Ballad of Cable Hogue Conclusion

The view of water rights in The Ballad of Cable Hogue becomes possible because Cable staggers into a mud hole, one that reveals a magical, Moses-like expanse of concentrated water. Cable has found water—and it doesn’t take long for him to realize he is sitting on an endless source of money, all resting on the federal law called the Desert Land Act. The wagon tracks he sees nearby are not only a sign of civilization but of progress.  It’s Cable’s water, and people in wagons, stagecoaches, and buckboards are going to need it.

The film’s explanation for the Desert Land Act is based in fact. On March 3, 1877 the Forty Fourth Congress enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States passed Chapter 107, “An act to provide for the sale of desert lands in certain States and Territories.” Inspired by the hard work of California representative John K. Luttrell of the state’s northeastern district, the Act asserts,

That it shall be lawful for any citizen of the United States, or any person of requisite age “who may be entitled to become a citizen, and who has filed his declaration to become such” and upon payment of twenty five cents per acre—to file a declaration under oath with the register and the receiver of the lead district in which any desert land is situated, that he intends to reclaim a tract of desert land, not exceeding one section, by conducting water upon the same, within the period of three years thereafter.

Although the message of The Ballad of Cable Hogue differs from that of earlier films focused on water rights, it is still immersed in historical memory, in references to environmental history that attempted to both settle the West and turn its desert lands into a garden. These attempts to transform a desert into a garden seem to fail in the film because water serves only as a resource for financial gain. Instead, Cable Hogue demonstrates the negative effects that even a populist version of progress can have on individuals and their environment. Both populist and progressive visions of progress are represented by the changing road that passes by what was Cable’s stagecoach stop. Cable both literally and figuratively “stands still” as stagecoaches and wagons turn into motorcars.

While Cable Hogue seems to valorize claims that economic growth facilitates environmental action, it merely shows how a lone miner is able to exploit water resources for profit. No fecund valley emerges from Cable’s discovery. His water hole does not promote a garden in the desert. Cable uses water only for profit, not for community growth. Most telling, however, in Cable Hogue is the use of technology as a signifier of progress. In The Ballad of Cable Hogue, progress literally runs over Cable, suggesting that unchecked progress may result in death not only for nature but also for ourselves.