Water Is Life, Water Is Power: The Confluence of Water, History, and the Public in Utah

Abstract

In Utah of late it seems that water has been both everywhere and nowhere at once. For the past two decades our state and much of the American West has been locked in a “mega-drought,” the region's worst in 1,200 years. At the same time, unprecedented population growth and the increasingly impossible-to-ignore effects of climate change have pushed the West toward the brink. The crisis on the Colorado River—where in late December 2022, Lake Powell stood at 23 percent of capacity and Lake Mead at around 28 percent—portends both painful cutbacks for water users and years of legal and political battles to come.1 Meanwhile, declining water levels on Great Salt Lake have exposed hundreds of square miles of playa, creating toxic dust storms that imperil human health, and threatening catastrophic impacts for the migratory birds, brine shrimp, and other species that depend on the lake's ecosystem. That is the nowhere part.The everywhere part is the awareness of the water crisis in the media and in the public consciousness. Once a local or regional story, the West's disappearing water has become headline news on the national and even global stage. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and CNN among many others have covered the crisis. HBO's John Oliver even made water the subject of an episode of his satirical news show Last Week Tonight, taking particular glee in skewering Utah and its political leaders.2 This is all in addition to sustained coverage by local and regional outlets, including the important work of the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a consortium of twenty-three media organizations with the shared mission of raising public awareness of the crisis.3 Everywhere, it seems that alarm bells are finally sounding.Water has also been on my mind a lot over the past several years as I have worked with a dedicated team from Utah Humanities on Think Water Utah. My involvement began in 2019, when Megan Van Frank asked me to serve as the state consulting scholar for the Utah tour of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum on Main Street (MoMS) exhibit Water Ways. Utah Humanities regularly brings MoMS exhibits to Utah and I had acted as consulting scholar on a previous tour, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. Besides, as an historian of the American West, water is never far from the center of the story, whether it be mythologized, celebratory tales of hardy pioneers or grimmer accounts of environmental injustice and the struggle to control the precious resource. Indeed, some noted western historians such as Walter Prescott Webb and Donald Worster deemed aridity the region's defining characteristic.4 Then Van Frank had the vision to secure the tour of a second Smithsonian exhibit H2O Today, transforming Water Ways into Think Water Utah, which she informally and lovingly dubbed the “water circus.”5 By the time the big top was struck for the final time in October of 2022, our travelling circus reached every corner of the state. All told, Think Water Utah included the publication of my extended essay “Utah Water Ways,” companion exhibits and local programming at nine partner venues, a statewide exhibit developed to accompany H2O Today, associated exhibits at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Natural History Museum of Utah, online resources for teachers, and multiple episodes of Utah Humanities’ Beehive Archive podcast.6While it was enough to leave me feeling waterlogged, I believe that Think Water Utah and projects like it can play a crucial role in our civic life. As a citizen who cares deeply about Utah and the West, I worry about our future. We live in a time when both the validity of science and the relevance of history are under attack. Neither trend bodes well for dealing effectively with the water crisis. Yet at the same time, as a publicly engaged historian, I remain hopeful that my work, and the work of so many others, facilitates meaningful public discussions as we face consequential decisions both as individuals and as a society. In saying this I do not suggest that history provides an objective roadmap for the future. We have all heard the old saw about those who cannot remember the past being condemned to repeat it. But in fact, historians are notoriously bad at predicting the future. And so, despite living in Utah for over three decades I make no claim to being a prophet. No historian should. What then is the role of an historian at the confluence of water and the public?If historians cannot predict the future, we can provide desperately needed historical context that in turn contributes to informed public discussion. In public-facing projects like Think Water Utah, our central goal is to provoke visitors and readers. I use the term provoke advisedly. In doing so I am following Freeman Tilden, the National Park Service's guru of interpretation, who long ago asserted that provocation was the chief aim of public interpretation. Effective interpretation, he wrote, served to “stimulate the reader or hearer toward a desire to widen [their] horizon of interests and knowledge, and to gain an understanding of the greater truths that lie beneath any statements of fact.”7 To provoke, then, is not to pick a fight. Of course, we knew that for Think Water Utah to truly have value, we must ask hard questions and tell difficult stories. By retelling well-known (and lesser known) stories with a critical eye toward their meaning in light of current concerns, our goal was never to disparage heroes or tear down heritage but rather to expand and complicate popular narratives and get our visitors and readers to stop and think more deeply about the past as context.That is also what I want to do here, by addressing several intertwined historical threads that provide particularly relevant context for understanding our present and pondering our future. All are linked by the central notion that water is not only life but also power. Moreover, they also illustrate the fundamental contingency of history. Utah's historic “water ways” were not predestined nor were they simply dictated by the state's harsh environment. Rather, they took shape where the natural world and human cultures met. It was there that people made decisions, rooted in their own cultural traditions and historical experiences, which impacted their own lives and in many cases transformed the lives of others. Our future water ways will be formulated the same way, through adaptation and resistance, conflict and compromise.There is an oft-repeated adage, popularly though falsely attributed to Mark Twain, that in the West “whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.”8 It is a funny line, but it also reflects a deeper truth: in arid places like the West water is power, and it is often a source of conflict. The general scarcity of water meant that the relatively few places