1.) Use the story of water in California’s San Joaquin Valley to answer the following question: “Which was more important in the development of California: individual pioneers or the power of government?”
2.) What would California be like had the various California water projects
not been undertaken?
3.) How does the story of the transformation of California’s San Joaquin
Valley change our understanding of the environmental history of California?
What is natural in California? What is perceived to be natural there? What
tensions exist between these perceptions and the actual material reality?
4.) At the center of the story of water in California is the question of
how humans use technology to transform their environment. What particular
understanding of technology informed the various California water projects?
What were/are the consequences of this understanding? What larger lessons
about the proper relationship between humans, technology, and the environment
do you draw from this story?
5.) Think about water in California in terms of democracy. Does the technological
control and redistribution of water in California promote democracy? Why
or why not? What does the history of water in California tell us about
the forces shaping democracy in America in the twentieth century? What
larger lessons about the proper relationship between technology and
democracy do you draw from this story?
6.) The history of water in California and the history of Silicon Valley
are both particular cases of the larger history of the making of the “American
West.” What do these histories have in common? How do they illustrate the
larger history of the “American West?” What role does technology play
in this history, and how are technology and “the West” related?