Scott B. Cohen

Controlling the Crooked River

Changing Environments and Water Uses in Irrigated Central Oregon, 1913–1988

LIKE MUCH OF THE AMERICAN WEST, the value of water to people living in Central Oregon's Crooked River Basin cannot be overstated. All of the basin's inhabitants, from the first people who roamed Oregon's high plateau to those who attempted to settle there (if not permanently, then long enough to make improvements and sell out), recognized rivers and streams as the arteries of life.¹ Where there was no water, there were no people. The Crooked River Basin's history is defined not only by its semi-arid landscape but also by human transformations of the waterways that traverse it. Dams, storage reservoirs, canals, and pumping plants as well as acts of drainage, channelization, and biological management characterize the Crooked River and its tributaries today. It is at the intersection of those changes, where human ingenuity and nature meet, that the dynamism of the river's history is revealed. When Central Oregonians turned to dams and irrigation, the changes they expected in both human and natural communities were not always what they got, and that unexpectedness is typical in the area's environmental history.

During the early-twentieth century, a large influx of new settlers came to Central Oregon. As more people poured into the area, irrigation became indispensable for ranchers who could no longer graze cattle openly throughout the region and for homesteaders who were attempting to farm in the arid climate. But when those ranchers and farmers (and, later, the federal Reclamation Bureau) set out to impound the river and its tributaries, they proved unable to predict or control all that was different in the newly created environment. That new environment sparked changes in how people used water, and those changes prompted Oregonians to reevaluate the Crooked River and its role in Central Oregon's culture and economy, an examination that continues today.

Bowman Dam, built by the Reclamation Bureau and completed in 1961, created Prineville Reservoir and generated developments in the recreation industry and in fish and wildlife management that area residents had not expected.

Courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation

In 1961, the Reclamation Bureau finished work on the main phase of the federal Crooked River Project, which included a 240 -foot earthen dam and irrigation works for twenty thousand acres of land. Congress had authorized the project for irrigation and flood control purposes, but the new environment it created — particularly the Prineville Reservoir, behind the dam — quickly prompted a new demand for water that proved completely unforeseen by the Reclamation Bureau, irrigators, and the area's political and economic leaders. The impounded river spawned tourism, recreation, and retirement industries, which opened the way for a variety of users, not simply irrigators, to lay claim to the river. Those unexpected consequences of damming the river caused tension among irrigators, area leaders, and instream recreational and wildlife users who all wanted access to, and control of, the basin's most valuable commodity. Much of the Crooked River Basin's development has been and will be determined by how Oregonians choose to value the area's most limited resource. While many Oregonians worked in concert to secure authorization and funding for the Crooked River Project, the new environment it created spawned drastically different visions for the basin's future. During the latter half of the twentieth century, those visions clashed in political battles over water use that took center stage in the Crooked River Basin.

The Crooked River Project is small compared to major federal dams like Grand Coulee and Bonneville, but its story is significant because it so clearly demonstrates several important aspects of water history in the American West: an early misunderstanding of water resources and river hydrology that led to water and economic scarcity; the instrumental role local water users played in determining water policy; the relationship between western water projects and federal politics; and, most significantly, the changing uses — from out-of-stream irrigation to in-stream recreational and fish and wildlife uses — for which water is valued by those living in the West. The Crooked River's history brings all of these themes into view, allowing us to better understand how they functioned locally and nationally.

LYING IN THE RAIN SHADOW of the Cascade Range, the Crooked River Basin averages slightly less than ten inches of precipitation per year. The majority of the river's length flows through Oregon's Crook County and is primarily fed by snowmelt from the Ochoco Mountains to the north and from mountain springs to the south. Basin irrigators and workers in the wildlife and recreation industries carefully watch the winter snowpack, and when the area experiences less than its average snowfall, water users brace themselves for a dry summer. Although the basin has two major storage reservoirs (Ochoco and Prineville) and has implemented significant water conservation efforts, when a drought hits, it hits the area hard — crops are lost, reservoirs turn into muddy flats, and wildlife and fish habitats are severely degraded. The basin's history is largely tied to mitigating the effects of two natural hydrological phenomenons: droughts and floods.

Those hydrological realities first prompted attempts to control the Crooked River in 1913. Oregon's State Engineer, John H. Lewis, and the federal Reclamation Service (which became the Reclamation Bureau in 1922) surveyed the basin for potential irrigation projects and found that impounding Ochoco Creek, the Crooked River's main tributary, would irrigate more land at a lower cost than damming the Crooked River.² Neither Lewis nor the Reclamation Service, however, knew much about Ochoco Creek's hydrology. Accurate stream flow measurements only existed for a five-year period, from 1908 to 1913; Lewis and the Reclamation Service calculated the reservoir's potential capacity by incorporating an additional seven years of estimated stream flow amounts provided by the United States Geological Survey. The area also experienced above-average rainfall from 1912 to 1915, and Euro-American settlers had lived in the basin for such a short time — at the earliest, since the 1860s — that even long-term anecdotal evidence was unavailable to them.³ The agencies' and locals' limited knowledge of the basin's hydrology led to inflated stream flow estimates and, eventually, to an indebted irrigation district.