such the Wasatch Oasis zone, where water was more abundant, became the focus of intensive and permanent Euro-American colonization, setting the stage for the dispossession of Native peoples. Later, the struggle to control water meant the difference between success or failure for those same colonists, be they farmers, ranchers, miners, and even whole communities.And if water is intensely political in the West, in Utah it is has also been also central to cultural identity, for it figures prominently in the LDS faith's cherished narrative of hardship, trial, and triumph. Fleeing persecution in the East, the popular narrative goes, Brigham Young led the Mormons into an unforgiving land where through hard work and with a shared sense of purpose they made the desert “blossom like the rose.” The whole story is, of course, far more complicated. To tell the more complete story, we must begin with the central premise that different cultures and societies can and have approached the natural world with radically dissimilar values and goals. These differences have shaped lands and waters in distinct ways and very often have engendered conflict. Indeed, making the desert bloom for Euro-American colonists came at the expense of Utah's Indigenous peoples.The central difference between Native and Euro-American water ways came down to adjustment, to adaptation: more precisely, who or what was expected to adapt or change. Utah's Native peoples generally accepted the natural limitations of their homeland and made optimal use of its resources without attempting to reengineer the world around them. For Numic-speaking peoples—Utes, Shoshones, Goshutes, and Paiutes—mobility was a crucial strategy for survival throughout much of the year, but this was balanced by more sedentary camps the of a on those which the people had to Water of course, a and in and and as well as In the were camps that with to and for In the people and in the Utah the at of the in the their both and colonists came to the arid lands of the American West with about human with For it was not a of but a of to to the of their their At a fundamental their in the that had been over they that transforming was as well as In the for and to and an of life they knew in the to the arid In doing so they only as far as to the natural world and its and then the land we Utah, water became a of conflict. and their that or linked and other water was the of and and The peoples of the Great living to the the In many cases the important water often the Native peoples who had for many of the of the of of in of a much greater other the Mormons to The Wasatch Oasis their only to a between the and to the of came at the expense of Native lands and In the over the and lands of the Utah It was the of two decades of that led to the of people from the Wasatch Oasis and central Meanwhile, to the LDS into the homeland of the there in the of the of Native peoples in the American not engaged in the as they had been in Utah colonists from the and the as the of the failure to they were control over Native Mormons engaged in struggle over this with other This not play on but in the of a values as well as its Brigham goal in the to Utah was to an with or of water was an part of those and through of the Utah's worked to that is legal struggle took environmental and the of a were to water the arid Water in the began with the of if land a or they a to use its they not the for others. The was well to the like the meant not water to their In the West, a very different took in the of the two in time, in and Water are not to land but rather depend on an claim with the the state to a with and use to others with on the same or The of the or the of not in time, in the also on a for this is where into water is a not It is the to use a of water that is not the water whether they be or must their claim by the water to some which or a or to meant of the water use is often more as it or the goal of the use was to and that a served the it has also led in of their to use every of their of or rather the LDS led to and served to the of At a time when other and the to the values of the of New Water was be but water As and the Wasatch local water not to but to the and of the As the in Utah the to control of in the Water and resources came under the of in the that for the of included to and Yet over time, the of in and Utah. In the and water with water and and on By when Utah its water was the of the the LDS to the world at through the control of water were they for an vision of western by John the to doing Powell a for with and public This is he a in the public particularly in Utah and among of the environmental and In popular Powell was the despite an in the led two through the and in the Today, some as to the of and more many more for the natural world and But Powell was a nor a of And so, there is in who he was and was as well as his vision for western That never came to not its for about water in the American West and for public think about the of was not a but an of and in the natural and he an of no and to following his into and a long in which he and the natural history and human cultures of the for years he both the and the of American and his interests were part of the same of national For a understanding of the land and its peoples was a for the of the arid saw the between water and in the It was central to his goal of a vision of that was rooted in the of and other of the For political The to the he was to a made of In the decades the this by a became the of who the of the the to and being in an Powell also this of And he to both to the of human and to that vision of American saw both the of the as well as to that to the in the of the These included the the and the that more any other the of the the This an to claim from the public that on the land for years and made they to their in other their very own in American the Powell that the in the not of and but of the natural environment. In places of the of in any year, the of that provide a living in the made sense in the arid West, where or much to were more to the environment. American in be to the lands of the American This was the that important And in it he a radically different of the waters and the which had it been have transformed the political and face of the American his Powell time in Utah and were by a different their the arid West became of the that Powell through his Powell not the same with and that LDS colonists, but he want to interests and the of and local control over that precious also to his That is and important began his for the American West, which deemed a for a with his on the of the of the the over the years in and finally a of in of an understanding of the environmental limitations by aridity in the American that only percent of the West be there are about under in Utah, or percent of the state's land this under to provide for over a American It be a and of and It also the of to every of the region's That the West's be was