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

2. In what year was the Hoover Dam dedicated?
(a) 1922.
(b) 1956.
(c) 1935.
(d) 1949.

3. In 1848, what was the population of San Francisco?
(a) 9,000.
(b) 4,500.
(c) 2,500.
(d) 800.

4. Who does the author refer to as “horse-drawn Fresnoscraper kind of contractor” in Chapter Four?
(a) Emil Haury.
(b) W. A. Bechtel.
(c) Harry Morrison.
(d) Jim Casey.

5. 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) 22.
(c) 4.
(d) 15.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what year did Charles Rockwood see the Colorado River for the first time?

2. The drop to the Colorado River is nearly how many feet?

3. Who is quoted in the beginning of Chapter Four as stating, “Ours was the first and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locale”?

4. 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?

5. When did Harrison Gray Otis move to Santa Barbara, California?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did William Mulholland’s character and career develop in his later years?

2. Who was William Mulholland? Why did he come to Los Angeles?

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

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

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

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

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

8. What did Arizona do in response to California’s challenge for the Colorado River?

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

10. What genre is Cadillac Desert? What does Marc Reisner reveal through his approach in the book?

(see the answer keys)

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