The Crooked River carves its way through Central Oregon's characteristic benchlands.

Courtesy of Steve Lent, photographer

In 1915, after completing their survey, the Reclamation Service and the Oregon State Engineer's office published a comprehensive report, recommending that the federal government build a dam on Ochoco Creek. The recommendation to build did not, however, ensure dam construction. Vocal critics in Congress had recently bombarded the Reclamation Service, prompting Congress to reform the agency with the Reclamation Extension Act of 1914. Designed as a "settler relief bill" the act, among many other changes, gave Congress rather than the Reclamation Service the power to decide which projects were approved and funded. After 1914, the Reclamation Service provided a "menu of reclamation options" for Congress to choose from, stripping the agency of autonomy it had enjoyed since its creation in 1902.⁴

Ochoco Dam was still under construction in this photograph, taken in about 1918. The reservoir filled in 1921 and did not reach capacity again for seventeen years.

Courtesy of Crook County Historical Society, Bowman Museum

Because Congress chose not to follow the Reclamation Service's recommendation, the Extension Act's ultimate meaning for Central Oregon farmers and ranchers was that the dam on Ochoco Creek would not be built by the federal government. Undeterred, locals chose to build Ochoco dam without federal assistance by forming the Ochoco Irrigation District in 1916 and issuing bonds to pay for the project. Construction began in 1917 and finished four years later. Although the reservoir filled to capacity in 1921, its first year in operation, a string of seventeen subsequent dry years left irrigators with a dry reservoir and a hefty debt.⁵ Because the reservoir was below capacity, the irrigation district was unable to deliver the total amount of water contracted to farmers and, therefore, did not collect sufficient funds to keep up to date on loan payments. That long spell of supposedly below-average rainfall was actually a chimera. In reality, the Reclamation Service and Oregon State Engineer's report, on which the Ochoco Irrigation District had based its dam construction and irrigation schedule, had overstated stream flows for Ochoco Creek. The Crooked River Basin's poorly understood hydrology misled locals; they were dealing not with a predictable stream but with a desert creek prone to floods and drought.

Ochoco Dam was built with private funds, but its management was eventually taken over by federal agencies — first by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and, later, by the Bureau of Reclamation.

Courtesy of Crook County Historical Society, Bowman Museum

In 1935, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a federal agency, took over project administration and reduced the amount of land irrigated by the Ochoco reservoir from nearly 20,00 to 8,500 acres, leaving many farmers literally high and dry. This was the first of many lessons for locals attempting to control the basin's waters. Because Ochoco dam proved unable to meet the basin's irrigation needs, locals spent years lobbying the Reclamation Bureau for a federally built project in the basin. They were unsuccessful until 1947, when the agency recommended that Congress immediately approve the Crooked River project and twelve others as part of its massive, long-term Columbia River Basin plan.⁶

During the immediate post–World War II era, federal reclamation in the West stood on firmer ground than during any other time of its existence. Dams were a symbol of progress and were closely linked to nationalistic fervor. The public recognized major projects on the Columbia River, such as Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams, for their contributions to the war effort. Responding to requests for better long-range planning and riding a wave of popular support for federal dams in the West, the Reclamation Bureau issued a report outlining an ambitious plan for reclaiming a great deal of the Columbia River Basin in 1947. The report was unabashedly bold. It outlined 238 projects providing irrigation water to over five billion acres of land. Today, federal reclamation actually irrigates about ten million acres of land in the entire West, but the late 1940s was an economically, politically, and socially optimistic era. The problem with building 238 water projects came down to the question of how the Reclamation Bureau would fund that construction.

After the success of the Tennessee Valley Authority during the 1930s and 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged the Reclamation Bureau and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to coordinate their plans for river basins.⁷ During the early 1940s, the Reclamation Bureau transformed the basin-wide planning idea into a basin-wide repayment scheme in which all revenues from projects would be lumped into a single account to pay for all construction and maintenance costs.⁸ Thus, surplus revenues from a Corps of Engineers' hydroelectric dam on the Columbia River could be used to pay for the Reclamation Bureau's irrigation and flood control dam on the Crooked River.

The Reclamation Bureau supported the basin-wide repayment plan, but some Central Oregonians were less convinced by the idea. No one was more outspoken about reclamation controversies in Central Oregon than Bend Bulletin editor and owner Robert Sawyer. As the editor of Central Oregon's leading newspaper and as the longtime president of the National Reclamation Association, Sawyer campaigned tirelessly for western reclamation projects, but he opposed the Reclamation Bureau's repayment plans. Rather than hiding the true costs of a project by shifting funds from one project to another, Sawyer believed that subsidies should come directly from the federal treasury, where Congress would approve specific amounts of federal funds for irrigation endeavors. As Sawyer reasoned, if reclamation projects were truly in the national interest, then they should be paid for by the nation as a whole.⁹ In a 1950 editorial, Sawyer wrote that "the land should pay as much as it can afford, then the balance be taken from the national treasury," and, in a letter to Oregon Republican Senator Guy Cordon, he opined that the Reclamation Bureau's repayment plans "will some day rise up to plague reclamation and, probably, power."¹⁰ Although the Reclamation Bureau did not share Sawyer's view, his ideas were not tuned out by politicians in Washington D.C. Senator Cordon, who maintained a personal friendship with Sawyer, often deferred to the editor's perspective on western reclamation issues. In 1948, after much lobbying by Sawyer and local Crook County officials, Cordon successfully secured a $350,00 appropriation for repairs to the failing Ochoco dam. Although it was probably not his intention, Cordon's ability to secure appropriations for Ochoco dam set the stage for greater Crooked River development by bringing the Reclamation Bureau into the basin for the first time in over ten years.

