011
D Pisani on Dominy, 2018
C Pope on Canyon, 2011
J Rainey, coal plant shutdown, 2018
Dissertations
S Dickey on Navajo and Glen dam, 2011
G Stack on Brower and rhetoric, 2017
Silliness and misses
xvi: Policy is not made when people put bumper stickers on their cars saying "Save Grand Canyon" ... "Laws are crafted in isolation, especially" to 1960
"chance for me to add eighteen years of research" xix
conservation, preservation, and environmentalism "are used interchangeably because their meanings have changed over the past century." xix (This makes NO sense.)
xx: "relatively few connections" between Wilderness Act and dam fight. Anderson? Aspinall?, part of the developing zeitgeist?
xx: misses that "low" Bridge Canyon dam was only one considered by FPC because of Monument.
xxii "mere preservation of natural curiosities such as the Grand Canyon had become outdated". "Last major campaign of XXth century conservation" OR first and iconic of the new national orientation?
1 TR gave speech on "porch of hotel close to the brink". Doesnt know he was speaking against El Tovar, which was built shortly after his visit in spite of his being told that day that it would not be.
3-4 on Powell doesnt mention his being author of original GCNP legislation introduced by B.Harrison.
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