Desert Landscapes

Geographic areas characterized by extreme climatic conditions including very low precipitation and temperature extremes with great diurnal and seasonal variability. Desert landscapes have been characterized as wastelands, harsh and inhospitable wilderness. In contrast, rural areas are defined as areas that accommodate small- to moderate-sized communities and agricultural activities that require reliable precipitation and generally moderate temperatures. They frequently have been characterized as pastoral, sometimes rustic, country. Agricultural activities in rural desert landscapes tend to fall into two categories: irrigated farming and grazing.

Following a brief historical introduction, this article addresses major actions and events that shaped the rural desert landscapes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That era starts with the 1847 settlement of Mormons in what was at the time Mexican territory and which, via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, became American territory in 1848 and the territory of Utah in 1850. Other major actions and events include the expansion of irrigated agriculture, expansion of grazing following the Civil War, completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 and of other lines that followed, and enactment of governmental programs intended to stimulate settlement and agricultural development of arid and semi-arid areas of the West.

The First Rural Landscapes

The first rural landscapes in what is now the U.S. emerged in the desert Southwest more than 2,000 years ago when hunting and foraging for food by indigenous peoples were replaced with a more sedentary lifestyle. This change in lifestyle was associated with the development of rudimentary forms of irrigation and the growing of food crops such as beans, corn and squash. Accompanying this sedentary food production was the construction of more permanent forms of dwellings, the formation of hamlets and villages, and the evolution of community organizations. Communities were formed along desert rivers that provided water required to irrigate small farm plots and constituted the unifying matrix for the rural desert landscape.

From about 500 CE to 1000 CE, larger communities evolved and irrigation technology improved, incorporating systems of terraces and extensive canals to carry and distribute runoff water from adjacent rivers. Dwellings and other structures within communities became more sophisticated. Masonry and mud-brick construction was intermingled with, and gradually replaced, earlier pit-houses with roofs of brush and mud.

At the peak of development, about 900 CE, a large communal, irrigated, agricultural complex of about 155,000 acres (242 sq. mi./62,700 ha.) had been developed by the Hohokam people in an area that is now part of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. Included within this area were 300 miles (480 km.) of canals, some as much as 32 feet (10 m.) wide and 13 feet (4 m.) deep. Amidst this canal network were approximately 80 Hohokam settlements. From about 1150 to 1450, for unknown reasons, the settlements steadily declined. Nevertheless, the imprint of that irrigation system on the landscape remained.

In the early 1800s the Tohono O’Odham people restored and used part of that extensive Hohokam system. And in 1878, Mormon settlers in the area also recognized the potential of those abandoned canals and hired Pima Indians to restore parts of the system, which were again used to irrigate farm fields in the desert.

For much of the nineteenth century the land west of the 100th meridian was known as the Great American Desert, a name given in 1819 by Major Stephen H. Long, who led several expeditions to the West. Long’s desert, however, included lands to the east of the Rocky Mountains, an area later known as the Great Plains. Eventually, a distinction was made between areas that received between 10 and 20 inches of rain annually and those that received less than 10 inches. The higher rainfall areas, which included the Great Plains, were called grasslands, semi-arid, or steppes. Areas that received 10 inches of rainfall or less annually were called desert or arid. Nevertheless, in both arid and semi-arid areas there can be significant variability in annual rainfall. Within the 48 contiguous states, deserts or arid lands now are defined as occurring primarily between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coastal mountain ranges. They include the Great Basin Desert in southeastern Oregon, southern Idaho, and western Utah; the Mojave Desert in southeastern California, the southern tip of Nevada, and northwestern Arizona; the Sonora Desert in the southeastern corner of California and southern Arizona; and, to the east of the Rocky Mountains, the Chihuahua Desert in southwestern Texas and southern New Mexico, extending up the Rio Grande River Valley.

Anglo Settlement

In 1847, Mormon settlers arrived at what was to become the state of Utah. Their initial impact on the arid landscape was modest as their use of the land was oriented to provide shelter and food for subsistence and included development of irrigation systems for their farm fields. The primary comparable irrigated agriculture in the region at that time was the still active communal system developed by the Spaniards and Indians in the early seventeenth century in the Rio Grande Valley. As the Mormons spread their settlements in Arizona, along the Little Colorado, Gila, and San Pedro Rivers, and elsewhere, their proficiency in and scale of irrigated agriculture increased substantially, as did the expansion of rural desert landscapes. Between 1850 and 1890, irrigated acres of Mormon lands increased from approximately 16,000 to 260,000 acres. Throughout the arid West, irrigated lands increased from approximately 3.5 million acres to approximately seven million acres during the decade of the 1890s.