Senator Guy Cordon (top) was photographed in about 1953, and Robert Sawyer was photographed in the high desert garden at his home on the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon.

OHS neg., bb00 3530

Where Cordon left off on the Crooked River Project, Crook County leaders, with the help of Oregon's junior Republican Senator Wayne Morse stepped in. Morse eventually had a long, controversial career in Oregon and national politics, but, in 1950, Oregon's media portrayed him as charismatic and unconventional rather than as controversial. Morse loudly proclaimed his support of federal water projects, and he capitalized politically on the national attention that stance garnered. For Crook County leaders working diligently with the Reclamation Bureau to secure a project that gave irrigators the most control over the Crooked River, Morse was a natural ally who became the project's biggest supporter in Congress.

During the early 1950s, the Crooked River Project gained attention from Oregon's politicians, including Morse, and from the Reclamation Bureau. In 1953, the bureau released a report that included updated costs figures and a recommendation that Congress allow power revenues from The Dalles Dam to subsidize Crooked River construction costs.¹¹ That subsidy was vital to the Crooked River Project, as it was the bureau's only plan to fund construction. In May 1955, Oregon's newly elected Democratic Senator, Richard Neuberger, a former journalist and state senator, stood before Congress to appeal for the Crooked River Project. At the same time, he lashed Oregon's Republican governor Paul Patterson for opposing the agency's repayment proposal.¹² Neuberger tied his appeals for subsidizing the Crooked River Project directly to a national conversation about the Hells Canyon Project, a proposed hydroelectric dam that had become the symbol of a debate over the federal government's role in developing natural resources.¹³ Politicians, including Morse, Neuberger, and Idaho's Democratic Senator Frank Church, argued for a federally built and controlled Hells Canyon Project, while President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay fought for private development and control.¹⁴ Although the Crooked River Project garnered none of the national attention Hells Canyon attracted, Morse and Neuberger used the smaller reclamation project, and many like it, to fortify their positions as supporters of public water projects. The senators' strong stances on public control over natural resources helped vault them into the national spotlight and usher in a Democratic majority in Congress in 1956.¹⁵

As the 1956 election approached, however, Morse's signature issue, a federally built Hells Canyon Dam, looked like a lost cause. To shore up Morse's record of support for water projects, he and Neuberger deftly highlighted other federally sponsored water projects in the Pacific Northwest, including Hills Creek and Cougar dams near Eugene, the deepened channel of the Columbia River to aid ship traffic, and projects in Tillamook and Coos bays on the coast. The Crooked River Project served as another opportunity for Morse to prove his effectiveness, and his correspondence with Central Oregonians underscores his interest in its authorization.¹⁶ As early as 1952, for example, he wrote to a constituent in Bend, vociferously defending the Crooked River Project. In 1958, after Congress authorized funding for the project, Crook County commissioner Harry Fowler wrote to thank Morse "for all the time and effort you have put in regards the Crooked River Project."¹⁷

The Crooked River Project served as more than just an opportunity for Morse and Neuberger to bolster their reclamation and public works records for the upcoming campaign. It also represented a direct federal subsidy for existing landowners in Central Oregon. Ten thousand new acres of land would be irrigated, but, more importantly, an additional ten thousand acres of land already under cultivation — land that once received water from the downsized Ochoco Project — would receive supplemental water. Existing farmers could expect subsidized, federal waterdelivery in an area where land held significantly more value with irrigation than without. Such a gift would not be overlooked at the polls. Crook County farmers had long sought federal assistance to bail out their failed irrigation district, which the Crooked River Project revived with the promise of a consistent and inexpensive water supply.

Senator Wayne Morse, speaking here at the Cougar Dam dedication on May 9, 1964, was a major supporter of federal reclamation throughout Oregon.

OHS neg., OrHi 48581

In August 1956, under the guidance of Senators Morse and Neuberger, Congress authorized the Crooked River Project, which included a dam, a pumping station, and several irrigation canals. Although small, the Crooked River Project generated significant political capital for Morse's 1956 senatorial campaign. He toured the state, touting his support for water projects and explaining how his position differed from that of the Eisenhower administration.¹⁸ That strategy helped Morse gain a significant win over Douglas McKay, Eisenhower's Secretary of the Interior and a former Oregon Governor (1949–1952). Morse had also switched parties, and this political victory was his first as a Democrat. Morse and Neuberger used their support for smaller projects to usher in Democratic political majorities in Oregon and in Congress.

