William Deverell is Co-Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and Professor of History at USC. He also serves as the Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences. He has written widely on the cultural, environmental, and political history of the 19th and 20th century American West.

Rivers of Memory and Fate

 Southern California’s explosive growth over the last century and a half is inextricably tied to hydrology, water engineering, gigantic public works, and the ever-changing interface between aridity and metropolitan demands. Through context and history, these prelude remarks examine the ways in which greater Los Angeles hitched growth to the acquisition of water is dramatic and complex, specific to time, place, and circumstance. But these events—the building of aqueducts, dams, concrete channels, and vast delivery systems—must also be considered together in order to understand historical patterns. Understanding those patterns (of hubris interwoven with accomplishment) will help guide planners and policymakers making critical decisions about water management going forward. These scene-setting remarks will take us from the mid-19th century forward, from the banks of the tiny Los Angeles River to the headwaters of the Owens River in the Sierra Nevada and on to the Colorado River watershed. This exploration of how planners, engineers, politicians, boosters, and the public worked together and crosswise over the future of water will help ground the day’s discussions in historical perspective.