Essential books about the Colorado River

We have a crisis on our hands. It’s been a long time in coming. These books top the list of those you need to read.

by Ken Neubecker

I like books. No, make that stronger. I treasure books, particularly those about the Colorado River and, more broadly, water in the West.

Scores of books have been published over the years, and more yet will arrive as climate-driven aridity strengthens its grip on the Southwest, shrinking the Colorado River even more. The seven states that rely on water from the Colorado River are at loggerheads, each blaming the others for the impasse preventing a long-term agreement on sharing the river’s waters. They all interpret the laws, historical agreements, and particularly the Colorado River Compact of 1922, in ways that favor their own positions.

In reading comments from the myriad reports and posts on this issue it’s clear that many people who are now concerned about the river have scant knowledge about the law, the history, and the cultures that have shaped use and management of the river during the past 100-plus years. Perhaps the most common and incorrect belief is that California is stealing our water. They aren’t.

For those who really would like to learn more, here are some suggestions.

For the Colorado River Compact, the foundation of what is known as the Law of the River, no book beats Norris Hundley Jr.’s Water and the West, Second Edition (2009). A historian, Hundley detailed what caused the seven states to pursue a compact for sharing, the process of its creation in 1922, and the subsequent political squabbles until its final ratification in 1928. The book’s first edition came out in 1975, but the second edition, with a new preface, updates much of his thinking.

This one book is essential for understanding how the river’s waters were divided over 100 years ago. Hundley dives into the contentious politics of the time, which aren’t so different from today. For a document that is only four pages long the compact carries a lot of baggage.

The 1922 Colorado River Compact is at the heart of all the subsequent agreements and arguments about the river. Hundley explains the complexities well with both depth and eloquence.

The second must-read is Science be Dammed, How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River, by Eric Kuhn and John Fleck. In this 2019 book, Kuhn and Fleck examine the history of the compact and its aftermath through the lens of hydrology, the flow of the river itself. They explain how the creators of the compact chose to divide the waters based on optimistic, and incorrect, flow measurements and projections for the future despite having more realistic numbers at hand. Our current problems were born by this hopeful fantasy. The dreams of the old booster mentality remain very much alive, premised in these 100-year-old miscalculations.

Frank Waters’ The Colorado provides insights into the early history and culture of the Colorado River. Published in 1946, the book is a series of stories about the river, the lands it flows through and the people who lived along it, from the headwaters to the sea. Waters’ stories come from his personal experiences in a world of the river that no longer exists. He also wrote with a perspective from Native America that was unusual for that time. One chapter covers a trip down the river from Yuma, Ariz., to the Gulf of California on a regularly scheduled steamer. That hasn’t been possible since the river was first dammed in the 1930s. The book may be a bit dated, but it’s a delightful read about the river, its landscape, its history, and its people.

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A more recent book, a comprehensive look at the river and the cultures it supports, is Philip Fradkin’s A River No More. Published in 1981, it details Fradkin’s exploration of the Colorado River basin during the drought years of the late 1970’s. It is prescient in so many ways. The climate crisis wasn’t yet prominent on the radar of most of us. Even then, however, he was clear that the river had no more water to give. The promises of the dam-building era and the boosters early in the century was a fantasy. Mismanagement, drought, and the reality of trying to create a paradise in the desert had drained the river completely. Fradkin was the first author to note that the Colorado River no longer reached the sea. I place this book as one of the essential reads about the Colorado River. Get the second release with his updated 1995 preface.

A few years after Fradkin’s book, Marc Reisner came out with the classic Cadillac Desert, which I think was inspired by Fradkin’s book. Most know of Reisner’s book, but read Fradkin’s as well. Reisner’s primary target is the Bureau of Reclamation, and deservedly so. Reisner reiterates many of Fradkin’s observations but takes a much wider perspective, looking at how rivers from California to North Dakota were developed and managed, or, to his mind, mismanaged. It is a story of Western zeal, a modern version of manifest destiny, the successes and failures of a drive to make the vast desert and cities bloom. The Colorado isn’t the only river in the West with problems stemming from our ideas of progress and illusions about living in an arid land.

Another excellent volume along these lines, one published in 1985, is Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West.

The many Native American tribes who have called the Colorado River basin home for millennia have a long history of abuse, theft, neglect, and outright hostility by the white establishment and federal government. The compact devoted one sentence to the tribes.

Daniel McCool has written two books on tribal water matters, Command of the Waters and Native Waters. Eric Perramond’s book, Unsettled Waters, looks at the complexities of clashing customs and traditions in New Mexico where imposing Western ideas of water law on top of long standing communal and Native rights is not easy.

If you are a fan of early Colorado River exploration, then Wallace Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian is probably already on your shelf. Stegner was one of the finest writers America has ever produced (recent charges of plagiarism in the case of one book notwithstanding), and most of his work centered on the West. His focus in this book is on John Wesley Powell, both his two river voyages and what came afterword in the political arena of Western development during the late 1800’s. It’s another classic.