not a are Powell his he that resources be that no water to the The that we so were a like and the same some ways Powell be a of those he that and resources must be developed for human their on he for to science and be to make western he but only the by work to a regional that the of environmental and the New But there were also important differences between Powell and of not the vision of sustained by the provide and but the control of the must be to the of and political and the cherished vision of between the natural world and was at the of for the it the arid West's political to with its natural and were often the of the and making over water under of the waters human and political as well as water In the American West, that meant a of effectively be with two or more which Powell Powell have in of a of water Water be to land but the and of the land be central or from the to all the water that be To a of and of lands in the be to and all and be as the the or the on to local waters as well as the to the waters that down from in of the more their water be to those of water no their or only to the water that be their and have only a and the in and water be a of the arid the of western like who the and the in and Powell to But not want to of natural and and other western saw that not their for the only two years the effectively of a very different vision for the West was on in in October when Powell what to be his on water and western was there as the of the National The was the of who in his of Salt Lake where he had the two years The were a of and Powell his on the it was an began by his not to the or other but to a that will the of for the I am more in the and the I am in the they truly with such the and in the with the who shared he his the in the from for the and to The when Powell the of natural what I to make to is is not Water enough to all the that when all the are when all the in the when all the when all the are when all the the are when all the waters are when all the waters are when all the are or that can be in all this arid there is not water to all this arid I make that is but a of the land which can be when all the of then a years the interests in water will I tell are a heritage of conflict and over water for there is not water to that it became difficult for Powell to others with questions and at the who a became the of the the that whole on for some general The he was the only he had in this being from the Powell as the of the to the a vision of and and for it was an of that to any natural no of has our lives in an arid like Utah to a population in the it is to believe that can every often the very they were to This brings me to of water in Utah and the American western water an but in the and their in the struggle to control the region's precious resource. This not as a the West has been and it the of the about percent of live in places as in the West, it is over And about percent of the water in Utah to of that to a growth accounts for the in and has and very to current and that October in when Powell the of the who stood in was then of the Water and the of the of Water and In he the of of Water to and not of which was for that was but was not in was on the current more future of the he that his were on the waters of the as a to water the was a in the of and its population By the turn of the the and two decades as the in and the American Yet despite its growth and the water its as a The water source was the a of a that became a The was natural and without more water its that its growth The the water in American a struggle that the and the of the political of the West, all the environmental of our the of the and it made in the other in the Great the waters of the never reached the but rather into an It is a or as is Utah's Great Salt a the pioneers the Salt Lake and Utah other Indigenous people and began in the of the natural which were not those of the Wasatch it became the of the Service's in and had other a who served as and was in of the his was but came to believe that it was the only to the the began to water in the In a conflict of the in of the the in and the of water to to more water and the In fact, the water was not and be in the beneath the it was were by but the public it not be without In Frank present was the old and who as of the was a of of was in his own for the for the that there was greater to be served by the water in The a to a over that have the water the became and the following the the from the to become at the of Water and every of the between and it water miles the over miles of and twenty-three to and without the for It was a But it not the of the nor it to only the water in the led to the that he must it all in to the water No water meant no future for the and and they and the on several the to the with conflict but growth and its for more water The was extended to the Lake which became and the But even that was not In the an even was to water from the Colorado to over a in And the water over miles from Lake on the in to In and throughout the American West has more has the of the far from Utah, we not its historical the for being the of By a second and began even more and water of the The was environmental Once a for migratory birds, Lake became a toxic dust storms that the legal have in to water into but it and so the with and to The between Lake and our own Great Salt Lake are hard to In a on the Great Salt the New York not are of important differences For the toxic dust storms from Lake relatively few people in like and a Great Salt Lake the and of people living the Wasatch This is a to be but it also a of came at the expense of hundreds of miles the Wasatch we are doing this to and that the to change. is in and if have the will to a hard at they a there are no or public discussions of water in Utah have increasingly toward and more toward the that percent of the water in the state year, ask if it sense to so much of our precious to a that percent of the state's It is a and water from use to other seems like an to Utah's water But we also for the state's it to be no at the Utah was the state in the and are that population growth will for decades to we cannot stop growth is that not want to even if it were we can it more We can and over the of and water projects that have greater growth and even greater will and will in our cultural values and And they will from every of our cannot predict it all will turn but I do believe that historical context will be in our future water Think Water Utah was to provoke and meaningful discussions of our past and our future I public The goal was to get our visitors and readers to their to water and to That is also what I have to do In the ways in which Native peoples and Euro-American colonists engaged land and water in different or the vision of western by John or population growth and in the West, we to more and decisions about our water future. For me that is the role of a historian at the confluence of water and the