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Worksheet Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics

The 1911 Fossgate Aqueduct and Quennell Hollow's Decline

A grade 10 worksheet on a fictional city aqueduct, with a seventy-year population and farmland table students use to trace how one decision moved people.

Objectives

  1. Students will calculate growth and decline from a seventy-year population and land-use table.
  2. Students will explain how the purchase of farmland with water rights transferred both water and population.
  3. Students will evaluate a water transfer as a political and economic decision with named winners and losers.

Vocabulary

Water right
The legal permission to take water from a river, lake, or aquifer and use it. Water rights decide who gets water when there is not enough for everyone.

Also: aqueduct, out-migration, land use, watershed of origin

Teacher overview

Cities that outgrow their local supply have often reached for water in a distant valley, and the effects on the supplying valley usually extend beyond the water that leaves it. This worksheet uses a fictional case, the city of Fossgate and the farming valley of Quennell Hollow, with a seventy-year table of population and irrigated acreage in both places. Students calculate the growth and the decline, identify the period of steepest farmland loss, and then explain how buying farms with their water rights attached moved people as well as water. The table is built so that the steepest acreage loss falls in the decades when the purchases were under way, which points toward a decision rather than a drought.

The 1911 Fossgate Aqueduct and Quennell Hollow's Decline — Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Fossgate and Quennell Hollow are fictional places. Fossgate completed an aqueduct in 1911 that carries water ninety miles from Quennell Hollow to the city. To secure the water, city agents bought farms in the Hollow together with the water rights attached to them. Use the table and the notes below to answer the questions, and show your work.

Year Fossgate population Quennell Hollow population Quennell Hollow irrigated acres
1900 32,000 7,400 24,000
1920 118,000 6,100 15,500
1940 265,000 4,300 6,200
1970 610,000 3,050 1,900

Two purchase prices appear in the city's records. In 1913 city agents paid about $95 an acre for farmland with water rights in the Hollow. In 1928 they paid about $210 an acre for comparable land.

  1. How many times larger was Fossgate's population in 1970 than in 1900? Round to the nearest tenth.
  2. What was the percent change in Quennell Hollow's population between 1900 and 1970? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent and say whether it is an increase or a decrease.
  3. What was the percent change in Quennell Hollow's irrigated acres between 1900 and 1970? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent and say whether it is an increase or a decrease.
  4. Using your answers to items 2 and 3, which fell faster in the Hollow, the number of people or the number of irrigated acres?
  5. Subtract the acreage figures for each pair of consecutive listed years. Between which two consecutive listed years did the Hollow lose the largest number of irrigated acres, and how many acres were lost in that period?
  6. Using the two purchase prices, how much more per acre did the city pay in 1928 than in 1913?
  7. Using your answer to item 6, explain in two or three sentences why one farmer might have sold in 1913 while a neighbor held out until 1928.
  8. Fossgate grew while the Hollow shrank. Using the table, explain how a single decision by one city government redistributed population between the two places.
  9. Name one group in Fossgate that gained from the aqueduct and one group in Quennell Hollow that lost, and state exactly what each gained or lost.
  10. Describe how the environmental character of Quennell Hollow changed after 1911, and explain why that change should be called the result of a political and economic decision rather than a natural one.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: 19.1 times. Dividing 610,000 by 32,000 gives 19.0625, which rounds to 19.1.
  2. Answer: 58.8 percent decrease. The change is 3,050 minus 7,400, or negative 4,350. Dividing by 7,400 gives negative 0.5878, a decrease of about 58.8 percent.
  3. Answer: 92.1 percent decrease. The change is 1,900 minus 24,000, or negative 22,100. Dividing by 24,000 gives negative 0.9208, a decrease of about 92.1 percent.
  4. Answer: The irrigated acres. Acreage fell about 92.1 percent while population fell about 58.8 percent, so farming shrank faster than the population that had depended on it.
  5. Answer: 9,300 acres, lost between 1920 and 1940. The three losses are 8,500 acres from 1900 to 1920, 9,300 acres from 1920 to 1940, and 4,300 acres from 1940 to 1970.
  6. Answer: $115 an acre. Subtracting 95 from 210 leaves 115.
  7. Answer: Accept any answer that uses the rising price. A strong response notes that early sellers took the first offer when the aqueduct had just opened and its long-term effect on the Hollow was still uncertain, while a neighbor who waited watched prices rise as the city's need grew and as irrigation became harder for anyone still farming beside sold-off land.
  8. Answer: Accept any response that connects the purchases to migration. Buying farms with their water rights ended irrigation on that land, which ended the farm work that supported Hollow families, so residents moved away, while the water those farms had used supported new households in Fossgate. One government's purchasing decision therefore moved both the water and the people who followed it.
  9. Answer: Accept any well-matched pair. Examples include Fossgate homebuilders and new residents, who gained a reliable supply that let the city grow, set against Hollow farm laborers and merchants, who lost the irrigated acreage and the local trade that went with it.
  10. Answer: Accept any response that names the change and its cause. The Hollow shifted from irrigated cropland to dry, largely unfarmed ground, with fewer people and less local business. The cause was a purchase program and an aqueduct authorized by the city and permitted by the state, not a change in rainfall, so the decline followed a decision made outside the valley by people who did not live there.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the percent-change formula worked once on the Fossgate population row, which is not asked about in items 2 or 3, and give students a blank subtraction grid for item 5 with the three year pairs already labeled. Allow calculators throughout.

Extension

Ask students to add a 1990 row that they invent and defend, giving a population and an acreage for Quennell Hollow along with a two-sentence explanation of what would have had to happen in state law or city policy to produce those numbers.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "aqueduct," "water right," and "irrigated" with a labeled sketch of a valley, a canal, and a distant city. Allow items 8, 9, and 10 to be planned in a two-column chart of gains and losses before students write, and provide the sentence frame "Fossgate gained ... because ... , while Quennell Hollow lost ... because ..." for item 9.

Extensions

Have students identify the source of their own community's drinking water and how far it travels, then write a paragraph naming the place the water comes from and what that place gives up, if anything, to supply it. Students whose water comes from local wells can instead describe what would change in their town if a distant city sought to buy those wells.