Powell’s own account, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons is also a must-read for river runners and armchair explorers. Add to that Frederick S. Dellenbaugh’s more readable The Romance of the Colorado River. Dellenbaugh was a member of Powells second expedition down the Colorado. He’s a better writer and covers a wider range of the Colorado River and its surroundings as seen from a late 19^th century perspective.

Among the more important books recently written about the early years of the Grand Canyon is Melissa Sevigny’s Brave the Wild River, about two women botanists and their cataloging of the vegetation along the Colorado River before Glen Canyon Dam was built. They did this in 1938, a time when men were the primary figures of Colorado River exploration. It’s a marvelous story of both science and adventure at a time when women were not supposed to be there.

For adventure itself, there are also several great books. First would be Kevin Fedarko’s The Emerald Mile. This book weaves the story of the fastest run through the Grand Canyon in a dory with the near loss of Glen Canyon Dam in the flood year of 1984. It is a fast paced and gripping read. Don’t think you’ll read it to relax before going to bed in the evening!

Katie Lee’s book All My Rivers Are Gone is a memorial story of loss, the drowning of Glen Canyon by the Bureau of Reclamation’s last great monument to misguided progress. So is Edward Abby’s book, Down the River. Both good books are about a place now gone, that few people knew, but which is returning as the flows of the river diminish and the demands downstream drain the second largest reservoir in the United States.

More recent books on the evolving situation of the river are Zak Podmore’s Life After Dead Pool, about the returning canyons and ecosystems of Glen Canyon as the reservoir shrinks. Another is Melissa Sevigny’s Mythical River, a poignant story about the never-ending dream of rivers, water and wealth in the Southwest. Manifest destiny still provides the rhythm of hope in a land that refuses to behave like the well-watered lands of the East.

All the books on the Colorado River, the West and water, can fill a library, as they have mine. Here is a short list I’ve compiled from my own shelves. Some are out of print but still readily available through used book sites such as Alibris or Amazon.

Colorado River Compact and The Law of the River

Water and the West, Second Edition, Norris Hundley, Jr., University of California Press, 2009
Forging New Rights in Western Water, Robert G. Dunbar University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Water, Land, & Law in the West, Donald J. Pisani, University Press of Kansas, 1996
Dividing Western Waters, Mark Wilmer, TCU Press, 2007
The Colorado Doctrine, David Schorr, Yale University Press, 2012
Science Be Dammed, Eric Kuhn and John Fleck, University of Arizona Press, 2019
Water Law in a Nutshell, Fifth Edition, David H Getches, Sandra B Zellmer, Adell L Amos, West Academic Publishing, 1997

History, Culture and Climate

The Colorado, Frank Waters, Rinehart & Company, 1946
Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner, Penguin Books, 1993
A River No More, Philip L. Fradkin, University of California Press, 1995
Rivers of Empire, Donald Worster, Oxford University Press, 1985
Crossing the Next Meridian, Charles F. Wilkinson, Island Press, 1992
Water is for Fighting Over, John Fleck, Island Press, 2016
Where the Water Goes, David Owen, Riverhead Books, 2017
Dead Pool, James Lawrence Powell, University of California Press, 2008
Mythical River, Melissa L. Sevigny, University of Iowa Press, 2016
Down River, Heather Hansman, University of Chicago Press, 2019
Life After Dead Pool, Zak Podmore, Torrey House Press, 2024
River Notes, Wade Davis, Greystone Books, 2023
Deadbeat Dams, Danial P. Beard, Johnson Books, 2015
Echo Park, Jon M. Cosco, in cooperation with the Dinosaur Nature Association, 1995

John Wesley Powell

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, Wallace Stegner, Sentry Books, 1954
A River Running West, Donald Worster, Oxford Press, 2001
Down the Great Unknown, Edward Dolnick, HarperCollins, 2001
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, John Wesley Powell, Dover Press, 1961 (Originally published as The Canyons of the Colorado, 1895)
A Canyon Voyage, and The Romance of the Colorado River, Frederick S Dellenbaugh, Yale University, 1962, and The Rio Grande Press, 1904

Tribal Water Rights

Native Waters, Danial McCool, University of Arizona Press, 2002
Command of the Waters, Danial McCool, University of Arizona Press, 1994
Unsettled Waters, Eric P. Perramond, University of California Press, 2019

Good Reads

The Emerald Mile, Kevin Fedarko, Scribner, 2013
The Sound of Mountain Water, Wallace Stegner, Penguin Books, 1980
Marking the Sparrow’s Fall, Wallace Stegner, Henry Holt and Company, 1992
All My Rivers Are Gone, Katie Lee, Johnson Books, 1998
River, Colin Fletcher, Vintage Books, 1998
Down the River, Edward Abbey, Plume, 1991

Ken Neubecker has spent much of his adult life following — and participating in — the discussions about the future of the Colorado River and its tributaries in both personal and professional capacities. One measure of his devotion is how many times he has rafted the Colorado River and its tributaries from the Grand Canyon to its headwaters. He has, for example, rafted the Yampa River through Dinosaur National Monument around 20 times.