Kyle Paoletta
Appearances
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Well, I think Powell is such a fascinating figure because he's the one who first charged the Colorado for the United States and helps facilitate the Arab settlement by saying, here's where the canyons are, here's where Lee's Ferry is, the premier place to cross the river. But after that experience, he gives a very famous speech where he basically says that
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
there is not enough water to sustain an East Coast-style population here, that this is a very rugged environment with very limited resources. And I believe he gives that speech in the 1880s or the 1890s. It's before the Bureau of Reclamation is founded, and it is very quickly dismissed by the kind of interest of boosters who, you know,
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Definitely part of this story is the land grab that was basically made possible all of the settlement of the West, which, you know, we can talk a little bit about the history of Albuquerque, where I'm from, which was very much a... a lot of Anglo entrepreneurs buying up land very cheaply.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And then having done that, they were able to get the railroad to come to Albuquerque and then see a huge profit because they owned all this land that suddenly was very valuable because it was next to a railroad depot.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah. And just to make that point even more, the Homestead Act is rightly very famous for allowing the colonization of Kansas, Nebraska, the Midwest, the Great Plains. But in order to get people to even want the land in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, they have to pass another act that's called the Arid Lands Act, which doubles the amount of land that a homesteader is able to claim if it's arid.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Because it was this idea of like, this is how much the federal government wanted this colonization project to succeed, that they literally were giving away as much land as they possibly could.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And hence why you then have this big federal investment in things like a Hoover Dam, because suddenly you have all these people who sort of are expecting that the government is going to make good of, you know, you wanted us to live here. We need some water now.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Well, and speaking of New Mexico, part of the story there is Spanish colonialism where you have the Spanish first coming and coming in 1598 to create the permanent colony and then Santa Fe is established in 1610. This is 20 years before Boston is settled. This is before Jamestown. And you have this system where the Spanish crown is making vast land grants to Spanish settlers.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And to this day, many of those land grants are still legally valid. And there are families who can trace back to the 17th century that there's this chain. But in New Mexico, it's possible to have these vast ranches. And I would bet good money that that rancher who you met, the origin of his ranch was probably as a Spanish land grant. Yeah. Yeah.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah, so I mentioned the cliff dwellings before that are in kind of the highlands of the Colorado Plateau. It's believed that many of the pueblos today are descended from those cliff dwellings, which were initially very defensible kind of positions, that they're in canyons and have very limited entry, but they also have pretty limited water.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
If you visit Chaco Canyon today, you will very swiftly realize how dry it is. And so there were some periods of a special aridity that drove a lot of those people to the rivers. And so you have these dozens of villages along the Rio Grande and some of these tributaries. And they practice a style of agriculture that's somewhat similar to what's happening in the Sonoran Desert.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
But I think the most important thing is that it's very flexible, that they'll have a pueblo, which if people are unfamiliar, is usually made out of adobe blocks, which is made of mud and straw. It's very much building with the materials of the place that you live in. And those are often quite far from the river or at a real remove from the river.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And then there are sort of irrigation canals and somewhat more temporary farms that acknowledge that there's going to be a flood eventually. All of this land will be submerged. There's no point in building a house here because it's going to get destroyed because it's made of mud. So many of the pueblos are actually a decent distance from the river.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And so when Coronado's party arrives on this exploration, they find, I think it's believed to be about a dozen villages in the area that's now Albuquerque, which is a province known as Tijue. And they go there and they spend a winter there. And it's sort of a classic American story of first contact where initially there is a period of
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
you know, kind of bartering and friendly relations, trading things. But as the winter sets in, the Spanish army begins just kind of like taking more and more. And there's various sources about exactly what happens if There's a story about a Spanish soldier visiting a Pueblo and literally grabbing the blankets off of people to use. There's one about sexually assaulting a woman.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
But there's some kind of violent interaction that leads to the Pueblos to basically close ranks and shut the Spanish out of the actual structures. in the Tihue area, and that leads to a siege.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And this sort of inaugurates this real era of warfare between the Spanish and the Pueblos, which continues from when Coronado was there in the 1540s through when Don Juan de Oñate settles the first permanent colony in 1598, where there's a very famous
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
between his army and the Pueblo of Acoma, which leads to Oñate ordering that every man from the Pueblo have his foot cut off, which is this kind of touchstone example of the Spanish brutality towards the indigenous people. And so there's that last all the way through 1680 of Spanish kind of bringing the Pueblos to heel.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And then in 1680, you actually have a revolt that's led by this figure known as Pope, who is a religious leader from the Pueblo of Oquehuangue, which is quite close to Santa Fe. And it's really a fascinating story of
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
indigenous resistance where they are able to basically across this vast landscape that stretches all the way from the area around Santa Fe and New Mexico all the way to what's now western Arizona and the Hopi tribes. And all on the same day, they rise up. The priests are many of them killed very brutally. All these churches are burned down.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
They drive the Spanish back to Santa Fe, lay siege on Santa Fe, and actually force the Spanish to retreat back to Mexico. And so there's a period of 12 years in which the Spanish are completely ejected from New Mexico. And then they come back and there's the Reconquista of Pedro de Peralta reclaiming Santa Fe in 1692. But I'd say all that just to illuminate this. Often I think there is a
