Douglas R. Littlefield, Ph.D. '87
A new book by Douglas R. Littlefield, Ph.D. '87, "Ruling the Waters: California’s Kern River, the Environment, and the Making of Western Water Law," has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
From the press release for the book:
When Europeans first arrived at what is now California’s San Joaquin Valley, they found a vast landscape of wetlands, small ponds, riparian forests, and grasslands surrounding three large swampland lakes. What greets a visitor to the region today is a dramatically different view of mile after mile of row crops, vineyards, orchards, and grazing acreage—some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land in the world. This remarkable transformation, with its enduring consequences, is at the center of Ruling the Waters, a legal, social, and environmental history of how western water law shaped, and was shaped by, the subjugation of the largest freshwater wetlands wildlife habitat in the West.
Littlefield traces this concept to the 1886 California Supreme Court case of Lux v. Haggin—which pitted the giant farming and cattle company of Miller & Lux against a prominent land baron, James B. Haggin—and shows how the lawsuit profoundly shaped future waters issues, which in turn influenced water laws in other western states that were grappling with similar questions. Far from a dry legal history, Ruling the Waters tells a story with world-wide historical environmental ramifications, a tale of competing personalities and values and visions that forever changed both the economy and the ecology of the American West.
Littlefield is founder and owner of Littlefield Historical Research and the author of "Conflict on the Rio Grande: Water and the Law, 1879–1939."
Littlefield earned his Ph.D. in history.
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