Lessening Stream: An Environmental History of the Santa Cruz River, The

Environmental History, Oct 2003 by Sturgeon, Stephen C

The Lessening Stream: An Environmental History of the Santa Cruz River. By Michael Logan. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. xiii 311 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00

Michael Logan's book is an environmental history of the Santa Cruz River in southern Arizona, which provides an examination of the inverse symbiotic relationship between the river and human settlement in the region around Tucson. Just as human settlement has been shaped by the presence of the river, so too has the fate of the river been largely determined by human settlement. Based largely on secondary sources, Logan has done an excellent job of documenting the ebb and flow of the river over the course of twelve thousand years, with the bulk of his attention being on the last five hundred years.

The conclusion Logan reaches is not terribly radical: The river has prospered the most when human activity in the region has been at its least. What is interesting, however, is the historical pattern that emerges. Logan sets forth a thesis that avoids both the old progressive view of human history, as well as the declensionist perspective often embraced by environmental historians. Instead he talks about how the ecological health and human use of the river has fluctuated over time, and points out that the level of use by early indigenous people (and the sophistication of their delivery systems) was actually much higher than subsequent European and American settlers-a level of use that was surpassed only in the mid-twentieth century.

Logan divides human reactions and interactions with the river into three broad categories: archaic, which views the river in a spiritual manner; modern, which views the river from a scientific, problem-solving perspective; and postmodern, which views the river as somehow being detached from larger regional water issues. While to some extent these points-of-view are chronologically sequential, Logan argues that all three perspectives still exist today, and are shaping the ongoing debates about Tucson's water development.

Conflicting perceptions of the Santa Cruz River are not particularly new. Logan points out how the reports by Spanish and Mexican colonial officials about the condition and level of the river and its impact on local settlements painted a dire picture, as opposed to reports by American explorers and settlers from the same time that tended to speak about the lushness of the area. (An example, perhaps, of the river being half-empty versus half-full.) Once the Americans took control of the region, however, they too became preoccupied with water levels. For the next century and a half, local people assumed that science and engineering would solve their problems. In the aftermath of the Central Arizona Project water debacle in the early 19905, though, this trust seems increasingly misplaced.

One critical caveat about the book is that at times the river in the narrative, just like the river in real life, disappears beneath the surface. As a result, the book is really more of a general environmental history of the Santa Cruz River drainage basin than exclusively a history of the river itself. Overall, though, the book is solid and interesting to read, and provides an unconventional perspective on the history of a particular place.

Stephen C. Sturgeon is manuscript curator and adjunct professor of history at Utah State University. He is the author of The Politics of Western Water: The Congressional Career of Wayne Aspinall (University of Arizona Press, 2002).