The Ogallala aquifer, a vast store of underground water reserves extending from South Dakota through Texas, is the product of eons of accumulated glacial melts, ancient Rocky Mountain snow melts, and rainfall, all percolating slowly through gravel beds hundreds of feet thick. Irrigation from the aquifer has allowed the High Plains region to prosper, but without revolutionary changes in the management of this resource, the future may bring a return to subsistence conditions.

Focusing on the Ogallala aquifer, John Opie vividly portrays the south-central plains—its natural resources, the history of settlement and dryland farming, and the remarkable irrigation technologies that have industrialized farming in the region. He recounts state and local attempts to manage and conserve groundwater and describes the operations, insights, hopes, and fragile future of several families farming on the High Plains. In doing so, he illustrates that the aquifer is not merely a local resource, nor simply a regional treasure: its influence is felt in farming, food, and foreign trade issues at the national and international levels.

A distinguished professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, John Opie is also director of the Center for Technology Studies and founding editor of Environmental History Review. His other publications include The Law of the Land: Two Hundred Years of American Farmland Policy (Nebraska, 1987).

"A sane, scholarly model for addressing local enviro-crises."—Booklist

"This work will give the reader the basis for planning the future of the Ogallala."—Journal of Sustainable Agriculture

"A richly detailed and well-researched study of one of the most important issues facing the American breadbasket. I highly recommend this sensitive, sympathetic study to anyone interested in how we can preserve an agricultural future for the plains."—Donald Worster, University of Kansas

"Extremely important and timely as a case study not only in the complex variables affecting the relationship between farmers and groundwater, but also as a blueprint for the future of the region."—Donald E. Green, Central State University, Oklahoma

1995 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History, sponsored by the American Society for Ethnohistory, winner