Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege's fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho's Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces?one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology.Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000

Foreword by William CrononAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Discovering the Irrigated Landscape1) Genesis: Water, Earth, and Irrigation Systems2) Habitat: The Irrigated Landscape and Its Biota3) Dividing Water: Conflict, Cooperation, and Allocation on the Upper Snake River4) Labor and Landscape: Irrigated Agriculture and Work5) From Field to Market: Agricultural Production in the Irrigated Landscape6) Industrial Eden: Myth, Metaphor, and the Irrigated Landscape7) Conclusion: A World in the makingNotesSelected BibliographyIndex