Western Infrastructure
Two observations shape our discussion of the West up to the New Deal years: (1) almost all of the West was in still in the process of being settled, possessed little manufacturing, lots of agriculture and extraction/mining industries–and was overwhelmingly urban; and (2) most of the territory was owned and managed by federal government bureaucracies, i.e. the federal government. Whatever history and tradition had characterized economic development east of the Mississippi, it was likely to be a quite different story in the West. The second observation, therefore, is our starting point in this section.
In regards to the federal role in western economic development, I can make two additional comments: (1) as already discussed, the Pacific Ocean, whatever else it was, required the federal government to construct a defense/military presence in the Pacific coastal states; and (2) the West as described by its famous explorer, John Wesley Powell is “an arid region” and anyone who has survived a car trip across the West will know—it is quite LARGE. Getting from place to place and providing services over such a dispersed, loosely populated area is a different matter than the more congested east. Although most westerners lived in cities, the urban hinterland was agricultural and livestock-raising. These lands were mostly federal owned and managed.
The 1891 Forest Reserve Act/Land Revision Act authorized the President (Benjamin Harrison) to set aside and reserve land and forest areas from the public domain. Added to by both the Cleveland and McKinley administrations, the land/forest aggregation was turned over to the newly created (1905) Forest Service—the creation of Pinochet and Theodore Roosevelt. By the 1990’s over 740 million acres—one third of the nation—was still directly administered by the federal government. The Feds were many western state’s largest landowner; and the “feds” controlled economic recreational/tourist activities conducted on these lands.
In 1919 the National Park Organic Service Act established a nation-wide set of national parks, and, intentionally or not, put Uncle Sam into the local/regional tourism business. Federal ownership of so much land and the involvement of the federal government in regulating/conducting what, in other states, would be local/state economic development activities/business climate has created, a complexity, if not a constant source of tension in western state economic development. This tension did not take long to manifest itself. In 1922, after leasing federal petroleum reserves to a private firm, a massive scandal, the Teapot Dome scandal erupted.
Agriculture, the gray area of economic development, prompted early western state action to advance wide-scale household farming, then Frank Wiggin’s infamous orange groves, and in fairly short order large-scale commercial agriculture. By the time John Steinbeck’s heroes were making their way from the Dust Bowl to employment in southern California farm worker jobs, a second book, Carey McWilliams’s Factories in the Field[1] (1939) provided vivid testimony of the existence and weaknesses of California’s highly developed commercial agriculture complex. The infrastructure supporting this sector supplied water to these enterprises. Indeed, Donald Worster[2] argues that over forty years, California and other western states had developed into a hydraulic economy, similar to that of the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians—an economy based on farming made possible through irrigation accomplished through concerted, large-scale government public works.
The government-irrigation nexus grew out of an 1871 private firm, the San Joaquin and King’s River Canal and Irrigation Company headquartered in San Francisco. This corporation opened up the San Joaquin Valley and within two years irrigated over 16,000 acres. Rich and poor, big and little farmers flooded into California and by the 1880’s new migrants had consumed nearly every drop of water in sight. The1895 formation of the Fruit Growers Exchange prompted yet more marketing cooperatives that fed the grocery stores of the nation—and drained more water. Deeper wells were required. In order to accommodate further growth, large-scale irrigation was required.
In 1887,the Wright Act (California) authorized farmers to organize a quasi-government entity that could own land, build irrigation complexes, and tax the landowners: the agricultural district was born. “By 1920 there were 71 irrigation districts in the state, most of them put together in the boom years of 1915 to 1920. The largest, covering over a half million acres, was in the Imperial Valley”[3]. It was only a question of time, and in the late thirties, the New Deal federal government commenced the Central Valley Project. The quest for water for a thirsty population and growing economy had drawn the federal government into the provision of infrastructure necessary for western states economic expansion.