After the 1956 election, Morse and Neuberger continued to support the Crooked River Project. In 1958, they secured congressional funding and, the following year, they persuaded Congress to pass the Crooked River Project Extension Act, which added canals, pumping stations, and acreage to the original project. The projects transformed the Crooked River from an important local stream to a waterway with regional economic significance. While the project's promoters had expected the increased agricultural output and flood-control benefits, the project spawned another, quite unexpected, demand for water. Only months after construction on Prineville Dam (later renamed Bowman Dam in honor of project booster and Crook County official A.R. Bowman) finished in late 1961, Oregonians began flocking to the resulting Prineville Reservoir with boats and fishing rods in hand.¹⁹ In their diligent lobbying campaign, which highlighted myriad reasons why the Crooked River Project should be built, few local boosters had cited the potential appeal of a large lake in the middle of Oregon's picturesque High Desert. The Reclamation Bureau also had ignored the reservoir's potential tourist draw, which began a full year before irrigation water made it into a ditch. Congress had authorized what locals and the bureau had lobbied for — irrigation and flood control — but many Oregonians saw something else in the Crooked River's new environment.

Bowman Dam created Prineville Reservoir, a lake covering three thousand acres where a deep canyon and a narrow, winding river had previously existed. Newly constructed irrigation canals in the dry benchlands came to resemble natural streams, having algae growth, streamside vegetation, and fish populations. During the dry summer months, the irrigation district's large releases of water from the reservoir inverted the river's natural stream flow and encouraged thousands of redband trout, a subspecies of trout native to Central Oregon, to return to a small section of the river just below the dam. The transformed environment brought new water users to the basin, many of whom had little interest in irrigation or agriculture. Even without boat ramps, campgrounds, resorts, or recreation plans by state or federal agencies, Prineville Reservoir immediately appealed to recreationalists. In the early summer of 1962, the Central Oregonian reported that, "the heavy use already given the primitive facilities put in this spring on Prineville Reservoir [necessitated] ... an immediate major development near the reservoir."²⁰ Simultaneously, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department began plans for Prineville Reservoir State Park and housing developments began dotting the hills surrounding the reservoir. Attempts to manipulate the Crooked River for specific purposes yielded demonstrably unpredictable results. Not only did a new industry arise as a direct result of the Crooked River's altered environment, but the value Oregonians placed on water in the basin also changed, challenging irrigators' sole claim to the Crooked River and reshaping the area's entire economy and ecosystem. The river and reservoir's recreation appeal, which became the catalyst for change, is a direct result of the environmental transformations wrought by the Crooked River Project's Bowman Dam.

The reservoir's recreational appeal continued to grow through the 1960s. In 1972, the Reclamation Bureau, acting on the need to start managing the Crooked River and Prineville Reservoir for uses beyond irrigation and flood control, proposed reallocating nearly half of the reservoir's water for recreational and fish and wildlife purposes. The bureau explained that, "since completion of the reservoir in 1961, it has become one of the most popular recreation and fishing sites in the State." Accordingly, the report argued that the "highly valued" fishery and recreation developments warranted reassigning a portion of the reservoir's storage capacity for recreation and fish and wildlife purposes.²¹ Although the proposed reallocation would significantly change the bureau's water management approach, it would not affect the water rights of irrigators who had already contracted for water with the Ochoco Irrigation District, which administered the project for the Reclamation Bureau. Prineville Reservoir held approximately 160,00 acre-feet of water, but irrigators had only contracted for about 70,00 acrefeet. The remaining water simply flowed down the Crooked River and into the Deschutes. In certain years, however, Prineville Reservoir did not fill to capacity. Irrigators worried that designating half of the reservoir's water for recreational and fish and wildlife purposes would cause problems during dry years. Local leaders also worried that re-designating water for recreational and fish and wildlife purposes would preclude them from using it for any future municipal, industrial, or potential hydroelectric developments. Irrigators and civic leaders felt that the water belonged to them, and they fought to keep control of it.

The bureau's 1972 recommendation initially generated little interest from Central Oregonians, but, in 1974, recreation and fish and wildlife interests, led by the Crook County Council's tourism committee, requested that the bureau begin formal reallocation plans for Prineville Reservoir.²³ Simultaneously, irrigators and county leaders attempted to secure more water for agricultural, industrial, and municipal developments. To solicit public comment, the Reclamation Bureau held hearings in Portland and Prineville in 1975, proposing four separate alternatives that all reallocated a portion of the reservoir for recreation use. Two hundred people attended the hearing in Prineville, and 350 attended in Portland.²³ As evidenced by the number of people and the often-heated testimony at the hearings, the Crooked River Project's reach extended far beyond Central Oregon.

