This book is an account of how water rights were designed as a key part of the state’s largest public water system, the Central Valley Project. Along sixty miles of the San Joaquin River, from Gustine to Mendota, four corporate entities called “exchange contractors” retain paramount water rights to the river. Their rights descend from the days of the Miller & Lux Cattle Company, which amassed an empire of land and water from the 1850s through the 1920s and protected these assets through business deals and prolific litigation. Miller & Lux’s dominance of the river relied on what many in the San Joaquin Valley regarded as wasteful irrigation practices and unreasonable water usage. Economic and political power in California’s present water system was born of this monopoly on water control. Stroshane tells how drought and legal conflict shaped statewide economic development and how the grand bargain of a San Joaquin River water exchange was struck from this monopoly legacy, setting the stage for future water wars. His analysis will appeal to readers interested in environmental studies and public policy.

"This book provides fascinating insights into how present-day American land legislation has evolved. In doing so the author identifies the many problems that the family farmer has had to face over the past two centuries at the hands of the weather, unstable product prices, and corrupt and venal politicians."--Journal of Agricultural Economics. "A provocative, learned, polemical contribution to the debate on the nature of the farm problem and the means to solve it. Throughout our history, Opie, a historian, convincingly argues, contradictory goals have produced contradictory policies that are the sources of our current problems."--Science. "This important volume offers a reinterpretation of public lands history as it relates to contemporary farm policy. . . . [Opie's] signal contribution is to examine and evaluate the many policy strands of a twentieth-century safety net designed by Congress to sustain the family farm."--Journal of American History "Bright, passionate, and entirely convincing."--Journal of Rural Studies "The Law of the Land has made a significant contribution to agricultural and public policy history by pointing out that American ideals have shaped policies and assigned roles that have often left farmers and farmland vulnerable."--Public Historian "The five years that have passed since this book was first published have been enough to conclude that John Opie can reconstruct the past and predict the future. . . . Many of the problems he foresaw have come to pass and some of the solutions he discussed have been adopted. . . . Anyone interested in the basic environment will find that this volume gives a clear picture of how we got to where we are today in the use and misuse of natural resources. . ."--Environmental History Review. A professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, John Opie is also director of the Center for Technology Studies and founding editor of Environmental History Review. His other publications include Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land (Nebraska 1993).