Review of The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers
By: Kurt Vetters, University of North Alabama
Martin Doyle, Professor of River System Science and Policy and former Frederick J. Clark Scholar at the US Army Corps of Engineers, has written an entertaining and informative book The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade its Rivers.[1] Drawing on his own experiences, detailed archival research, and journeys across the United States such as joining a barge working its way down the Mississippi River, Doyle makes the case for understanding America by understanding its rivers and their central role in the development of the country.
Doyle takes a journalistic approach to the narrative, frequently interspersing interviews, anecdotes, and opinions of the disparate characters he interacts with throughout his research. They influence his conclusions by putting a human face on the policy and engineering accomplishments of the American system of river management, as well as, make for enjoyable reading of what could be a particularly dry subject. As an example, the interview with Vince Vasquez in Chapter Six, “A New Water Market,” brings to life not only the intricacies of the burgeoning secondary water market, but also the economics of the export business to China, water rights based on seniority of access, the “appropriation doctrine,” and the importance of the relationship between irrigators and municipalities. (140-1)
This book has had a plethora of reviews, mostly positive. One notable exception is a New York Times review from 2018 that claims Doyle’s primary thesis, that the river system’s commerce was the primary driver of American economic culture, is a stretch, and that other economic historians place more impact on railroads and interstates.[2] I tend to side with the author: since significant river travel preceded all other forms of goods transportation except for ocean-borne trade, I feel that Doyle has touched on an important and overlooked genesis of the American economic system.
Early in the book Doyle lays out the case for the river network’s influence. He begins with the need for a standing army to man the fortifications at the rivers and coasts and highlights West Point’s national influence as the first engineering school focused on river management. He follows with an analysis of river-borne commerce and its directional pull toward a national rather than regional economy, and then moves to the acquisition of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers with the Louisiana Purchase. He concludes with the influence of the western river networks on water rights, finally landing on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s substantial contribution to power generation, river regulation, and, consequently, a disproportionate effect on how the government regulates economic endeavors.
For the public historian, Doyle’s explanation of the American grain miller process of granting franchises and regulating their commerce was very insightful. (220) Equating these gristmill regulations and charting their regulatory path to modern day public utilities, including how private property is viewed today in America regarding eminent domain, is insightful to anyone with an eye to documenting the underlying causes of how we do the things we do. Reading Doyle’s treatise on these underpinnings of modern society was both fascinating and inspirational.
Doyle takes the reader on an insightful journey into the history, inner-workings, and national impact of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), one of the great progressive projects of the American era. From Theodore Roosevelt’s plan to break up the power monopolies in the early 1900’s to the execution of Franklin Roosevelt’s groundbreaking public electric company in the Tennessee River valley, the story of the TVA has been auspicious for America. (234) A “corporation clothed with the power of government,” as TVA Director David Lilienthal claimed, the TVA absorbed significant manpower during the Great Depression, electrified an entire region in the South which was under-served, and provided a model for government to solve regional and national economic development issues. (234)
This model worked well for decades, until challenged by the environmental movements of the 1970’s. As environmental issues began to compete with economic development, particularly big-scope, heavy-handed, and highly visible projects like those from TVA, the public and their lawmakers challenged the need for some of the controls being placed on the management of rivers and streams, and consequently the life that existed in these watersheds. (253) Even though the tiny snail darter lost its habitat to the TVA’s Tellico Dam, the public relations damage was done, and environmental concerns now took significantly higher billing than they did previously.
Thanks to President George H. W. Bush, wetlands conservation and “no loss” stream and river management have become the modern descendants of the early gristmill regulations. Markets for Stream Credits and a return to beaver-like stream management to preserve wetlands have allowed economics and public policy to interact in ways undreamed of by early Americans. (297) Doyle wonders if eventually the public would simply take on the management of streams and rivers as a “true test of Adam Smith’s philosophy.” (298) In other words, would the normative guides to action, rules, and virtue work in watershed usage and protection?[3] Doyle’s conclusion seems to be a cautious yes.
Photos from Left to Right:
1: Tennessee Valley Authority, Smoky Mountain Power Company on the Oconaluftee River, 1939, photograph, Swain County, North Carolina, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smoky_Mountain_Power_Company_on_the_Oconaluftee_River_-_NARA_-_280750.jpg.
2: Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA Wilbur Dam, n.d., photograph, Elizabethton, Tennessee, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TVA_Wilbur_Dam.jpg.
3: USACE Photo, USACE-TVA 80-year partnership a definite plus for Cumberland, Tennessee Rivers Basin, April 26, 2013, photograph, Grand Rivers, Kentucky, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USACE-TVA_80-year_partnership_a_definite_plus_for_Cumberland,_Tennessee_Rivers_Basin_130425-A-CE999-050.jpg.
Notes
[1] “Martin Doyle,” Nicholas School of the Environment, accessed August 7, 2024, https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/doyle.
[2] ProQuest. “THE SOURCE: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers.” The New York Times, April 1, 2018. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2020474692/4C5005AEEBA548AEPQ/2?accountid=14668&sourcetype=Magazines.
[3] Fleischacker, Samuel. “Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/smith-moral-political/.