At both hearings, the majority of people testified in support of allocation for recreational purposes. One Portlander, fearful of low reservoir levels, exclaimed, "I don't want my boat stuck in mud!"²⁴ A woman from the Portland metropolitan area explained:

Whether designated or not, Prineville Reservoir serves nearly a half million recreation visits per season. To continue insisting it is simply an irrigation and flood control project is like having an egg, and when it hatches into a chicken, you keep calling it an egg. It has hatched into a recreation area, whether anyone likes it or not, and now the Bureau and our state representatives are sitting on it.²⁵

At the Prineville hearing, twenty-five of the forty testimonials supported recreation allocations. The Crook County Council testified against reallocation, fearing that it would handcuff future municipal and industrial developments. With overwhelming public support, the bureau proposed that Congress reallocate 51,00 acre-feet for in-stream recreation and fish and wildlife purposes. In 1977, the agency formalized the proposal and included an additional 25,00 acre-feet for irrigation. The plan set aside only 3,00 acre-feet, out of a total of 160,00, for domestic, municipal, and industrial uses, significantly less than Crook County officials had sought.²⁶

People fish on Lake Ochoco east of Prineville during the summer of 1982, an example the popularity of recreation in Central Oregon.

OHS neg., bb00 3593

The proposed reallocation numbers did not satisfy all parties, particularly Crook County council members, one of whom opined, "I think we should continue to ask for it [the water] and refuse to pay for it.... What are they going to do with it if we don't? Dump it down the river?"²⁷ Neither the residents nor the County Council, however, proposed any new endeavors that would require water. One resident seemed to summarize the county's sentiments against recreational interests: "Why allocate all that water? ... No one has the foresight to completely tie up that water.... We need to have priorities and this county cannot afford to have recreation as its top priority."²⁸ This resident's sentiments, repeated by many of reallocation's opponents, belied the facts. As early as 1975, recreation, which was focused primarily on Prineville Reservoir, ranked as the third largest industry in Crook County.²⁹ Simultaneously, agriculture played a significantly smaller part in the area's economy than it had when Congress approved the Crooked River Project. During the 1970s, Crook County experienced a shift in employment to non-farm and non-manufacturing jobs, with wholesale and retail sales and government employment due to recreation demands on public lands accounting for much of the change.³⁰ By the early 1970s, the wood products industry had come to dominate the economy, but a recession during the early 1980s devastated Central Oregon's sawmills. High interest rates in the 1980s had driven mortgage rates up, allowing fewer people to borrow money for new homes. New housing construction significantly slowed throughout the country. Between 1970 and 202, all five of Prineville's sawmills closed, crushing Crook County's wood products industry.³¹ Meanwhile, the service industry — led by retail sales and increasing tourism — played a growing role in the area's economy. Since the 1970s, recreation had contributed significantly to the local economy and had served as one of the fastest growing employment sectors. Nevertheless, the Crook County Council and Ochoco Irrigation District were not ready to give up control of the Crooked River.

The debates over Prineville Reservoir water allocation also reveal the beginning of fundamental changes in the Reclamation Bureau's priorities, changes that would fully take place during the late 1980s and 1990s.³² The agency's mission shifted from dam building and reclaiming arid lands to water management and environmental protection. That new mandate was reflected in the bureau's 1972 report on the Crooked River Project, which helped set off the local controversy over water-use priorities. While it recommended reallocating water in Prineville Reservoir for in-stream uses, the Reclamation Bureau also proposed several new construction endeavors for the basin. Monner Reservoir, a proposed off-stream storage site twenty miles west of Prineville, would help "maintain the existing fishery and recreation levels in Prineville Reservoir" by providing supplemental irrigation water for the North Unit Irrigation District and allowing water in Prineville Reservoir to remain for recreational uses. Another proposed project, on Big Marsh Creek in the Deschutes National Forest fifty-two miles southwest of Bend, "would be a very beneficial development for reservoir fishery and recreation enhancement and would provide an improved stream environment."³³ These projects reflected both Oregonians' changing reasons for placing value on water in Central Oregon and the Reclamation Bureau's changing priorities. Both of the bureau's recommended projects were designed to improve the stream environment and to enhance recreational and fishery developments in the area. In Central Oregon, the Reclamation Bureau began to serve interests beyond irrigation as early as 1972.

Historian Donald Pisani has examined the Reclamation Bureau's shifting priorities throughout the twentieth century.³⁴ He explains that the first change occurred during the 1930s, when the agency undertook large, multipurpose projects depicted by the federal government as important allies against the Depression, Communism, and Fascism.³⁵ In order to remain a viable federal natural resource agency, the bureau reinvented itself again during the 1980s and 1990s. According to both Pisani and author Marc Reisner, the catastrophic engineering failure of Teton Dam on southeastern Idaho's Teton River, which resulted in eleven deaths in 1976, marked the beginning of the end for new reclamation construction projects. Teton's failure opened up inquiries by Congress into other significant problems within the agency, including lack of engineering creativity, overstated economic benefits, and understated costs.³⁶ As pending construction projects faced greater scrutiny from elected officials, the Reclamation Bureau began to portray itself as a water management agency by supporting endeavors it had once disdained or simply ignored. The agency, for example, participated in environmental protection, considered Indian water rights, and acted as broker between different water interests groups.

The Reclamation Bureau's calls to reallocate water in Prineville Reservoir and build new projects for recreation purposes suggest that its changes were underway before Teton's collapse in 1976, and undoubtedly before the agency changed its name (for the second but not the last time) to the Water and Power Resource Service for a brief period during the early 1980s. Particularly in places like the Crooked River Basin — where recreation interests challenged irrigators' and county officials' sole claims to the impounded river — the value of water and shifting economic realities, both nationally and in rural communities, had more to do with the agency's changes than the failure of Teton.

