"Born in incredible beauty, flowing through incredible desolation, nourishing incredible fertility..."
So begins Bill Gulick's definitive story of the Snake and the vast area it drains.
The Snake may justly be called the last important wild river left in the Pacific Northwest, for its potential power, irrigation, navigation, and recreation is only now beginning to be developed. As the only large river wholly contained within the United States whose waters flow from the western slope of the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, it has played an important role in exploration, in empire and settlement. Yet because the wide expanse of the country through which it flows is sparsely settled and capable of great development in the years to come, the present and future of the Snake should be as vitally interesting to the reader as is its colorful past.
In telling the story of the watershed, Gulick felt that a mere compilation of facts, dates and statistics would not do the job. As a novelist, he wanted to catch the drama of the unfolding story in human terms - that is, in the words of the people who made things happen. The explorers, the British and American fur trappers competing to win an empire, the missionaries coming West to make converts of the Indians, the gold miners, the badmen, the emigrants, the stern-wheeler captains, the framers learning to turn desert lands into productive fields through the miracle of irrigation - all are here, their stories told in their own words.
Other sections of the book deal with the modern big dam era on the Snake, the struggle between public and private power, the development of tug and barge navigation on the lower river, the grain-rate wars between rail and water transport, the quarrel between environmentalists and dam builders over the as yet free-running reach of river in lower Hells Canyon, and the question of diversion of water from the river to the thirsty Southwest.
Using water, power, population, food, and fiber projections to the year 2020, which he has obtained from the latest surveys and predictions available, he asks questions that concern us all and answers them in layman's terms. As in the historical sections of the book, he lets the people who make things happen - that is, the advocates of dams, fish, power, wilderness, industrialization, and other interests - speak for themselves.
"Obviously, all these diverse interests cannot be served as they would like to be served," he says. "In the end, we must make choices. But before choosing, we must learn what the alternatives are."
So begins Bill Gulick's definitive story of the Snake and the vast area it drains.
The Snake may justly be called the last important wild river left in the Pacific Northwest, for its potential power, irrigation, navigation, and recreation is only now beginning to be developed. As the only large river wholly contained within the United States whose waters flow from the western slope of the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, it has played an important role in exploration, in empire and settlement. Yet because the wide expanse of the country through which it flows is sparsely settled and capable of great development in the years to come, the present and future of the Snake should be as vitally interesting to the reader as is its colorful past.
In telling the story of the watershed, Gulick felt that a mere compilation of facts, dates and statistics would not do the job. As a novelist, he wanted to catch the drama of the unfolding story in human terms - that is, in the words of the people who made things happen. The explorers, the British and American fur trappers competing to win an empire, the missionaries coming West to make converts of the Indians, the gold miners, the badmen, the emigrants, the stern-wheeler captains, the framers learning to turn desert lands into productive fields through the miracle of irrigation - all are here, their stories told in their own words.
Other sections of the book deal with the modern big dam era on the Snake, the struggle between public and private power, the development of tug and barge navigation on the lower river, the grain-rate wars between rail and water transport, the quarrel between environmentalists and dam builders over the as yet free-running reach of river in lower Hells Canyon, and the question of diversion of water from the river to the thirsty Southwest.
Using water, power, population, food, and fiber projections to the year 2020, which he has obtained from the latest surveys and predictions available, he asks questions that concern us all and answers them in layman's terms. As in the historical sections of the book, he lets the people who make things happen - that is, the advocates of dams, fish, power, wilderness, industrialization, and other interests - speak for themselves.
"Obviously, all these diverse interests cannot be served as they would like to be served," he says. "In the end, we must make choices. But before choosing, we must learn what the alternatives are."
Used availability for Bill Gulick's Snake River Country