For my research topic I have chosen to concentrate on the development of massive river projects during the late 1800s and early 1900s  along the Colorado River and it’s influence on the Southwestern United States.  I will go along by doing this by first asking what projects and legislation in the west helped facilitate the buliding of large daming projects and how the local areas reacted to such changes.  Also, I will probe into why the southwest area felt the need for such large expensive projects.  “The American West” by Hine & Faragher referred to the massive river projects specifically around the Colorado River, which I will mainly be focusing on.  The Hoover Dam and other main water and energy projects helped the west boom and rival the east coast.  The workers and the lobbyists for these projects influenced how the west was viewed at this time of an industrial boom. 

I have found numerous sources for my reasearch topic.  Of the many primary sources most have come from GMU online databases and the National Archives site.  Many come from the early 1900s and are newspaper articles from the area (i.e. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego etc.).    I found also many first hand accounts of these building projects in online databases, some describing what was going on in construction or even the plans that outlined the uses of these projects for large masses of areas in the southwest.  I am still in the process of finding more sources and will travel beyond my previous spectrum of research capabilitities to clarify the scale of such projects on the Colorado River.  But the overall point and topic to be “clarified” will be the how the projects along the Colorado River in their grand scale influenced and changed the southwest U.S. 

Comments are welcomed.