Pisani focused on the Reclamation Bureau's changes during the 1980s and 1990s and described some of the root economic causes in the 1970s, but he did not explore the importance of recreation in the agency's shifting priorities. "When Congress and the public decided that federal reclamation was too expensive," he wrote, "that it benefited large farmers more than small, and that hydroelectric power was an old and inflexible technology support for the program collapsed overnight."³⁷ In Central Oregon, however, a new industry began taking hold during the early 1960s, forcing the bureau and locals to reevaluate water use in the area. Although Pisani correctly pointed out that the agency's change "demonstrates that water policy, inevitably, is no less a democratic process than other public policies," he missed one of the key factors that pushed public policy and the Reclamation Bureau to change.³⁸ Recreation's increasing importance, along with national economic or political factors, forced the agency to reevaluate its role in western water management.

TO DATE, CONGRESS HAS NOT followed the Reclamation Bureau's recommendation that it reallocate nearly half of Prineville Reservoir for recreational and fish and wildlife purposes, and the proposal continues to be debated. Because Congress authorized the Crooked River Project solely for irrigation and flood control, only a congressional act can reallocate the stored waters for other purposes. Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield briefly took up the issue in 1980, but he abandoned a proposed congressional solution after many local leaders expressed their opposition to the bureau's reallocation plans.³⁹ For over thirty years, county officials, agricultural and recreational interests, and the bureau have been unable to reconcile their differences over water use. Meanwhile, Prineville Reservoir's recreation draw continues to grow. Between 1985 and 1995, visits to the reservoir increased by over 500 percent.⁴⁰

Although Hatfield, a Republican who strongly supported environmental protection, chose not to push for reallocation, he did revisit the Crooked River Basin in 1988 to promote a landmark bill that would protect sections of forty different Oregon rivers under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, including one hundred miles of the main stem and the North and South Forks of the Crooked River. In 1988, only four Oregon rivers, totaling 317 miles, were protected under the Wild and Scenic Act; Hatfield's legislation proposed an additional 1705 miles.⁴¹ The bill read like a geographical survey of Oregon's recreational and wilderness areas, including the Deschutes, Salmon, and John Day rivers and segments of many others. In public and political debate over the bill, the economic and political reevaluation of the Crooked River's worth becomes clear. Whereas Hatfield had brushed aside recreational interests in 1980, the political benefits of supporting protection and preservation outweighed the concerns expressed by Crook County irrigators and community leaders eight years later.

Crook County residents made several arguments against Wild and Scenic designation for any part of the Crooked River. Many feared limitations on land use and future development on or along the river because the act allowed the federal government to condemn property along protected rivers. In July 1988, Hatfield addressed property owners' concerns by explicitly pointing out in his opening statement at the Bend hearing that only 653 out of 500,00 Wild and Scenic acres had been acquired through condemnation.⁴² Nevertheless, property owners feared both a federal land grab and limitations on land use. The latter fear was more justified. With Wild and Scenic designation, federal agencies gained considerable leverage in negotiating "cooperative land management agreements" with landowners.⁴³ With the potential for condemnation looming over property rights, landowners were often compelled to enter into "cooperative" agreements with the managing federal agency. Those agreements were central to the Wild and Scenic designation and required property owners to adhere to certain requirements, such as not grazing cows within a certain pre-determined distance from the river. While Hatfield attempted to assuage Oregonians' concerns about property condemnation, explaining, "I cannot emphasize too strongly that this bill is not a Federal land grab," property owners continued to worry about the act's potential for land seizures.

One of Prineville's most visible citizens, Les Schwab, owner of a retail automobile tire business and one of the town's largest employers, came out strongly against Wild and Scenic designation for the Crooked River. Schwab's written testimony rings with familiar western diatribes against an intrusive federal government:

It has been my experience, over 70 years I've lived, to know that the outcome of this type of bill is a forgone conclusion. We, as land owners, are given the right to attend [a hearing] and beg for our rights that are clearly established in our constitution.... 'Government shall not take private land without due process and reimbursement.'
... In olden days, people came to hangings, came to the party when heads were cut off.... they came and were cheer leaders; yes, they came to the games. The game this time is to come and cheer when the government takes my land, along with hundreds of other Oregonians, without due process, without reimbursement for the damage done.
... Please think about the great America we have and what we have worked for so hard. It is slowly being destroyed by acts such as above.⁴⁴

However exaggerated Schwab's fear might seem, the Wild and Scenic Act undoubtedly gave the federal government more control over how private property could be used.

