Before there was a Lower Colorado River Authority, the Colorado River cut across Central Texas free and unfettered by artificial structures. But the river could be unpredictable and dangerous. In the early years of the twentieth century there were numerous attempts to harness and develop the river. Some Texans desperately wanted private enterprise to achieve that goal, but the job proved to be larger than the resources of the private sector. What emerged in the mid-1930s was a cooperative federal-state approach that created controversy yet results. John Adams details the dynamics in the struggle of private interests and public institutions to cooperate in the taming of the Colorado. The Great Depression further constricted private capital available for large-scale reclamation projects, but the New Deal entered into the effort. With seasoned Texas politicians in Washington, millions of dollars in federal funds were channeled into the Lower Colorado River Authority. The Lower Colorado River Authority resulted in a system of dams, reservoirs, and hydroelectric power stations. Intensive research in primary documents, including four sets of presidential papers, and in state and national archives has enabled Adams to trace the development of the accord and relationships between private utility interests, conservationists, and politicians that finally dammed the Colorado and further cemented the precedent for federally funded water and reclamation projects in the West.

Arguably, no other institution has transformed the heart of Texas like the Lower Colorado River Authority. Born in the Great Depression of the 1930s, LCRA built a chain of dams and brought predictability to the cycles of extreme droughts and floods that had long plagued Austin and other communities. It also brought hydroelectric power—and with that, modern-day civilization—to the hard-scrabble regions of Central and South Texas. With those achievements, and the support of powerful political leaders like Lyndon Johnson, LCRA for years was touted as one of the state’s major success stories. But LCRA has never been a stranger to controversy, and while it continues to provide much of the energy and water that fuels the economic engine of Austin and beyond, most people know very little about LCRA. In this book, readers will learn about the forces of nature and politics that combined to create LCRA; the colorful personalities who operated, supported, or fought with the agency; its spectacular successes, periodic blunders, and occasional failures; and its evolution into one of the largest public power organizations in Texas. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.