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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. When was Franklin D. Roosevelt born?
(a) 1907.
(b) 1882.
(c) 1921.
(d) 1856.

4. What is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological Oasisamerica traditions of what is now the American Southwest which the author describes in Chapter One?
(a) Brenula.
(b) Hohokam.
(c) Trincala.
(d) Bahmona.

5. What is the title of the book’s Introduction?
(a) A Semidesert with a Desert Heart.
(b) First Causes.
(c) Chinatown.
(d) Rivals in Crime.

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. When was the revised and updated version of Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water published?

3. What is the title of Chapter Three?

4. 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”?

5. 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?

Short Essay Questions

1. How have historians traditionally spent their focus in regard to the American West?

2. How does the author describe the American West in Chapter One?

3. How was Cadillac Desert received upon its first publication?

4. When did the perception of the American West as a desert begin to change? Who helped initiate this change?

5. What actions did William Mulholland take in order to solve the water problems in Los Angeles?

6. What awards has Marc Reisner earned for his environmental and writing work?

7. What impressions did the first Europeans to discover the American West have of the environment?

8. What are the historical foci of Marc Reisner in writing Cadillac Desert?

9. What reaction did the public and lawmakers have to the advice of John Wesley Powell regarding settlement in the West? What was the result?

10. Describe the author of the book. What relevant professional experience does Reisner have to ecology?

(see the answer keys)

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