DESCRIPTION: In 1936, the Vale-Owyhee irrigation projects opened up sagebrush desert to homesteading along the Oregon-Idaho border. Within a few years, hundreds of families were establishing new farms; Dorothea Lange recorded these pioneers’ progress in 1939. More than six decades later, I encountered families she had photographed and found that the system still provides water to farms (and new subdivisions). I met the ditch riders who deliver the water and the farmers who use it and listened to their growing concern about conflicts over water.