Of man, time, and a river the Skagit River, how should it be used? captures the intense late-twentieth-century environmental and industrial conflicts over one of the most powerful and ecologically vital watersheds in western Washington. DeLorme details how the region's complex topography—spanning from the sheer, glaciated alpine canyons of the North Cascades down to the broad, fertile alluvial floodplains emptying into Puget Sound—strictly dictated competing models of resource extraction and human settlement. By documenting a series of pivotal community meetings, the narrative highlights the immense spatial tension between exploiting the steep, narrow upper river corridors for massive hydroelectric dam projects to power distant urban centers, and preserving the delicate hydrography required to sustain the lower valley's rich agricultural grid and ancient, fragile salmon runs. The proceedings underscore how the sheer scale, velocity, and seasonal flooding of the river forced residents, engineers, and conservationists into a fierce debate over the ultimate physical control of the landscape. Ultimately, this documentary record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the immense hydrological force and extreme topographic diversity of this Pacific Northwest river basin fundamentally shaped the modern political and environmental battlelines over the region's natural resources.

Conference papers and proceedings, Fisheries, Fisheries Skagit River (B.C. and Wash.), Floods, Floods Skagit River (B.C. and Wash.), History, Inondations Skagit (C.-B. et Wash. : Fleuve), North America Skagit River, North America Skagit River Valley, Pêches Skagit (C.-B. et Wash. : Fleuve), Skagit (C.-B. et Wash. : Fleuve), Skagit (C.-B. et Wash.