The stereotypical image of the American West is that of grazing lands and cattle, an image that, for the arid West, has some of its roots in the efforts of the Spanish Jesuits who introduced cattle and horses into the southwestern U.S. from Mexico in the early eighteenth century. Initially, however, there were many more sheep than cattle in the area, with the Navajo and Hopi Indians being among the first to raise sheep in that area. Although there were difficulties in sustaining cattle ranches in some areas because of Apache Indian raids during the 1830s through the early 1860s, eventually cattle greatly outnumbered sheep. After the Civil War, large herds of cattle were driven to Arizona and New Mexico from Texas. By the end of the century there was growing evidence of overgrazing in parts of the arid region, a trend that continued into the twentieth century.

The advent of the transcontinental railroad, linking the East and West Coasts, and traversing the arid portion of the country, opened hitherto inaccessible markets for Mormon food products and the products of others who followed them. What had been small-scale, subsistence agriculture became large-scale, commodity agriculture. The first transcontinental railroad line, the Union Pacific Railway, linked Omaha, Nebraska, with Sacramento, California, via Promontory, Utah, in 1869. In 1881, Chicago and Los Angeles were connected by the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway via a route through northern New Mexico and Arizona. The third transcontinental line, the Southern Pacific Railroad, was completed in 1883 and ran from New Orleans through Texas, southern New Mexico and Arizona, and on to Los Angeles. The Northern Pacific and Great Northern lines were completed in 1883 and 1893, respectively, and provided transcontinental connections from the northern Midwest to Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Each line connected with others at their western, Midwestern, or eastern destinations to complete links toEast and West Coast cities. By 1893, at least five lines crossed the arid and semi-arid regions of the West and provided access to markets for food products, both plant and animal, produced in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West. In addition, the location of the railroad lines influenced the location of rural communities as transshipment centers.

Settlement of the West was a topic of great interest to the U.S. Congress as indicated by the Homestead Act of 1862 and similar Acts that followed. The intention of these Acts was to stimulate the occupation of lands presumed to be suitable for farming, a condition that did not always prevail. Nearly 500,000 farms were established between 1880 and 1900. The same concept was applied to arid lands when Congress enacted the Desert Land Act in 1877. That Act was intended to promote irrigated agriculture and applied to all western states and territories except Colorado. It provided for individuals to acquire 640 acres of public land at an initial cost of 25 cents per acre, with an additional $1.00 per acre due after three years when proof was to be given that the land had been irrigated. Whereas more than 33 million acres were claimed, little had been irrigated. The majority had been obtained in violation of the Act, to be used by large corporations for grazing lands.

Failure of the Desert Land Act to provide the desired stimulus for the development of irrigated agriculture was readdressed in the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which earmarked money from the sale of public lands in the 16 western states and territories to build dams and irrigation systems in the arid West. The first dam to be built was on the Salt River, east of Phoenix, Arizona, and was completed in 1911. Many more dams were to follow as the Bureau of Reclamation aggressively pursued the mandates of the Newlands Act and contributed to ever expanding irrigation enterprises.

Contemporary Landscape Changes

The contemporary rural desert landscape is a product of this history that now includes the damming of most major rivers for irrigation and power generation. There are both historic and recent forces that continue to change the character and extent of these landscapes. Among the most notable are the ever-increasing demands for water brought on, in part, by the burgeoning cities, vacation communities, and suburbs, and the resultant competition for water and land between urban growth and agriculture. Some of the highest rates of population growth in the country during the 1981 to 1990 decade were found in arid lands states, for example: Arizona, 37.2 percent; Nevada, 52.3 percent; New Mexico, 24.7 percent; and Utah, 18.4 percent. In addition to competition for land and water, other indicators of change include ground subsidence associated with the overdrawing of ground water to meet both agricultural and urban demands; the related loss of surface waters, riparian vegetation, and wildlife habitat in and along formerly perennially flowing desert streams; and, in some places, the advance of desertification, the reduction of the biological potential of the land.

— Ervin H. Zube

See also

• History, Agricultural; Regional Diversity; Water Use; Watersheds

References

• Butzer, Karl W. “The Indian Legacy in the American West.” Pp. 27-50 in The Making of the American Landscape. Edited by Michael P. Conzen. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990.
• Council on Environmental Quality. Desertification of the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981.
• Hollon, W. Eugene. The Great American Desert Then and Now. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1975.
• Lister, Robert H. and Florence C. Lister. Those Who Came Before. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1983.
• Meinig, Donald W. Southwest Three Peoples in Geographical Change 1600-1970. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971.
• Miller, Clyde A., II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss. The Oxford History of the American West. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Rev. Ed. New York: Penguin, 1993.
• Westcoat, James L., Jr. “Challenging the Desert.” In The Making of the American Landscape. edited by Michael P. Conzen, 186-203. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990.
• Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and The Growth of The American West. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. 1985.
• Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.