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
If you visit Santa Fe today, you'll probably hear about the three cultures of New Mexico, that there's this sort of balance between Anglo culture, Spanish culture, and indigenous culture that goes back to that era, but in fact is a very violent history. Yeah.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
No, and even today, there are very emotional battles about New Mexican history where Don Juan de Oñate is still kind of memorialized as a hero by many descendants of the Spanish settlers, and as... the greatest villain by indigenous people. In 2020, there's a massive protest in Albuquerque that leads to a statue of Oñate being removed.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
I talk about just two years ago, there's a similar statue in a city called Española where there's a violent confrontation where someone gets shot where this is a very real kind of matter of debate about how we remember this era of Spanish colonialism.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
So I think the story is that they were chasing wealth, that there were these seven golden cities of Cibola, which comes from basically there's some earlier voyages where you have the famous journey of Cabeza de Vaca, who is shipwrecked with a bunch of other Spanish and ends up surviving this
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
I believe it's an eight or nine year trek from Texas through what's now the Southwest to the West Coast of Mexico, where it's him and three other survivors who come back kind of
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
You know, talking about we encountered all of these tribes, and then that leads to one of the survivors who is an enslaved man named Estabanico or Esteban, who allowed the Spanish to survive because he actually was kind of a polyglot. He was able to communicate with all of these tribes, and because of that skill, he actually
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Estabanico ends up leading the next journey north out of Mexico, where he accompanies a friar whose name is Marcos de Niza, who they encounter the Pueblo of Zuni, which is in today's western New Mexico. which is a somewhat... Basically, they kind of expect a certain amount of tribute. The people of Zuni are not impressed with them. They chase them away.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is very much having grown up in New Mexico and then lived and worked on the East Coast in New York and Boston for the better part of two decades. And what happens when you're from the Southwest and you spend a lot of time, especially in the people in the rest of the country know about the place you're from.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
But he comes back telling a story of this city made entirely of gold, that the walls are made of gold. And so there's some thought of like, oh, did he see the Pueblo architecture in the sun and like... It looked kind of golden. But that sort of sets off this rapacious conquest, which you see throughout the history of Spain's colonization of Mexico.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that sense of people visiting and becoming enraptured with it and then wanting to bring more people, that continues. And after Guadalupe Hidalgo, you have the first wave of Americans coming to the region and realizing it's very ripe for colonization.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
You mentioned Jack Swilling, you have the first kind of entrepreneurs who come to Albuquerque and El Paso, and yeah, it follows right through to the 21st century. Exactly. And certainly once you get into Las Vegas, which we can talk about as kind of the ultimate example of this chasing a dream in the desert. Exactly.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you get into the last part of the book is when I sort of turn from a very historical eye towards thinking about the world as it is now and how it is changing because of the climate. And I think the Southwest has always had these problems with water scarcity and
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
but has, because of the extremity of the environment there, has come up with some solutions and some strategies and ways to cope with it. And certainly the construction of massive reservoirs is the primary way that they have been able to build these enormous cities But now we've sort of seen the limit of that, and so we're beginning to have to think about, okay, how do we live more sustainably?
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
How do we live within our means? And in many ways, we're turning to more of that indigenous perspective of... using what is available rather than reaching further and further for another resource. So Las Vegas has this reputation as being this sort of profligate water user and the Bellagio's Fountains or all the golf courses. But it is, in fact, the most efficient water user in the country.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
40% of the water that is pumped from Lake Mead is returned to Lake Mead. And so because of how extreme the environment is, they actually have become kind of a pioneer in making do with less in a way that now you have Los Angeles spending about $8 billion on water recycling. San Diego is spending $3 billion. Phoenix has its own water recycling company.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
program, this idea of we actually do have the technology now to reuse our water rather than just consuming it.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And the sort of broad generalities that, you know, maybe someone's visited the Grand Canyon. Maybe they went to Santa Fe once. They have a grandparent or an uncle who retired to Phoenix. There's sort of like these touchstones that people have. But there's also this broad ignorance that stems from, I think, what you were talking about a little bit in the intro of this
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
I really like it. I appreciate it. Thank you.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
this sense of the Southwest as a very kind of foreboding, unwelcoming geography that how could people live there? How can there be those cities there? And so I think part of what made me really want to kind of return home in a way and have a deeper engagement with the history of the region was really wanting to both explain the Southwest to the rest of the country and help people understand
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
the process through which all that land that was incorporated into the country through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, how it was integrated into the country, as well as to kind of help the Southwest understand itself. Because I think so many people I grew up with are pretty new to the region.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
