The management of water in the West’s arid landscape has also been central to artistic endeavors, especially with the creation and destruction of large-scale dam projects. Dorothea Lange was a photographer who created a photoessay called Death of a Valley, in which she depicts an abandoned valley in California soon to be filled as large reservoir. The Monticello Dam, meant to provide infrastructure such as electricity and water for Bay Area suburbs, agribusiness, and defense installations, would soon create the artificial Lake Berryessa, erasing the agricultural lands and life that once existed in the valley. Bob H. Reinhardt, Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon, writes about the destruction of the Western small town in the early Cold War era, where “those who stayed took moderate paths …show more content…
She brings to light the tradeoffs of the pioneering American of legend and the necessity to not forget what is lost in time. Another water project, the Salton Sea on the Southern tip of California is a prime example of the way artists of the West interacted with government projects of water management. The diversion of water from the Colorado river in canals in the early 20th century led to the creation of the small inland sea. Edmund Mitchell writes about the reason for the creation of the sea in his essay “The Salton Sea” in 1906: “the California Development Company set itself to supply