DINOSAUR DAMMED: AN ANALYSIS OF THE FIGHT TO DEFEAT ECHO PARK DAM by Debra Elaine Jenson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah December 2014 2 Copyright © Debra Elaine Jenson 2014 All Rights Reserved 3 The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of DeBra Elaine Jenson has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: KimBerley Mangun , Chair May 1, 2014 Date Approved Glen M. Feighery , Member May 1, 2014 Date Approved Sean T. Lawson , Member May 1, 2014 Date Approved David J. VergoBBi , Member May 1, 2014 Date Approved Matthew Baker , Member May 1, 2014 Date Approved and by Kent Alan Ono , Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School of Communication and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. 4 ABSTRACT In the early twentieth century, the United States Bureau of Reclamation proposed a series of dams along the Colorado River to help control the violent and destructive fluctuations of the river that ran through six western states. The sites of two of the dams, Echo Park and Split Mountain, were located inside Dinosaur National Monument (a little known and rarely visited area straddling the border between Utah and Colorado). Conservation organizations across the United States joined together to fight the Echo Park and Split Mountain project. One coalition, the Council of Conservationists, consisted of nine groups including the Sierra Club, the American Planning and Civic Association, and the Wilderness Society. These nine groups used their official publications to reach out to their members, rallying them to act in defense of Dinosaur National Monument and the National Park System as a whole. This dissertation analyzes the nine publications from 1950 to 1956—the years of the most heated debate—for a better understanding of the strategies and themes used in this, the first successful campaign of the modern conservation movement. 5 To my family. You know who you are. 6 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………..iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………….viii CHAPTERS 1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT POWELL SAW…………………………….1 The National Park System and the West…………………………5 Water and the West………...….………………………………….9 Waging War……………………………………………………..13 Study Design and Method……………………………………….18 Chapter Outline………………………………………………….24 2 HISTORICAL METHOD AND THEMATIC ANALYSIS.……………26 3 SIERRA CLUB: HOW DAVID HELPED SLAY GOLIATH…….........37 Building a Coalition…………………………………………..…54 4 AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM……………………………………………………….…69 Beauty and the Bureaucracy ……………….……………..…..…78 5 AMERICAN NATURE ASSOCIATION: THE DINOSAUR DOMINOS……………………..………………………………………..85 The Duty to Defend………………...…………..………….…...101 6 NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY: DINOSAUR GOES TO THE BIRDS…………………………………………………………………..113 One Nation Under God…………………..……………….….…119 7 NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION: HOW THE SAUSAGE IS MADE……..............................................................................................128 Wilderness and Wise Use………………………………..…......140 8 8 IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE: THE GLOVES COME OFF…………..160 Invasion!......................................................................................171 9 NATIONAL PARKS ASSOCIATION: SEEING IS BELIEVING…....184 A Parks Principle…………………………………………….…200 10 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ASSOCIATION: BRING IN AN EXPERT…………………….……………………………………..215 The Numbers Game………………………………………..…...231 11 THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY: THE TIME IS NOW!........................251 A Movement Is Made……………………..……………………263 12 CONCLUSION: THE LESSONS WE LEARNED…………………….277 APPENDIX: MAPS…………………………………………………………………….295 vii 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the patient guidance and skillful editing of my advisor, Kimberley Mangun. She spent countless hours working with me. Her support and encouragement have been invaluable, and her feedback and expertise helped make me a better researcher and writer. Thanks, also, to the members of my committee. I appreciate the time and effort they have dedicated to this project. My husband, Keith, has spent seven years listening to me talk about every aspect of this process. He has never been there, but he knows more about Echo Park and Dinosaur National Monument than most people who live in Vernal, Utah. His love and support are endless, and he has taken on so many parenting duties while I have been researching and writing. Thank you for putting up with this whole thing just because I wanted to wear a poufy hat to college graduations. And to my children I say, thank you for being content with spending time next to me while I write. I look forward to attending your soccer games without a white binder in my lap. Thank you to my mom and dad. I’m happy to be able to report to them that my book report is done. