Early Spanish and Mexican immigrants, although they exploited water supplies on a large scale for their settlements, considered water a community resource, not to be monopolized by anyone. It was the Americans, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, who transformed California into a collection of the nation's preeminent water seekers. By the late twentieth century, a large, colorful cast of characters and communities had wheeled and dealed, built, diverted, and connived their way to an entirely different California waterscape. The results are presented not sensationally, but soberingly. One of Hundley's most important contributions to California water history, besides creating a clear, engrossing narrative of its intricacies, is to demolish the image of a monolithic "water empire" managed by a coercive elite.