University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2013 The Last Conservationist: Floyd Dominy and Federal Reclamation Policy in the American West Ian Robert Stacy The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Stacy, Ian Robert, "The Last Conservationist: Floyd Dominy and Federal Reclamation Policy in the American West" (2013). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1036. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1036 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE LAST CONSERVATIONIST: FLOYD DOMINY AND FEDERAL RECLAMATION POLICY IN THE AMERICAN WEST By IAN ROBERT STACY B.S., The New School, New York, NY, 1997 M.A., Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA, 2008 Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History The University of Montana Missoula, MT May 2013 Approved by: Sandy Ross, Dean of The Graduate School Graduate School Dan Flores History Tobin Miller Shearer History Kyle G. Volk History Nancy Cook English Sara Dant History, Weber State University © COPYRIGHT by Ian Robert Stacy 2013 All Rights Reserved ii Stacy, Ian, Ph.D., Spring 2013 History The Last Conservationist: Floyd Dominy and Federal Reclamation Policy in the American West Chairperson: Dr. Dan Flores Historians of the American West have long identified the federal government’s important role in shaping the region’s physical and social landscapes, especially concerning water development. The Bureau of Reclamation, which built most of the West’s major dams and water projects, traces its origins back to the 1902 Reclamation Act and since then has seen its share of political upheavals and colorful personalities. But one figure towers over all: Floyd Dominy, who served as commissioner from 1959 to 1969. By following the career of this one influential bureaucrat from the Great Depression to the end of the Great Society, I show that the federal government’s relationship with the West—and thus the relationship of westerners to their government—cannot be isolated from national political and social trends. My dissertation connects the literature of American state building with the insights of the “New Western History” and argues that the Bureau of Reclamation’s true role in shaping the twentieth-century American West can only be understood in the context of a Washington bureaucracy struggling to survive through a turbulent period. “The Last Conservationist” traces the arc of American liberalism from the New Deal to the final fracturing of Western political solidarity over water issues in the late 1960s. From this perspective, federal reclamation policy is less of an imperial endeavor than a largely unsuccessful effort to hold together various western factions in the face of diminished budgets and changing social priorities. This view also highlights the control and participation of local groups, often at the expense of federal desires. iii Table of Contents Introduction.…………………………………………………………………………………1 Prologue: “Times of Want…”.……………………………………………………………...22 One: “A True Son of the Soil”:……………………………………………………………...30 Two: The Making of a Conservationist.…………………………………………………….58 Three: The Making of a Bureaucrat.………………………………………………………..86 Four: Reinventing Reclamation.…………………………………………………………..109 Five: A Rising Star………………………………………………………………….…….138 Six: The Messiah of Capitol Hill………………………………………………………….163 Seven: White Elephants on the New Frontier…………………………………………….195 Eight: Power Struggles……………………………………………………………………227 Nine: Reclamation’s High Water Mark……………………………………………...……246 Ten: The Last Great Battles……………………………………….………………………275 Epilogue: “…Times of Plenty”……………………………………………………………305 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….………315 iv Acknowledgments: Any success I have had on this project I owe chiefly to my wife Lori and son Jacob, who tolerated my extended absences and let me pursue my work uninterrupted. I know that this journey has been at least as hard on them as it has been for me and words cannot express my profound gratitude. My grandfather Leo, aunt Evie, and cousin Kate provided significant financial and logistical support. Even more importantly, they believed in me and my work when my own confidence wavered. Charles Dominy, Ruth Young, and Jan DeBolt gave me critical insights into their father’s professional career and personal life. They also shared family correspondence and other material that helped round out the archival sources. I am especially indebted to them for allowing me to attend Floyd Dominy’s private funeral. They shared their knowledge unselfishly without ever suggesting that I shape the project in a particular way. At the University of Montana I was blessed with the ideal dissertation committee. Dan Flores has provided superb guidance from the outset and has built a fine cohort of graduate students. Sara Dant graciously agreed to join my committee from Utah and has been an outstanding source of information on fellowships, funding, and archival material. Kyle Volk pushed me to make this a bigger dissertation than I originally envisioned, expanding it beyond a simple biography. I am very grateful for his counsel and encouragement. Tobin Shearer must certainly hold the record for prompt review and his insightful commentary helped me sharpen my arguments. I have no doubt Nancy Cook’s invaluable guidance on writing will make this a better book manuscript when the time comes. At Montana and elsewhere I have also benefitted from the advice, scholarly and otherwise, of a number of friends and colleagues. I’d like to thank especially Happy Avery, v Shawn Bailey, Greg Gordon, Greg Hinze, Al Miller, Craig Rigdon, and John Robinson for allowing me to ramble on for years about this project. Each has produced fine work that enriched my own thinking. I would also like to single out Jerry Brandt for providing assistance at a critical moment in my travels. My old advisor from Central Washington University, Tom Wellock, has continued to give me more support than I deserve. He has endorsed most of my good ideas and none of my bad ones, which made this a much better dissertation in the end. Finally, I must thank the faculty and staff at Central Washington University’s history department where I have been housed for the last three years. Karen Blair, Brian Carroll, Roxanne Easley, Dan Herman, Jason Knirck, and Steve Moore provided feedback on an early draft and truly welcomed me as a colleague. Angie Hill helped me with a million small problems with good cheer and encouragement. Unraveling Floyd Dominy’s story allowed me the chance to travel the country extensively and peek into a lot of far-flung archives. But it was also a time consuming and expensive undertaking. Fortunately, I received generous financial and institutional support. Foremost was the American Heritage Center in Laramie, WY, where I essentially became a piece of furniture in the reading room for several months and which provided me a travel grant. The AHC staff was tremendously helpful and a model for their profession. A summer award for research from the Charles Redd Center at Brigham Young University gave me the opportunity to visit a number of fruitful archives in the West. I was especially pleased to receive a Grey Towers scholar-in-residence fellowship. This allowed me a month of uninterrupted writing at the Gifford Pinchot ancestral home and was the most pleasant and productive period of the entire dissertation process. A Wilbur R. Jacobs fellowship at the Huntington Library in California also allowed me the chance to write and conduct research among a community of brilliant scholars. Underpinning vi my entire stay at the University of Montana was the absurdly generous financial support I received from the Moser-McKinney and Bertha Morton fellowships. vii Abbreviations used in footnotes: CE-CSUC Clair Engle Collection, MSS 17, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico. CT-ASU Carl T. Hayden Papers, MSS 1, Arizona State University Libraries, Arizona Collection DC-CSR Dennis Chávez Papers, Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico. DDE-DDE Dwight D. Eisenhower Diary, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas. DRB-BANC David Ross Brower Papers, BANC MSS 79/9 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. DSK-UU David S. King Papers, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah. EFB-DDE Elmer F. Bennett Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas. ELA-AHC Ellis L. Armstrong Papers, Collection Number 04723, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. FAS-DDE Fred A. Seaton Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas. FED-AHC Floyd E. Dominy Papers, Collection Number 02129, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming [All citations refer to the 1981 accretion unless otherwise noted.] FED-OH Floyd E. Dominy, Oral History Interview, conducted by Brit Allan Storey, National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland. GGS-CSU