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT POWELL SAW Standing opposite the rock, our words are repeated with startling clearness, but in a soft, mellow tone, that transforms them into magical music. Scarcely can you believe it is the echo of your own voice. In some places two or three echoes come back; in other places they repeat themselves, passing back and forth across the river between this rock and eastern wall…. Some of the party aver that ten or twelve repetitions can be heard.” —John W. Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado and Its Canyons—1869 On the border between Utah and Colorado, the Yampa and Green Rivers meet in the shadows of 800-foot rock walls that rise so dramatically they appear to go on forever. John Wesley Powell, one of the first white Americans to explore this region, was delighted and thrilled at what he saw as he and his team rode the rapids. Powell’s team named the confluence of the two rivers Echo Park (later to be named Steamboat Rock because of its striking similarity to the prow of a ship) and they camped there for almost a week before continuing down the Green River. Voices of the past still linger along the Green River—etched into the walls in petroglyphs just off the banks and in the voices of campers and river enthusiasts that still reverberate across the river in Echo Canyon. Farther south, after the Green merges with the Colorado River in southeastern Utah, the water has carved miles of canyons, breathtaking arches, and natural crossing points for humans migrating and exploring the landscape. But here, the echoes come from below millions of acre-feet1 of water. Cave 1 An acre-foot is the amount of water it would take to cover an acre of land with water one foot deep. 2 drawings and family dwellings now lie beneath the surface of Glen Canyon Reservoir. The etchings in stone made by members of the Powell expedition down the river are now covered by the “lake” that bears their leader’s name. During the twentieth century, the flow of Americans cut a wide path across the continent, settling in Western states, establishing urban and suburban oases in vast deserts, changing the landscape like its own river. World War II turned this stream of people into a torrent, with military projects, army bases, and massive population growth in the desert states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. This human swell created new areas of habitation that led to a dual need for water and power, and rivers were diverted from the ancient pathways that had steadily whittled vast canyons into the landscape to run in more convenient patterns. Dams were erected in an effort to satisfy the exploding needs of power and irrigation. New pathways were created and old landmarks were destroyed. Engineers created rivers and lakes with the construction of a dam, even as they erased hundreds and thousands of years of human history. The importance of this body of water cannot be overstated. The Colorado River stands as one of America’s great rivers, with water flowing through seven states from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California.2 The Colorado and its tributaries reach roughly 22 percent of the land in the United States, yet according to Susan Neel, “The Colorado River is a geographical irony because the land through which it flows is the most arid region in America—an area once called the Great American Desert. … There was water in this desert land but it cared not for the needs of man.”3 Even more important 2 United States Bureau of Reclamation, “Upper Colorado River Basin,” www.usbr.gov/uc/, (accessed April 1, 2013). 3 Susan M. Neel, “Utah and the Echo Park Dam Controversy” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1980), 14-15. 3 to the people of the Colorado River Basin was the fact that the river was not like the great rivers of the East—miles across with a smooth surface suitable for a steamboat or Huck Finn. For the people who lived and farmed along the Colorado, it indeed was a “natural menace” that taunted them with its unpredictable flow, frequent flooding, and crashing rapids that smashed boats to smithereens and took a person involuntarily miles downstream. Following World War II, the demand for water in the West reached a pitch that could not be ignored—an estimated eight million people were transplanted to these desert states, creating boom towns including Denver, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas—and the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of the Interior hatched a plan to harness the Colorado River through a series of dams stretching from northern Colorado down to Arizona.4 Engineers and planners from the Bureau approached this as a way to conquer an enemy, writing, “Yesterday the Colorado River was a natural menace. Unharnessed, it tore through deserts, flooded fields, and ravaged villages. … Man was on the defensive. He sat helplessly to watch the Colorado River waste itself, or attempted in vain to halt its destruction.”5 The plan, known as the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP),6 was hatched in the early 1940s but was officially introduced in Congress in 1953.