The Crooked River, shown here near Chimney Rock, is included in the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Courtesy of Steve Lent, photographer

Opponents also disagreed with the prevailing definitions of a healthy or natural river. A Central Oregonian editorial, for example, stated that "the best rivers require strict management," and added that "a list of the benefits derived from the dams on the two rivers [Crooked and Deschutes] would be very long, indeed. A list of benefits that would have been a result of leaving them in their wild and scenic state would be very few by comparison."⁴⁵ Longtime Crook County irrigation district manager and Crooked River booster LaSelle Coles suggested that the river had become healthier after damming and management. He testified that "before the Prineville Reservoir was built, there wasn't any recreation, all there was in that river was wild — was trash fish."⁴⁶ Coles correctly pointed out that management of the reservoir had enhanced the fishery, but his condemnation of the river before impoundment ignores the reasons for the fisheries' degradation. Irrigation and land-use practices, particularly ranching and agriculture in riparian areas, had diminished the fish populations. As the irrigation district manager, Coles could not suggest restricting irrigation to enhance recreation. Instead, he supported more reservoirs as the answer to "trash" fish. Rather than leave the upper basin undeveloped or wild, Coles lobbied for an additional reservoir to further enhance recreational opportunities by managing the entire basin. Coles suggested that, before the Reclamation Bureau dammed the river and Oregon Parks and Recreation stocked it with game fish, the river generated little value; it was simply a muddy torrent for three months, a dry trickle for another three, and always full of unwanted fish. Now that a thriving tourist industry had developed, he reasoned, a real recreational endeavor would build more dams, not restrict development.

Coles's testimony is significant for several reasons. As a longtime champion of reclamation in the Crooked River Basin, he bluntly acknowledged the change in how people valued the river as its use shifted from irrigation to recreation. Rather than push for more reclamation developments, which Congress was unlikely to support, Coles sought federal projects to enhance recreation. As one of the Crooked River Project's main spokespersons, Coles clearly understood that water served more than irrigation needs in the basin. Instead of fighting against that trend, he sought to use it to the area's advantage by encouraging more federal projects that would enhance the local economy. Coles testified against including the North and South Forks of the Crooked River in the Wild and Scenic Act, because he feared that it would keep new construction for recreation developments, not irrigation, out of the basin.⁴⁷ Despite Coles's reasoning, Hatfield kept most of the proposed sections of the Crooked River in the bill, leaving out only one section on the South Fork. In October 1988, Congress authorized the senator's landmark environmental legislation.

Hatfield's Wild and Scenic Rivers Bill demonstrated the drastic change in how people valued water in the basin. Protection under the federal Wild and Scenic Act precluded any future development that, depending on the designation, would disturb the river's wild, scenic, or recreational appeal. During the 1950s and 1960s, local irrigators had as allies Oregon Senators Richard Neuberger and Wayne Morse, who staunchly defended reclamation projects against a small chorus of criticism in Washington, D.C. In 1988, however, all of Oregon's congressional representatives, except Central Oregon's Representative Bob Smith, supported environmental and recreational protection for Oregon's rivers. Hatfield's bill cemented recreation's importance to those living in and coming to the Crooked River Basin. Although many locals did not support Hatfield's initiative, few could argue against recreation's vital role in the local economy or expect that they alone controlled the Crooked.

THE CROOKED RIVER BA SIN'S history is shaped by the river's unpredictable nature. During the early-twentieth century, that unpredictably translated into an indebted irrigation district and destitute farmers. During the 1950s, irrigators and county leaders believed they had finally landed their long-awaited irrigation and flood control project — and they had. But the environmental transformations wrought by Bowman Dam prompted unintended consequences. The dam changed a desert river prone to flash floods into a large lake with a completely new hydrology. Those changes lured people to the area, not as farmers with a chance to secure irrigation rights, but as boaters, fishers, campers, retirees, and urban transplants. As the reasons Oregonians valued the Crooked River's water changed, the Reclamation Bureau followed, further demonstrating that the agency, as Pisani writes, "has more often been the pawn of history than its maker."⁴⁸ The Reclamation Bureau shifted its top priorities to environmental protection and water management for a variety of users, thereby supplanting building dams. While the 1970s' economic downturn, high profile engineering failures culminating in Teton Dam's collapse, and growing public criticism forced the agency to change course, the rise of recreation's importance in the American West also directed the bureau's new mandate. In the Crooked River Basin, these changes were underway well before the 1990s, when the Reclamation Bureau chose to publicly celebrate them.⁴⁹

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, locals battled over the value of water in the basin. Should irrigation and future agricultural development guide water use or should Congress embrace the reservoir's recreational draw and officially reallocate a portion of the water? Although this battle continues into the twenty-first century, Senator Hatfield's protection of sections of the Crooked River as Wild and Scenic cemented a transformation that began the moment Bowman Dam started storing water in 1961. While locals fought for irrigation and flood control, the Crooked River Project became something different almost immediately. This is a repeating trend in the basin's environmental history and helps inform our understanding of water management throughout the West. While our society will continue to transform the environment in profound ways, we must enter that process with an understanding of our inability to control all the changes, in both the human and natural communities. The value of water will undoubtedly shift again in Central Oregon. Understanding the precursors for, consequences of, and political manifestations of changes in why people have valued water in the past offers all Oregonians and Westerners a chance to enter their next round of negotiations with the environment better prepared.

NOTES

^1.� See Jarold Ramsey, New Era: Reflections on the Human and Natural History of Central Oregon (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 20 3).

