| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Where Land & Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed. By Nancy Langston. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. xiv + 230 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $26.00.)

An axiom of western history is that conflict is proportional to the scarcity of H2O, and the boundedness of water is usually unproblematic in this equation. The Owens, Colorado, and Columbia Rivers have clearly demarcated trenches, and the human contests inspired by transgressions of stream boundaries seem naturally obvious. Robert Kelley's Battling the Inland Sea (Berkeley, 1989), which examines efforts to keep northern California rivers within their channels, and Ann Vileisis's Discovering the Unknown Landscape (Washington, DC, 1999), which traces the history of America's wetlands, represent important exceptions to the rule, but the firm separation of rio and tierra remains a given for most historians. Thus, Nancy Langston's Where Land & Water Meet, which turns such assumptions topsy turvy, is an important contribution to western history. Her study of riparian zones in Oregon's Malheur Basin demonstrates the historical significance of nature's permeable boundaries in an archetypal western story.

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