Irrigation in the Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico: A Study and Annotated Bibliography of the Development of Irrigation Systems

Description

Author: Wozniak, Frank E. (1946-2024)

Publisher: U.S.D.A. Forest Service (Fort Collins, CO)

Pub Date: 1998

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Fair.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, folds.  Lower front cover corner at spine foot has an approx. 1″ bend (probably dropped).  The Forest Service has placed a stick on the lower edge of the title page, obscuring an earlier date (might this be a second printing? Doubtful, knowing FS)All corners slightly worn.

Notes: You gotta like the book when you first read the Will Rogers’ epigram: “The Rio Grande is the only river I ever saw that needed irrigation.” An original draft of the period before 1945 was written in the 1980s (but is not included in the bibliography).  The purpose of this report is to describe the development of irrigation systems in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico from their origins until the mid-1990s.  The study discusses prehistoric Puebloan irrigation, the impact of Hispanic settlement and of the rise of irrigation agriculture in the northern Rio Grande Valley during the seventeenth century, the interconnection of irrigation and land grant communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and finally the origins and development of federal irrigation projects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”  (From the Introduction).  Sixty-plus page bibliography.