Four or five years before The Winning of Barbara Worth was published, President Theodore Roosevelt asked Congress to allocate funds for harnessing the Colorado River, which threatened California's Imperial Valley. The flood plain was rich with fertile soil that needed irrigation to make it an oasis in the desert and needed the guarantee that it would not be devastated by the seasonal ravages of the Colorado.

Wright's epic novel centers on man's responsibility for his environment. He researched the history of the valley and the reclamation project and had five engineers read the manuscript of The Winning of Barbara Worth to authenticate his reclamation procedures. His King's Basin is a thinly disguised name for the Imperial Valley; the fictitious name San Felipe is actually San Diego; Rubio City is Yuma, Arizona; Barba is Holtville; Frontier is Calexico; and Republica is El Centro, where Wright lived while...