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25 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah. 6 First published in 1878, the Lands of the Arid Region is usually noted for its proposal to make the land policy of the West conform to the region's topography. Visionary and in many ways impractical, this scheme stirred Westerners to distrust and work against Powell's ideas. The report is valuable mostly for the idea that resource utilization should be based on sound scientific premises. Also the chapters concerned with the relationship of water to land, climate, and people were equally innovative and much more important in their impact on the evolving administration of water. True for the arid regions generally, this was especially true for Utah. To help understand how water should be used, an array of empirical measurements were taken. Some of these dealt with the rise of the Great Salt Lake in the decades after Mormon settlement. Others dealt with the effects of elevation, geological provinces, and the Great Salt Lake upon meteorology, precipitation, and water's potential for use. In addition to surveying all of Utah's major drainage systems, the Lands of the Arid Region took the cooperation of the Mormon pioneering method into account and remarked on the willingness of irrigators in Utah to accede to the arbitration of both church leaders and the county courts. The Mormons were favorably presented at a time when their repute nationally was at an all- time low. 7 From the first, the Lands of the Arid Region was a primer for the application of science to resource utilization. Doubtlessly, it helped formulate the responsibilities of the State Engineer's Office and otherwise helped lay the ground work for understanding water. But perhaps of equal importance was the fact that Powell and his surveyors employed a sizeable group of Utahns in the process of taking measurements and collecting the data upon which the report was based. Many of these were lay people whose contact with the ideas behind Powell's approach influenced Utah attitudes towards water management at the grass roots level. 8 Other Utahns who worked with Powell were trained figures of some public importance. For example, John R. Park, who helped collect data on the Great Salt Lake, was the president of the University of Deseret and one of the most influential educators in the territory. Territorial surveyor Jesse W. Fox and county surveyors like Cache County's James H. Martineau were also in a good position to appreciate the change in approach represented by Powell's method. Equally suggestive to Utahns in the late 1800s were Powell's advanced ideas about impoundment potential for extending the utility of water and his discussions of the physical relationships of water duty, including such thorny issues as where right of use attached when water rose in the High Uintas, passed through Provo River, Utah Lake, and the Jordan River into Great Salt Lake. Issues such as return flow, seepage, water's viscosity, and the influence of pressure and gravity began to be understood in scientific terms. Utah's administrators, judges, and water users gradually began to understand water's complexity and the transcending need for measurement and definition. John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah, ( Washington D. C.: Govemment Printing Office, 1878). Powell, Lands of the Arid Region, Chapter 2. " The reverse is also true, that these people and their customs of cooperation influenced Powell's thinking as well. |
