Ditches across the desert: A story of irrigation along New Mexico's Pecos River

Settlement of the West came slowly based on advances in technology and the harnessing of nature, especially water, In the arid environment of New Mexico's Pecos Valley, the exploitation of available water resources combined with corporate accumulation of land through manipulation of federal land laws led to speculation and development in the frontier region of southeast New Mexico.;This dissertation traces that development beginning in the late 1870s, and examines subsequent events in the valley until 1925. First used as open range for cattle grazing, the Pecos Valley became the scene of ever more ambitious plans to establish an agricultural mecca based on irrigation, and funded by wealthy investors from Chicago, New York, Colorado Springs, and Europe. Following a natural disaster and financial downturns in 1893, settlers and investors fled the valley, making its future uncertain. A series of financial reorganizations to attract much needed capital did bring a major railroad to the valley, but the heyday of corporate irrigation was over.;Instead, the moribund irrigation company turned to the federal government for help. The United States Reclamation Service, although reluctant to rehabilitate the valley's irrigation system, under pressure from President Theodore Roosevelt, agreed to take on the project.;Reclamation began a long, sometimes contentious relationship with water users in the valley, caught between its own policies promoting small farmers and the agendas of corporate and absentee landowners. At the heart of contentiousness in the Pecos Valley lay the competition for precious water and its usage in an area fraught with natural limitations.;This dissertation, while examining the events which unfolded in the Pecos Valley, attempts to place those events within the broader context of their social, economic, political, and environmental implications.