Acknowledgements

This biography of Francis G. Newlands comes from a small world of people and places. The people are John Morton Blum, David M. Kennedy, Zev Karlin-Neumann and myself. The places are New Haven and Palo Alto. David Kennedy and I became friends in New Haven in 1962, when we were getting our PhDs in the Yale American Studies program. That was 57 years ago. John Blum was our professor, mentor, and eventually, friend. He directed our dissertations. John died in 2011, but his friendship played an important role in our lives.

John suggested in 1962 that I write my dissertation on Francis Newlands, who in 1902 had authored the first major law of the Progressive Era, the National Reclamation Act. Both John and I were easterners, and I had never heard much about Newlands. John said that Newlands was all about water and that water was a big Progressive Era issue. “It will get bigger,” John said. He was right then, about water and about writing about Newlands.

I wrote a tidy dissertation on The Early Career of Francis Newlands, 1848-1898. The dissertation cut off four years before he drafted his Reclamation Act. The short circuit is entirely my fault, as I let the Newlands manuscripts capture me. Newlands’ papers were voluminous and beautifully archived. They contained unique, original materials (especially maps and pamphlets) that later were transferred to Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library. The papers also were substantively rich. Frank Newlands had lived quite a life as a young man. You could say correctly that he was the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time. His papers read like an adventure book on the Gilded Age. When I emerged from writing about the Gilded Age, I chose to end my dissertation. Newlands’ life was some story even before he became politically important. The historical year was 1898 and Newlands was 50. It was 1965 in New Haven for Bill Lilley.

I left Newlands for a while, but David Kennedy and I stayed close. He left New Haven for Stanford where he has long taught American history. He also started the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford in 2005. David grew it from an infant to the big boy it is now, and I serve happily on its advisory council.

One day, David asked me if I would consider publishing my Newlands dissertation on the Lane Center website. David set several conditions. David wanted the dissertation thoroughly rewritten and researched, and he wanted Newlands’ life brought up to 1902 and the Newlands Act. Just as John Blum had said, David was saying that Newlands was about water.

David offered me a lifeline in making these changes. He had a brilliant, former Stanford student who could help me, but I had to persuade him to help. “It is up to the two of you to work out an arrangement. His name is Zev Karlin-Neumann, and he lives near you in Washington,” David said. Zev proved to be the helper of the century. Zev is good at merging old, typewritten documents into new, digital formats, and he is not fazed by opaque original documents from other times, places, and formats. He is a genius as a conceptualizer. I have a fond hope that someday I might be able to help him as he helped me.

Newlands II, as I call this study, is very different from and far better than Newlands I (the dissertation). The advantages of a digital world are immense. For instance, much of the political conflict in this study revolves around whether the separate states should control the interstate flow of river waters. In Newlands I, I could not make proper use of the famous Geological Survey map of “The Yellowstone Basin,” drawn by Frederick Newell for John Wesley Powell in 1890. The map shows that the Yellowstone water basin was split equally between Montana and Wyoming. In the original paper version of “Yellowstone,” the boundary line was there but not emboldened. In Newlands II, the reader can click on the indistinct boundary line and make it stand out in color. The lesson becomes obvious—one river feeds two states.

The mistakes in this book are mine alone. I thank Kennedy and Karlin-Neumann for trying to prevent them. I also cite Donald Pisani and William Rowley, two Newlands scholars in their own rights, for doing their best to help someone who had left Newlands to them for 53 years.

Most important, I want to thank my lovely wife Eve for tolerating what became the digital coming of Francis Newlands. We have had a long and happy marriage, and she never let Frank Newlands disrupt it.