Essay unlocks
mystery
at Mesa Verde

Water for the Anasazi:
How the Ancients of Mesa Verde
Engineered Public Works
By Kenneth R. Wright,
edited by Todd Shallat
ISSN 1047-5257,
paperback, 81 pages, $15
Public Works Historical
Society, 2003

Five hundred years before the Indians discovered Columbus, one thousand years before Congress, in 1906, acted to preserved mysterious ruins in southwestern Colorado at Mesa Verde National Park, prehistoric builders and farmers transformed an American desert with remarkable public works.The Anasazi — or “ancient ones” in the Navajo language — built cliffside apartment houses, grain storehouses, terraced fields, community centers, watchtowers, and roads. But how on a riverless mesa did the ancients store enough water to sustain a concentrated population? Kenneth R. Wright’s Water for the Anasazi, volume 22 of the Public Works Historical Society’s Essays in Public Works History, refutes the conventional wisdom. Well organized and surprisingly sophisticated, the Anasazi, says Wright, maintained some community water projects for more than 300 years. Water for the Anasazi can be purchased from the APWA at http://www.apwa.net/bookstore/. Pictured: Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, 1918 (Library of Congress).

When the River Rises:
Flood Control on the Boise River, 1943-1985

By Susan M. Stacy. The University of Colorado Natural Hazards Research Center and Boise State University, 1993. Reveals the false economy of flood projects that made Boise increasingly prone to flood.

“The U.S. Corps of Engineers and the
Historical Foundation of Power.”

By Todd Shallat. The Public Historian, 11 (Summer 1989): 7-27.

The Corps of Engineers Environmental Work
on the Mississippi River

By Todd Shallat. Commissioned history for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer Mississippi River Valley Division, 2002.

A Light in the Window of Idaho: Boise’s
Public Library, 1895-1995

Edited by Kathleen Rubinow Hodges. The Friends of the Boise Public Library with research support from Boise State University, 1995. Handsomely designed commemorative history with comment on women’s civil organizations and the cultural life of a frontier city.

An enduring legacy:
the story of Basques in Idaho

By John Bieter and Mark Bieter. University of Nevada at Reno, 2000. Based on John Bieter’s superb 1994 masters thesis about three generations of Basque-Americans. “Essential for fully understanding and appreciating our Idaho heritage,” Governor Cecil Andrus.

“Shaping Water Policy Through
Administrative Power.”

By Todd Shallat. In Steven C. Harris, ed., Water Resources Planning and Management. New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1989, pp. 528-535.

Public Works History

Edited by Todd Shallat. Newsletter of the Public Works Historical Society serves the 26,000 engineers, contractors, historians, and public officials of the Kansas City based American Public Works Association. See http://www.apwa.net/About/SIG/PWHS/abstract_call.asp