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OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

For Konrad and Else Reisner

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First published in the United States of America by

Viking Penguin Inc. 1986

Published in Penguin Books 1987

This revised and updated edition published in Penguin Books 1993

Copyright © Marc Reisner, 1986, 1993

Maps copyright © Viking Penguin Inc., 1986

All rights reserved

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from

“Talking Columbia,” words and music by Woody Guthrie. TRO—© Copyright

1961 and 1963 Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, N.Y. Used by permission.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Reisner, Marc

Cadillac desert

Reprint. Originally published, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.

Viking, 1986.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

1. Irrigation—Government policy—West (U.S.)—History.

2. Water resources development—Government policy—West

(U.S.)—History. 3. Corruption (in politics)—West (U.S.)

—History. I. Title.

[HD1739.A17R45 1987] 333.91’00978 87.7602

eISBN : 978-1-440-67282-8

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INTRODUCTION

A Semidesert with a Desert Heart

One late November night in 1980 I was flying over the state of Utah on my way back to California. I had an aisle seat, and since I believe that anyone who flies in an airplane and doesn’t spend most of his time looking out the window wastes his money, I walked back to the rear door of the airplane and stood for a long time at the door’s tiny aperture, squinting out at Utah.

Two days earlier, a fierce early blizzard had gone through the Rocky Mountain states. In its wake, the air was pellucid. The frozen fire of a winter’s moon poured cold light on the desert below. Six inches away from the tip of my nose the temperature was, according to the pilot, minus sixty-five, and seven miles below it was four above zero. But here we were, two hundred highly inventive creatures safe and comfortable inside a fat winged cylinder racing toward the Great Basin of North America, dozing, drinking, chattering, oblivious to the frigid emptiness outside.

Emptiness.