In 1917 seven states formed the League of the Southwest to promote development (irrigation) from the Colorado River. After authorization from Congress in 1921 to enter into an agreement to allocate the flow and resources of the Colorado, the 1922 Colorado River Compact[4], a controversial agreement, was signed and water rights of the Colorado were allocated to each member state. The multi-state Colorado River Compact made dam construction and electrification of the inland West possible. The federal government played a major role in the politics and negotiation of the Compact—indeed Worster asserts much pressure for the first federally constructed dam program came from the Bureau of Land Reclamation, as well as the City of Los Angeles[5]. Interestingly, Worster’s take was that without the Frank Wiggin’s-Los Angeles Chamber entrepreneurial drive to encourage migration and commercial agriculture, there would have been little reason to construct the dam system. He cities William Mulholland who had earlier declared (1907) “If we don’t get the water, we won’t need it. We have to get the water or quit growing”[6].
A confirmed Privatist, Calvin Coolidge, signed the Boulder Canyon Act in 1928 and set in motion federal dam construction. President Hoover in 1930 dedicated the dam and started construction (that’s why they call it the Hoover Dam, stupid). In any case, the Hoover Dam was completed and generating power by 1937. At that time, however, Harold Ickes , FDR’s Secretary of Interior, changed the name to the Boulder Dam.
Hoover Dam was followed in 1938 by Parker Dam, located 150 miles downstream and furnishing water for the California Aqueduct which supplied the City of Los Angeles. Then came the building of the Imperial Dam and the All-American Canal to supply the agri-business interests farther south on the Mexican border. Than Davis Dam began to go up in 1946, and soon after the Morelos Dam in Mexico … the names proliferated endlessly.… Blocked, trapped, stilled and siphoned off, the Colorado finally ceased in normal seasons to reach the sea.[7]
Finally on a somewhat better note, Route 66, the Will Rogers Highway, began construction in 1926 and crossed over 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica[8]. Although not completely paved until 1938, Route 66 served the function performed by the National Road—without the controversy the latter engendered. In relatively short order, the Route became part of the American fabric and legend—the highway traveled by Grapes of Wrath Dust Bowlers, the Route of wartime industrial decentralization and population migration, and an early 1960’s television series my wife loved. Federal aid to highways increased from $216 million (1932) to $805 million by 1936. Much of these federal highway monies were spent in urban areas (Triborough Bridge in NYC and the Arroyo Seco Freeway in Los Angeles).[9]
By the New Deal, the federal government for four decades had been deeply involved in western states infrastructure development. FDR, however, faced other more complex issues than infrastructure in confronting the Great Depression: rural poverty, marginal farmers/livestock, a Dust Bowl, and a large rural population in a nation that in 1920 had in aggregate just achieved a bare majority of urban residents. That is a story for the next chapter on the West.
[1] Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field: the Story of Migratory Farm Labor (University of California Press, 2000). Originally published 1939.
[2] Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York, Oxford University Press, 1992). See in particular his chapter “Hydraulic Society in California”. He observed that by 1976, the federal Bureau of Reclamation operated 32o water-storage reservoirs, 344 diversion dams, 14,400 miles of canals, 900 miles of pipelines, 205 miles of tunnels, 34,620 miles of laterals, 145 pumping plants. 50 power plants, and 16,240 miles of transmission lines (p. 56).
[3] Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West, op. cit., p.60.
[4] See Norris Hundley, Water in the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West (University of California Press, 2009). The states are Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada.
[5] Chinatown (1974) produced by Roman Polanski, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, tells Los Angeles side of the tale. The Library of Congress cited this film as “culturally, historically … significant” so it must be true.
[6] Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West, op. cit., p.69.
[7] Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West, op. cit., pp. 70-71.
[8] The inspiration and political pressure for the highway is credited to two businessmen, Cyrus Avery of Tulsa and John Woodruff of Springfield MO, working within the American Association of State Highway and Transportation. Route 66 was intended to replace three existing highways. Taking advantage of 1916 federal legislation that authorized a federal role in highway construction, its original purpose was to simply connect the numerous small towns along the route to the national transportation system/economy.
[9] Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff, Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment (Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2003), p. 78.
Ron W. Coan 