River in Ruin: The Story of the Carmel River

The thin ribbon of the Carmel River is just thirty-six miles long and no wider in most places than a child can throw a stone. It is the primary water supply for the ever-burgeoning presence of tourists, agriculture, and industry on California's Monterey Peninsula. It is also one of the top ten endangered rivers in North America. The river's story, which dramatically unfolds in this book, is an epic tale of exploitation, development, and often unwitting degradation reaching back to the first appearance of Europeans on the pristine peninsula. River in Ruin is a precise weaving of water history—local and larger—and a natural, social, and environmental narrative of the Carmel River. Ray A. March traces the river's misuse from 1879 and details how ever more successful promotions of Monterey demanded more and more water, leading to one dam after another. As a result the river was disastrously depleted, cluttered with concrete rubble, and inhospitable to the fish prized by visitors and residents alike. March's book is a cautionary tale about squandering precious water resources—about the ultimate cost of a ruined river and the slim but urgent hope of bringing it back to life.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations  Preface  Prologue  One Spanish Era: Vizcaino to Father Serra  Two Crocker Arrives: Tourist Trade Begins  Three Not Enough Water: Building the Chinese Dam  Four Water Demand Increases: A Second Dam Is Built  Five A Village of Artists: At Odds with the Pacific Improvement Company  Six Carmel's Theater of Water: Enter Two Therapists from Oakland  Seven Sardines and Golf Courses: Yet Another Dam  Eight The Era of Disrespect: An Environmental Awakening  Nine Demise of the Steelhead: Anglers Debate the Fate of the Fish  Ten The Final Insult: Fire in the Forest  Epilogue  Acknowledgments  Selected Bibliography 

About the Author :
Ray A. March, the author of several nonfiction books, is a career journalist and cofounder and editor of the Modoc Independent News. He is also the cofounder of Modoc Forum, a nonprofit perpetuating an awareness of rural life through literature and the arts.

Review :
"Painstakingly researched, this enlightening book by Ray March does westerners a considerable favour. We need more books like this. We need to understand how we created, and how to cure, the watershed chaos we currently inhabit." William Kittredge, author of A Hole in the Sky: A Memoir. "The story of a river, when best told, is the story of the region it succours, and Ray March has told that story with deep research, clarity of vision, and personal involvement. When it is told particularly well, as March has done, it is also the story of other rivers."Philip L. Fradkin, author of A River No More: The Colorado River and the West.