I mean, my grandmother's family first came there in the 1910s, but plenty of people moved to Las Vegas last year and have no real sense of the history of this place that is you know, some of the fastest growing part of the country still.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah, I mean, I think it's an excellent question. And as I've talked about the book, I think Phoenix's emergence as an enormous metropolis is something that continually surprises people.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And certainly when it surpassed Philadelphia as the fifth largest city in the country, I think that was like a watershed moment for a lot of Americans of like, wait a second, like, Phoenix is better than Philadelphia? How did that happen? Yeah. So I think the story really starts with the ancestral Sonoran peoples who first lived along the Salt River in what's now central Arizona.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And the Salt is a, unlike the Rio Grande or the Colorado, is... a somewhat less stable river there are some years where it flows you know very rapidly and is a quite impressive river and many years when it runs dry so it's a much more the salt river is a less regular companion for civilization than yeah maybe other rivers are.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
So these ancestral peoples dug these irrigation canals and some kind of rudimentary dams and did a lot of these earthworks that allowed them to support some of the most vast agricultural area in what's now the United States in the pre-Columbian era. And so that was roughly 500 to 1500 CE. And so that kind of laid a foundation.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And then there were some climactic changes where those peoples migrated to other rivers, primarily the Gila and the Santa Cruz. And then after Guadalupe Hidalgo, You have Anglo settlers coming in the 1870s who discovered these irrigation canals. And that becomes, that is why it's called Phoenix. It's the sense of where it is a civilization reborn, where this supposedly banished people was.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, in addition to those peoples in what's now Arizona, there were, of course, the Pueblo people primarily in New Mexico and along the Rio Grande and some of its tributaries where there were dozens of villages when the Spanish first got there, when Coronado, you know, led his expedition out of Mexico into what's now the Southwest.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
and that those people also had a very long history. And there's evidence of trade between the Pueblos, the people of the rivers in Arizona, and Central Mexico with what became the Aztec civilization and so on. So there was very much a thriving culture. And you can today visit the ruins of Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon and see these really incredible
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
cliff dwellings that those peoples developed around 1100 and see that for them living in the desert was about making do with very scant resources and many lived very communally. Many pueblos are effectively huge apartment complexes. Right. And so what happened with Anglo settlement is very much an importation of a lifestyle from not just the Midwest and the Northeast, but from Europe.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And this sense of we can take this place and turn it into Europe. something that's more familiar east of the Mississippi as where you get this dictum of the rainfall follows the plow, which was very popular in the Manifest Destiny era that simply by cultivating land, you would turn it temperate and you would turn it into good agricultural land.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And even the Bureau of Reclamation, which is responsible for the Hoover Dam and much of the water infrastructure in the West, the name reclamation comes from the idea that there is some past version of the land that was facilitated mass agriculture. We simply have to reclaim it. We're not changing the environment. We're returning it to some idea of what it used to be.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Yeah, I mean, I think the history of Phoenix is a history of using up all of the water available and then reaching further to another water source. So it starts with the Salt River and irrigating the Salt River. And very rapidly, Phoenix becomes a kind of premier agricultural center, certainly in the region, but throughout the West.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And what happens, as I mentioned at the beginning, the Salt River is a very irregular river. And so they have sort of the first decade in the 1870s is a boom time. There's regular rain, good snowpack. They're able to really expand what's under cultivation very rapidly. The next decade is a drought. And...
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
It's probably the only time in Phoenix's history where it lost population, where people said like, oh, this isn't work. I'm going to go to California. And so you have this sort of like immediate challenge. And then the boom times recumb so much so that there's a massive flood that destroys the first railroad bridge in Phoenix.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
So all of that becomes part of why Theodore Roosevelt founds the Bureau of Reclamation is this idea of we need to even out the water. We need to make it possible so that when there's boom years, we can... hold on to that to use in the years when there isn't as much rain or snow.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And so the first dam that the Bureau of Reclamation builds is now called the Roosevelt Dam in the mountains kind of northeast of Phoenix. And that reservoir becomes what allows Phoenix to really begin growing because it gives it a very sustainable water source.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Within a couple of decades, the residential population has grown to the point where they can no longer pump groundwater because they're using the dam water for irrigation. People are drinking pumped water. Very quickly, it becomes silty and undrinkable. So they build a pipeline to the Verde River, which is sort of the next tributary north, and that allows them to expand again
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
which works until the 1950s when they suddenly need much more water than the Verde can provide. And you actually have a situation where the newspaper, the Arizona Republic, has a headline that is basically, Phoenix is going to run out of water a week from now.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
Like, there is a genuine crisis that I believe is actually on the 4th of July when this headline runs that, like, we are imminently going to run out of water. And very luckily, there is a massive rainstorm that follows, and they just kind of luck out of the crisis. But that experience leads them to say, okay, we need to, like... Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And this is why today almost all of residential Phoenix used to be farms. And all of that, the water that supplies the subdivisions is water from the Roosevelt Reservoir that was primarily irrigating citrus and cotton. So that allows the next growth spurt. And then we get into the 70s and they recognize again, we're growing so fast, we don't have enough water.
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
And that's how you get the Central Arizona Project, which is the 300-mile aqueduct to the Colorado River, allows Arizona to take advantage of its share of that river that it broke up with the other states. And that's completed in, I believe, 1993, and it connects both Phoenix and Tucson to the Colorado. And we are now...
American History Hit
How to Survive the Desert: Cities of the Southwest
for 30 years later have reached the point at which it's like, oh, still not really enough water.