^2.� See John T. Whistler and John H. Lewis, Ochoco Project and Crooked River Investigation (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1916).

^3.� Whistler and Lewis, Ochoco Project, 33; and Isaiah Bowman, The Pioneer Fringe, (New York: American Geographical Society, 1931), 94.

^4.� Donald Pisani, Water and the American Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 202), 118.

^5.� See Senate Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, Hearing on S.3101, 84th Cong., 2d sess., April 17, 1956, 13.

^6.� Bureau of Reclamation, The Columbia River (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1947), 6–7.

^7.� Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert (New York: Penguin, 1986), 140.

^8.� Ibid.

^9.� Robert Sawyer, "How Meet the Cost," undated newspaper clipping, in Robert Sawyer Papers, box 6, Guy Cordon 1949–1950 folder, University of Oregon Library, Eugene [hereafter Sawyer Papers].

^10.� Ibid.; and Sawyer to Cordon February 28, 1950, box 6, Guy Cordon 1949–1950 Folder, Sawyer Papers.

^11.� Bureau of Reclamation, Crooked River Project Oregon (Boise: Regional Office, 1953).

^12.�Congressional Record, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 1955, 101, pt.5:6643–645.

^13.� Ibid, 6643.

^14.� See Karl Brooks, "Unplugging the New Deal: Hells Canyon High Dam and the Postwar Northwest" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 20).

^15.� On Neuberger's political career in Oregon, see William G. Robbins, Landscapes of Conflict: The Oregon Story 1940–2000 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 204), 215–47. On the role of federal dam projects on the 1956 elections, see Mason Drukman, Wayne Morse: A Political Biography (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1997); and Elmo Richardson, Dams, Parks, and Politics (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973), 152–70.

^16.� Morse to Harry Fowler, February 19, 1955, box 4, series E, box 11, Crooked River Project folder, Wayne Morse Papers, University of Oregon Library, Eugene [hereafter Morse Papers].

^17.� Morse to Wilfred E. Jossy, September 22, 1952, box 12, folder 22, Wayne Morse, Sawyer Papers; and Harry Fowler to Morse, July 14, 1958, box 4, Public Works, series E, Crooked River Project, Morse Papers.

^18.� Series N, box 11, Campaign Advertising folder, Morse Papers.

^19.� "Recreation Starts at New Dam," Central Oregonian, February, 23 1961.

^20.� "State to Develop Res Park in Aug. Official Impressed by Lure," Central Oregonian, June 28, 1962.

^21.� Bureau of Reclamation, Deschutes Project, Central Division: Potentials for Expansion and Improvement of Water Supplies, (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Northwest Region, 1972), 58.

^22.� Subcommittee on Energy and Research Development, Crooked River Project Act of August 6, 1956: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy Research and Development of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, second session, on S. 2616 Prineville, Oreg., July 3, 1980, (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1980).

^23.� "200 Attend Reservoir Allocation Hearing," Central Oregonian, April 28, 1975 ; "Prineville Reservoir Hearing in Portland Draws 350 People," Central Oregonian, May 12, 1975.

^24.�Central Oregonian, May 12, 1975.

^25.� Ibid.

^26.� "Majority Oppose Reallocation of Prineville Reservoir Water," Central Oregonian, November 16, 1977.

^27.� "Council Asks Domestic Use Water Allocation," Central Oregonian, November 9, 1977.

^28.� "Residents Oppose Water Allocation," Central Oregonian, July 8, 1980.

^29.� "Water Usage Threatened," Central Oregonian, January 20, 1975.

^30.� Oregon Employment Division, Economic Survey Analysis: JTPA District 10, Crook County, Deschutes County, Jefferson County (Klamath Falls, Ore.: Research and Statistics, 1983–1984), 27.

^31.� Bill Graves and Jeff Mapes, "The Oregon dream shatters," Oregonian, January 12, 20 3.

^32.� See Donald Pisani, "Federal Reclamation and the American West in the Twentieth Century," Agricultural History 77 (20 3): 3, 391–419.

^33.� Bureau of Reclamation, Deschutes Project, Central Division.

^34.� Pisani, "Federal Reclamation."

^35.� Ibid, 418.

^36.� Ibid, 407–410.

^37.� Ibid, 419.

^38.� Ibid.

^39.� Subcommittee on Energy and Research Development, Crooked River Project Act of August 6, 1956.

^40.� Crooked River Watershed Council, Crooked River Watershed Assessment, http://nrimp.dfw.state.or.us/web%20stores/data%20libraries/files/Watershed%20Councils/Watershed%20Councils_165_DOC_CrookedRWSC_assessment.pdf, 202 (accessed April 14, 20 8), p. 29.

^41.� Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Lands, National Parks and Forests of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, 100th Cong., 2d sess. On S. 2148, May 30, 1988, (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1989).

^42.� Ibid, 142.

^43.� Ibid.

^44.� Ibid, 196.

^45.� Untitled Editorial, Central Oregonian, October 6, 1988.

^46.� Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Lands, 190.

^47.� Ibid.

^48.� Pisani, "Federal Reclamation," 419.

^49.� Ibid, 416.

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