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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. 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?
(a) The Mormon faith.
(b) The Christian Science faith.
(c) The Muslim faith.
(d) The Jewish faith.

2. 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) Jedediah Smith’s.
(b) James Marshall’s.
(c) C.W. Hollister’s.
(d) Henry J. Kaiser’s.

3. 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) Albuquerque, New Mexico.
(b) Phoenix, Arizona.
(c) Bakersfield, California.
(d) Reno, Nevada.

4. When was Harrison Gray Otis born?
(a) 1856.
(b) 1879.
(c) 1908.
(d) 1837.

5. Where was William Mulholland born?
(a) London, England.
(b) Dublin, Ireland.
(c) Lisbon, Portugal.
(d) Stockholm, Sweden.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. 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”?

3. Who wrote the sonnet “Ozymandias,” which is quoted in the opening of Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water?

4. Who, according to the author, was the unlikeliest commissioner the Bureau ever had?

5. What word used in the book’s Introduction means allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What happened to the populations of Nebraska and Kansas in 1890?

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

4. Who won in the struggles over the Colorado River, according to the author in Chapter Four?

5. What is significant about the movement toward revisionist history?

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

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

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

9. What publication does the author describe which was written by John Wesley Powell?

10. What does the author write of the impressions from the Lewis and Clark expedition in the West in Chapter Two?

(see the answer keys)

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