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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In which year does the author state “the Bureau of Reclamation was just beginning its detailed feasibility investigations of the Kings and Kern River projects”?
(a) 1963.
(b) 1919.
(c) 1937.
(d) 1945.

2. In his budget request for fiscal year 1945, FDR included a request of how much money to permit the Bureau to begin work on the Kings River?
(a) $8 million.
(b) $1 million.
(c) $3 million.
(d) $5 million.

3. In January of 1862, San Francisco recorded how many inches of rain?
(a) 39.
(b) 12.
(c) 27.
(d) 18.

4. In 1952, when Los Angeles built a second battery of pumps at the head of its aqueduct, California’s diversion climbed toward how many acre-feet?
(a) 2.8 million.
(b) 12.5 million.
(c) 5.3 million.
(d) 8.2 million.

5. Floyd Dominy was Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner beginning in what year?
(a) 1959.
(b) 1967.
(c) 1945.
(d) 1938.

6. The largest of the canals dug by the Hohokam was fifteen miles long and how many yards wide from bank to bank?
(a) 23.
(b) 11.
(c) 35.
(d) 4.

7. In San Francisco, average rainfall in May is how much?
(a) Two-thirds of an inch.
(b) Six-tenths of an inch.
(c) Four-tenths of an inch.
(d) One-quarter of an inch.

8. Chapter Ten is subtitled what?
(a) “The Go-Go Years.”
(b) “Those Who Refuse to learn…”
(c) “Chinatown.”
(d) “A Country of Illusion.”

9. By the mid-1920s, thanks to irrigation pumping, California had surpassed what as the richest agricultural state in the country?
(a) Iowa.
(b) Illinois.
(c) Minnesota.
(d) Nebraska.

10. The author states in Chapter Ten that “In eighty-two years, the Bureau would see the breakup of only one major illegal landholding through to the end” What company was this?
(a) Sierra Pacific Industries.
(b) The Tenneco Corporation.
(c) Irvine Ranch.
(d) The DiGiorgio Company.

11. The Kings, the Kaweah, the Tule, and what are the southernmost rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley of California?
(a) The Tuolumne.
(b) The Trinity.
(c) The Sacramento.
(d) The Kern.

12. Who was Pat Brown’s water resources chief?
(a) Paul Sears.
(b) Bill Warne.
(c) Mike Strauss.
(d) E. O. Wattis.

13. What was the population of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1940?
(a) 155,000.
(b) 92,000.
(c) 65,000.
(d) 34,000.

14. In what county is Phoenix, Arizona?
(a) Mohave County.
(b) Maricopa County.
(c) Apache County.
(d) Navajo County.

15. The Hoover Dam is on the border between which two U.S. states?
(a) California and Arizona.
(b) Arizona and Nevada.
(c) California and Nevada.
(d) Arizona and New Mexico.

Short Answer Questions

1. About what percent of the state of California receives less than twenty inches of precipitation a year?

2. According to the author, “[Ronald] Reagan, as a westerner, should have been a friend of dams, but he was growing more conservative by the hour, and true conservatives tend to dislike” what?

3. Every year, the Mississippi River carries about how many acres-feet of water out to sea, according to the author in Chapter Six?

4. In passing the Boulder Canyon Project Act, Congress had implied that Arizona’s share was at least how many acre-feet?

5. The 17.5-million-acre-foot yield that the Compact negotiators had ascribed to the Colorado River was based on about how many years of stream flow measurement, according to the author in Chapter Eight?

(see the answer keys)

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