Explores the story of Federal contributions to dam planning, design, and construction.

The history of federal involvement in dam construction goes back at least to the 1820s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built wing dams to improve navigation on the Ohio River. The work expanded after the Civil War, when Congress authorized the Corps to build storage dams on the upper Mississippi River and regulatory dams to aid navigation on the Ohio River. In 1902, when Congress established the Bureau of Reclamation (then called the “Reclamation Service”), the role of the federal government increased dramatically. Subsequently, large Bureau of Reclamation dams dotted the Western landscape. Together, Reclamation and the Corps have built the vast majority of major federal dams in the United States. These dams serve a wide variety of purposes. Historically, Bureau of Reclamation dams primarily served water storage and delivery requirements, while U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams supported navigation and flood control. For both agencies, hydropower production had become an important secondary function. This history explores the story of federal contributions to dam planning, design, and construction by carefully selecting those dams and river systems that seem particularly critical to the story. Written by three distinguished historians, the history will interest engineers, historians, cultural resource planners, water resource planners and others interested in the challenges facing dam builders. At the same time, the history also addresses some of the negative environmental consequences of dam-building, a series of problems that today both Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seek to resolve.

The massive dams of the American West were designed to serve multiple purposes: improving navigation, irrigating crops, storing water, controlling floods, and generating hydroelectricity. Their construction also put thousands of people to work during the Great Depression. Only later did the dams’ baneful effects on river ecologies spark public debate. Big Dams of the New Deal Era tells how major water-storage structures were erected in four western river basins. David P. Billington and Donald C. Jackson reveal how engineering science, regional and national politics, perceived public needs, and a river’s natural features intertwined to create distinctive dams within each region. In particular, the authors describe how two federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, became key players in the creation of these important public works. By illuminating the mathematical analysis that supported large-scale dam construction, the authors also describe how and why engineers in the 1930s most often opted for massive gravity dams, whose design required enormous quantities of concrete or earth-rock fill for stability. Richly illustrated, Big Dams of the New Deal Era offers a compelling account of how major dams in the New Deal era restructured the landscape—both politically and physically—and why American society in the 1930s embraced them wholeheartedly.

This history explores the story of federal contributions to dam planning, design, and construction by carefully selecting those dams and river systems that seem particularly critical to the story. The history also addresses some of the negative environmental consequences of dam-building, a series of problems that today both Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seek to resolve.

Donald Pisani's history of perhaps the boldest economic and social program ever undertaken in the United States, shows in fascinating detail how ambitious government programs fall prey to the power of local interest groups and the federal system of governance itself.