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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. Who did Charles Rockwood convince to join forces with him in irrigation, according to the author in Chapter Four?
(a) Michael Robinson.
(b) George Chaffey.
(c) Bill Warne.
(d) N.H. Darton.

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

4. How many acres of marsh and swamp forest were converted to farms in Arkansas and Louisiana, according to the author in the Introduction?
(a) 3 million.
(b) 60 million.
(c) 25 million.
(d) 9 million.

5. The author states in Chapter Two, “Brigham Young dispatched a party of his most loyal disciples, in 1851 to follow whose old route to the coast?
(a) Henry J. Kaiser’s.
(b) Jedediah Smith’s.
(c) James Marshall’s.
(d) C.W. Hollister’s.

6. Who was to the man to “discover a malleable yellow rock in the tail race of Sutter’s Mill on the American River above Sacramento” in the 1800s,” according to the author in Chapter One?
(a) Emil Haury.
(b) C.W. Hollister.
(c) James Marshall.
(d) Floyd Dominy.

7. The narrator states in Chapter Four that “If the Colorado River suddenly stopped flowing, you would have” how many “years of carryover capacity in the reservoirs before you had to evacuate most of southern California and Arizona and a good portion of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming”?
(a) 11.
(b) 4.
(c) 15.
(d) 22.

8. What western city does the author describe “with exotic palms and golf-course lawns and a five-hundred-foot fountain and an artificial surf” in the Introduction?
(a) Phoenix, Arizona.
(b) Reno, Nevada.
(c) Bakersfield, California.
(d) Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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

10. Where was Harrison Gray Otis born?
(a) Ely, Minnesota.
(b) Marietta, Ohio.
(c) Green Bay, Wisconsin.
(d) Atlanta, Georgia.

11. The drop to the Colorado River is nearly how many feet?
(a) 5,000.
(b) 7,600.
(c) 13,000.
(d) 9,400.

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

13. The first boom of travelers to Los Angeles culminated in what year, according to the author in Chapter Two?
(a) 1905.
(b) 1920.
(c) 1889.
(d) 1933.

14. According to the author, “New England was completely forested in 1620 and nearly deforested” how many years later?
(a) 30.
(b) 150.
(c) 120.
(d) 85.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. 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”?

2. From whom did Harrison Gray Otis purchase the Santa Barbara Press?

3. When was John Wesley Powell born?

4. 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?

5. Harry Morrison and Morris Knudsen, two engineers formerly with the Bureau of Reclamation, went into business together where, according to the author in Chapter Four?

(see the answer keys)

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