Flooding the Southwest: An Arizona Inland Sea as Agricultural Utopia

During the 1870s, a group of Euro-Americans devised a plan to flood vast portions of Western Arizona and California. The civil engineers J.E. James and Richard Stretch argued that irrigation canals could create an inland sea... [ view full abstract ]

During the 1870s, a group of Euro-Americans devised a plan to flood vast portions of Western Arizona and California. The civil engineers J.E. James and Richard Stretch argued that irrigation canals could create an inland sea in the desert Southwest. Although James and Stretch detailed potential drawbacks of such a plan, many boosters endorsed the artificial sea, including politicians such as John C. Frémont, a former governor of the Territory of Arizona. Climate played a key role in shaping the visions of these nineteenth-century Americans. The artificial sea, one proponent wrote, “would ensure a moister atmosphere and a greater rainfall to Western Arizona, and in connection with other measures,” such as tree planting, “would render the Territory [of Arizona] the garden-spot of all the West.” The ambitious plan was never carried out, yet the unfulfilled flooding of Arizona merits closer examination. It offers a glimpse into nineteenth-century beliefs about climate change, race, and ecology. Some supporters believed they were restoring Arizona’s environment by recreating the moist climate it had enjoyed under the aegis of a vanished Native American civilization. This belief did little to temper boosters’ genocidal attitude toward the Native Americans of their day. The inland sea project also sheds light on the often self-defeating nature of capitalist expansionism. Ultimately, promoters and boosters undermined the artificial flood plan. Some thought it wasteful to submerge valuable land while others worried that the artificial sea might deter potential immigrants by modifying the Southwest’s salubrious dry climate.