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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When was the Bayano Dam built?
(a) 1944.
(b) 1976.
(c) 1920.
(d) 1983.

2. Which states are touched by the Colorado River?
(a) Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California.
(b) Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
(c) Idaho, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado.
(d) New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado.

3. The Sierra Nevada foothills are how many miles across the Central Valley from San Francisco?
(a) 35.
(b) 150.
(c) 225.
(d) 80.

4. The Grand Coulee is an ancient riverbed in what U.S. state?
(a) Colorado.
(b) Arizona.
(c) Montana.
(d) Washington.

5. For what organization was Marc Reisner a staff writer from 1972 to 1979?
(a) The Natural Resources Defense Council.
(b) The Sierra Club.
(c) The Nature Conservancy.
(d) The World Wildlife Fund.

6. John Wesley Powell figured that if you evenly distributed all of the surface water flowing between the Columbia River and the Gulf of Mexico, you would have what?
(a) Lush green pastures as far as the eye can see.
(b) Astounding yields on farms covering a quarter of the country.
(c) The most productive agricultural system the world has ever seen.
(d) A desert almost indistinguishable from what is there today.

7. How many major dams does the author say California has in the Introduction?
(a) 1,200.
(b) 560.
(c) 50.
(d) 240.

8. According to the author in the Introduction, “Fifty-six years after the first earth was turned beside City Creek, the Mormons had” how many “acres under full or partial irrigation in several states”?
(a) 6,000,000.
(b) 500,000.
(c) 2,000,000.
(d) 250,000.

9. What was the population of Los Angeles when Harrison Gray Otis moved there?
(a) 5,000.
(b) 12,500.
(c) 22,000.
(d) 29,000.

10. Almost all of the rain in Napa Valley falls between which months?
(a) May to September.
(b) August to December.
(c) March to July.
(d) November to March.

11. What were a series of conflicts between the city of Los Angeles, farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California, and environmentalists called?
(a) The California Water Wars.
(b) The Great Acquisition.
(c) The Aquatic Revolution.
(d) The Urban Water Hoard.

12. When was Harry Chandler born?
(a) 1933.
(b) 1918.
(c) 1864.
(d) 1885.

13. William Mulholland’s father held what profession?
(a) Teacher.
(b) Postal clerk.
(c) Car salesman.
(d) Doctor.

14. Which Texas historian wrote an article for Harper’s entitled “The American West, Perpetual Mirage”?
(a) Cordell Hull.
(b) Harry Morrison.
(c) Walter Prescott Webb.
(d) Lloyd Tevis.

15. When was the revised and updated version of Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water published?
(a) 1985.
(b) 1999.
(c) 1993.
(d) 1979.

Short Answer Questions

1. When did Francisco Vásquez de Coronado set out on horseback from Mexico with a couple of hundred men, driving into the uncharted North, according to the author in Chapter One?

2. According to the author in Chapter Two, “the most persecuted among the virtuous in nineteenth-century America were, besides peaceful Indians and runaway slaves and Mennonites and Quakers, the members of” what faith?

3. Where was Marc Reisner born?

4. When was Harrison Gray Otis born?

5. How much of the water in California is used for irrigation purposes, according to the author?

(see the answer keys)

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