Plumbing the prairies: water management in the agricultural Midwest, 1850-1920

Abstract

This dissertation examines the use of state authority to manage natural resources and how the application of that authority changed over time. Between 1850 and 1920, Iowans interacted with the state’s prairie environment by converting it into grain-producing croplands. While this remarkable environmental transformation is most apparent in the controlled aesthetics of Iowa’s agricultural landscape, it is through the construction and maintenance of water management systems, or drainage infrastructure, that such a high level of environmental control is achieved. Drainage systems are a form of public infrastructure that are managed locally, at the county level of government. Through a study of the institutional origins of locally-led management of public drainage infrastructure, this dissertation argues that state-led natural resource conservation in Iowa never centralized around a coherent multiple use program at the State of Iowa or federal level, but rather modernized around locally-led institutions that prioritized drainage over other natural resource uses and users.