blog – Nate Housley

Zombie History

historiography

The day after the 2016 election, Barack Obama gave a speech that encouraged his supporters to be optimistic about Donald Trump’s presidency.

The Water Knife and Fantasies of Collapse

water

fiction

(This post will contain spoilers.)

Agricultural to Urban Land Conversion

cities

agriculture

land

I have been thinking about the broad historical progression in the West from farmland to city, as per usual. (We could even back up a bit more, all the way to the 1820s, and…

On Water and AI

water

If you’ve arrived at this post with no knowledge of Matt Yglesias, your best course of action is to refrain from reading the link below and to close this tab. Go get a…

Cadillac Desert Was Too Effective

water

(Note: This post is thematically similar to a previous post found here. I wrote this one because I wanted to address Cadillac Desert more directly and because of a…

Distributive Administration and its Discontents

water

Progressives

prior appropriation

Legal scholar Moses Lasky, in 1929, declared that “prior-appropriation is the law nowhere in the West.” He was correct, but only if we define what he meant. The prior…

Efficiency and Resilience

We are expected to believe that the cause of the West’s water troubles has been definitively diagnosed. Inefficient water consumption has led to too much wasted water. The…

“The Whites of this Country Are Against the Government”

water

west

politics

Reporting from the Associated Press about a series of talks in 2022 about the Colorado River contains the following detail: “Limiting population growth was not discussed as…

Reclamation in the Prophetic Perfect Tense

water

religion

The prophetic perfect tense is a literary style found in the Bible, where something prophesied is written as if it has already occurred. The tense reinforces the idea that…

Racism in Environmentalism and Why it Matters

environmentalism

racism

water

eugenics

conservation

The namesake of the 1902 Newlands Act, or Reclamation Act, was a racist. He was so outspoken in his hatred for Black Americans that in 2022 Congress voted to remove his name…

There is No Shortage of Water

GSL

water

agriculture

West

This post is an attempt at a short explanation of the problem with water in the US West as I near the end of a multi-year project researching and writing. I came to this…

Expansion is at the Root of the Problem

cities

agriculture

water

GSL

How do we make sense of contemporary water shortages? This post will draw on more in-depth posts that treat the last 50 years or so of water in the West to arrive at a…

What’s the Deal with Water Marketing

water

markets

Prior appropriation is a bit of a funny thing. There are essentially two simple principles that make up the legal doctrine that governs Western water allocation: seniority…

Great Salt Lake as Wasteland

GSL

water

environmentalism

Historian Jared Farmer, in On Zion’s Mount, relates how Mormon settlers saw the Salt Lake Valley as an oasis only to be remembered later as a desert waste. The hot springs…

Water for City and Country in the late 20th century

water

agriculture

GSL

The last major Colorado River projects were approved in 1968. The Bureau of Reclamation declared twenty years later that the “arid West essentially has been reclaimed.” For…

What’s the Deal with Alfalfa

water

agriculture

GSL

Agriculture in the Mountain West, like anywhere else, is complex. There are inefficiencies and peculiarities, as many are now aware. About 80% of Utah’s water goes toward…

The Case of Uphill Flowing Water

water

West

“We all know that water runs uphill toward money,” wrote Colorado governor Richard Lamm in 1976. “Other values are largely ignored.” This adage continues to shape ideas…

A Short History of Water in the US West

West

water

reclamation

The current era of water in the US West begins with Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, though irrigation practices from the Spanish settlement period still…

The Safety Valve

West

water

reclamation

There are some narratives about the US West that have taken on a life of their own, independent of whether they are true. The West is a resource colony for the East. The…

The Second Treaty Era

water

settler-colonialism

Colorado River

reclamation

In 1908, Montana farmers who had been diverting water upstream from the Fort Belknap reservation appealed an injunction from the federal government. Ultimately, the Supreme…

“Our Last Major Water Resource” – The Central Utah Project

Colorado River

water

reclamation

In 1965, governor of Utah George Clyde referred to the Colorado River as “our last major water resource.” He was correct about this, but his estimation that it would be “key…

Race to the Bottom – The Law of the River

GSL

water

reclamation

Colorado River

At the turn of the twentieth century, the population of Los Angeles had just cleared 100,000. This made it a fair bit larger than Salt Lake County, but the desert metropolis…

The Sinful Rivers We Must Curb

GSL

environment

During the middle of the nineteenth century, the meaning of “wilderness” began to change. For Anglo-american farmers, wilderness had long been something to clear away…

Free-for-all in the Uinta Basin

GSL

water

Utah

Note: An extended version of this post appears at Weaving Rivers here.

Boosters and Crusaders, Megacities and the Safety Valve: Iterations on the Oldest New Idea in the West

GSL

water

In the last few years, powerful people have proposed building new cities from scratch in the US West. The odds are stacked against their success, but it’s worth viewing them…

How (Not) to Make the Desert Blossom as the Rose

GSL

agriculture

In the Salt Lake Valley in the spring of 1848, crickets and grasshoppers emerged en masse. The voracious locusts ate the tender plants of grains and vegetables that the…

The 100th Meridian: Where ‘Free Land’ Requires ‘Free Water’

water

GSL

The westward expansion of the United States accelerated considerably with 1862’s Homestead Act. But by the following decade, the movement of the frontier had slowed to a…

The Agrarian Foundations of the Western Water Crisis

water

GSL

settler-colonialism

The first irrigation project on federal land began in 1867. It was authorized through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for the Colorado River Indian Reservation. It was…

Defensive Conquest and Victim Narratives

settler-colonialism

land

In a tiny town named Almo in southern Idaho there is a monument to a massacre that claimed the lives of 295 people traveling along the Oregon Trail in 1861. The memorialized…

Great Salt Lake and Western Water: Introduction

water

GSL

Welcome to my blog. I’ve decided to use this site to communicate my perspective on the crisis facing Great Salt Lake. My goal is to break this big, complex problem into…