This year, 2026, marks 40 years since the publication of Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Marc Reisner’s magnum opus and dire warning about the effects of land use, development and water policy in the western United States.
Cadillac Desert is as or more relevant today than when it was published in 1986. The Cadillac desert — mostly seven western states where water is a central issue — still has the pedal to the metal, gulping water by the acre foot, dam the future.
The Mojave Desert.
This is true mostly because so little regarding water and land use has changed in the past four decades. The American west faces a reckoning of epic proportions thanks to a hideous combination of human-induced climate change, population growth, poor decision making, political inaction and infighting have only worsened with years of prolonged droughts punctuated by years with devastating El Niño weather condition storms.
The manipulation of water in the American west through the construction of dozens of dams, canals and water storage projects, ranks as one of the greatest social and engineering efforts in the history of humanity.
All of the west’s, rivers great and small, were dammed. Spectacular canyons and valleys flooded. Millions of acres of formerly arid land was irrigated, sometimes whether it need to be or should have been. A complex maze of water use laws and rights were written that affect millions of people, most of whom have no idea where the water that comes out of their taps and fills their toilets comes from.
Top: Taken in the early 1900s before the O’Shaughnessy Dam was constructed, shows the Hetch Hetchy Valley and the Tuolumne River, looking east. Wapama Falls is on the left, Kolana Rock on the right. Bottom: A modern photo, taken from much the same vantage point, shows the submergence of the valley floor under the waters of the reservoir.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Portland either would not exist at all or would not exist at their current scale if not for the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and thousands of federal bureaucrats and elected officials that lusted for big-bucks water projects. Many of these projects were the result of the New Deal and post-World War II make work projects.
Owens Lake, California, looking east. Before Los Angeles diverted water from the lake, transforming it into the desert shown here, it was a lake large and deep enough that steamboat carried passengers and freight across it.
Reisner points out that when the Spanish arrived on the land where San Francisco is today, the area was so dry and windswept there were absolutely no trees. He contrasts the look of land the Spanish found with that of San Francisco’s lush Golden Gate Park now. The city and it park are largely the result
Often these projects made little or no economic sense, benefiting few or no people. They were primarily the product of pork barrel politics – it was usually political suicide to oppose a dam project – and the rapacious efforts of the competition between the Army Corps and the Bureau of Reclamation.
The cost in dollars has been in the many billions. The cost to the land, environment and numerous communities has been incalculable. At the same time, these water projects turbo charged the economics of the western states, even helping to win World War II. Water from these projects made California an economy more powerful than most nations.
These are the reasons the book is named Cadillac Desert. Water projects turned the west, and other areas of the nation, in the equivalent of a top-of-the line, top-price automobile that looks and rides nice, but may not be the most practical or cost effective.
Cities of the Dammed
The demand for water in the west has grown dramatically in the past 40 years as the population of the west has grown.
In 1986, the population of Arizona was approximately 2.7 million. Arizona’s population in 2026 is estimated at 7.8 million. In 1986, the population of California was approximately 29.5 million. The population of California in 2026 is approximately 39.3 million. In 1986, Nevada’s population was approximately 1.2 million. In 2026, Nevada’s population is 3.3 million. In 1986, the population of Utah was approximately 1.5 million. In 2026, Utah’s population is estimated at 3.57 million.
Satellite view of Los Angeles
The difference between now and 40 years ago is the Cadillac desert has gone from being a two-ton, 17-foot-long Fleetwood getting 18 miles to the gallon to a three-ton, to a 17-foot-long Escalade getting 16 miles to the gallon.
The 1986 high end Fleetwood cost the equivalent of about $68,000 in 2026 dollars. The Escalade costs $100,000 and up. A gallon of regular gas in 1986 averaged $0.82 per gallon — about $2.43 in 2026 dollars. The national average price for a gallon of gas in early September 2026 is approximately $4.10. And rising, depending on what oil producing nation we’re bombing at the moment.
