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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where was Marc Reisner born?
(a) Billings, Montana.
(b) Durango, Colorado.
(c) Knoxville, Tennessee.
(d) St. Paul, Minnesota.

2. Who wrote the sonnet “Ozymandias,” which is quoted in the opening of Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water?
(a) Jim Casey.
(b) Percy Bysshe Shelley.
(c) James Marshall.
(d) Michael Robinson.

3. When was Harrison Gray Otis born?
(a) 1879.
(b) 1856.
(c) 1908.
(d) 1837.

4. Who does the author refer to as “an egomaniacal small-time construction tycoon” in Chapter Four?
(a) James Marshall.
(b) W. A. Bechtel.
(c) Wayne Wyatt.
(d) Henry J. Kaiser.

5. For what organization was Marc Reisner a staff writer from 1972 to 1979?
(a) The Natural Resources Defense Council.
(b) The World Wildlife Fund.
(c) The Sierra Club.
(d) The Nature Conservancy.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological Oasisamerica traditions of what is now the American Southwest which the author describes in Chapter One?

2. What is the title of the book’s Introduction?

3. What western city does the author describe “with exotic palms and golf-course lawns and a five-hundred-foot fountain and an artificial surf” in the Introduction?

4. In what year was the Hoover Dam dedicated?

5. What region is located in southeastern Southern California, and is the site of an urban area largely centered on the city of El Centro?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Arizona do in response to California’s challenge for the Colorado River?

2. What initially led to the struggles over the Colorado River?

3. How did William Mulholland’s character and career develop in his later years?

4. How does the author describe Los Angeles’s power in its struggle for the Colorado River in Chapter Four?

5. When did the perception of the American West as a desert begin to change? Who helped initiate this change?

6. How have historians traditionally spent their focus in regard to the American West?

7. How have new historians of the American West spent their focus differently than the traditionalists?

8. What does the author write of the impressions from the Lewis and Clark expedition in the West in Chapter Two?

9. Who was General John Wesley Powell? How does the author describe him?

10. What reaction did the public and lawmakers have to the advice of John Wesley Powell regarding settlement in the West? What was the result?

(see the answer keys)

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