Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege’s fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho’s Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces—one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology.

Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999

Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000

"For such a focused book, there is remarkable breath here. No one will go away from this book without having their view of irrigated landscapes enlarged and enriched."

"Fiege suggests that, no matter how we try to alter the natural world, the unexpected consequences of our actions will always come back to haunt us. . . . He also offers new ways of thinking about the past and, possibly, new ways of thinking about how the future will unfold. The writing style is eloquent."