What’s true of how Cadillac vehicles, and the cost of driving one, have transformed during the past 40 is also true of water in the west.
What’s true of how Cadillac vehicles, and the cost of driving one, have transformed during the past 40 is also true of water in the west. Western water is expensive, the systems that move it around are complex and showy, but may not be practical in the near future or sustainable in the long the run.
Reisner died of colon cancer in July 2000 just as millions of people migrated into a giant portion of the country that was essentially a vast desert 300 years ago. He did live through the huge population southwest population influx of the 1990s, but he would probably be both shocked and unsurprised at what has happened in the past 26 years.
Water management is not just a western issue.
Resiner points out the west isn’t the only part of America that is dammed. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility that covers all of Tennessee, parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. The TVA has 29 hydroelectric dams in the fifth-largest river system in the United States.
Resiner revised and updated the book in 1993, adding a new afterword. It was reissued in 2017, with a significant postscript added by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Nearly a decade has passed since Mott wrote her postscript. In some respects, the water situation has becomes much worse with a persistent drought that has lakes Mead and Powell at their lowest levels since they were first filled. Politicians and agribusiness still want more dams, canals and water diverting tunnels.
The West’s Acre-Feet
Water in the west is measured in acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre to a depth of one foot. Water managers in United States consider one acre-foot the annual water usage of a suburban family household. It’s about the amount of water needed to fill an eight-lane swimming pool, 82 ft (25 m) long, 52 ft (16 m) wide and 9.8 ft (3 m) deep.
Many water-management agreements in the United States are measured in acre-feet per year. To give you an idea of how much water we’re talking about being distributed, the Colorado River Compact divides 15 million acre-feet per year (19 cubic kilometers per year) among seven western US states, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The compact also includes an agreement to send 1.5 million acre-feet per year (59 cubic meters per second) to Mexico.
The Colorado River as seen from Navajo Bridge over Marble Canyon in Coconino County, Arizona. Photo: A.C. Scally
While the Colorado River Compact is one of the largest, most important and contentious of western water agreements, it is one of many.
On the hand, water users in the cities and suburbs are using less water, cities are using reclaimed water, agriculture is being forced to conserve, desalination plants are being built, some dams have been removed, some water is flowing back to Owens Lake, the source of some of Los Angeles’ water.
Water’s For Fightin’ About
The Central Valley Project was the world’s largest water and power project when undertaken during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal public works agenda. The Project was the culmination of eighty years of political fighting over the state’s most important natural resource – water
Map of the Central Valley Project, California’s massive water management system
However, a comprehensive solution to water management in the westremains out of grasp. If human’s don’t come to terms with it soon, nature will eventually throw a spike strip onto the highway in front of the speeding Cadillac desert.
The Whole Dammed Nation
There are about nearly 8,100 major dams in the United States as of 2006. The National Inventory of Dams defines a major dam as being 50 feet (15 m) tall with a storage capacity of at least 5,000 acre-feet (6,200,000 m), or of any height with a storage capacity of 25,000 acre-feet (31,000,000 m). There are an estimated 84,000 dams in the United States, impounding 600,000 mi (970,000 km) of rivers.
Dams in the United States.
The book:
“Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition”. By Marc Reisner, Postscript by Lawrie Mott. 2017 Penguin Random House. ISBN 9780140104325
The Cadillac Desert documentary:
Cadillac Desert was adapted into four-part documentary series about water, money, politics, and the transformation of nature released in 1997. The film was directed by Jon H. Else and Linda Harrar.
DVD/Video Cover
Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature. Produced by KTEH, San Jose, Calif. and Trans Pacific TV. Directed by Directed by Jon Else and Linda Harrar. Written by Jon Else, Sandra Postel and Marc Reisner. Released June 1997. Four-part series. Total run time 270 minutes.
Further reading:
The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax. Vintage. May 2019. ISBN-13 : 978-1101875216
Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, by Sandra Postel. W.W. Norton & Co., 1992. ISBN 0-393-31744-7