Walter Prescott Webb: Biography, Ideas, Further Reading, and a List of Books by Author Walter Prescott Webb

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Walter Prescott Webb (April 3, 1888–March 8, 1963) was a 20th century U.S. historian and author noted for his groundbreaking historical work on the American West. As president of the Texas State Historical Association, he launched the project that produced the Handbook of Texas. He is also noted for his early criticism of the water usage patterns in the region.

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Rundell (1963) has examined Webb's main books to see what inspired and prompted the writing of each, what the purpose and message of each seems to be, and Webb's emergent philosophy of history. The professional reception of these studies is also considered. The message of The Great Plains (1931) is contained in its subtitle, 'A Study in Institutions and Environment.' Its primary purpose was to present representative ideas about the region rather than to write its history. Webb utilized the same approach in The Great Frontier (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1964) by attempting to put his subject in the context of Western civilization, calling the settled area of Europe 'the Metropolis' and the rest of the world 'the Great Frontier.' Webb's The Texas Rangers (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1965) was a pungent and learned treatment of a frontier institution. The economic domination of the North, through the tariff, Civil War pensions, and patent monopolies, (over the South and West, which contained the largest share of natural resources) was the theme of Divided We Stand. Another volume, More Water for Texas (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 1954), popularized and vitalized a Federal study of what he regarded as the most serious problem of his state. Environment and his experiences within that environment explain Webb's analyses. He was interested in broad outlines rather than with the weight of documentation.

The Webb thesis focused on the fragility of the Western environment, pointing out the aridity of the territory and the dangers of an industrialized West. O'Har (2006) shows that in his classic interdisciplinary history of the post-Civil War West. Webb develops dominant characteristics of the Great Plains - treelessness, level terrain, and semiaridity - and examines effect on the lives of people from very different environments. To succeed, pioneers made radical readjustments in their way of life, eschewed traditions, and altered social institutions. Webb believed what set the Great Plains apart from other regions was its individualism, innovation, democracy, and lawlessness, themes he derived from the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner. His focus is said to have missed the emergence of a national empire and that he failed to acknowledge the roles played by women, Indians, and Mexicans.

Water

Webb was an esteemed historian when he wrote an article in the May 1957 edition of Harper's entitled "The American West, Perpetual Mirage". In the article, Webb criticized U.S. water policy in the West, stating that the region was "a semidesert with a desert heart", and that it was a national folly to continue to follow the current federal policy (managed through the United States Bureau of Reclamation) of attempting to convert the region into productive cropland through irrigation. Webb's criticism of federal policy was roundly rebuked at the time, but some contemporary critics of U.S. water policy regard him as prophetic in his views.