This book reveals how natural forces and human actions shaped the Mono Lake Basin in eastern California over 10,000 years. The narrative begins with Indigenous peoples, follows the mid-nineteenth-century arrival of Euro-American settlers and the dispossession of the Kootzaduka'a people, and traces how control over water drove hydroelectric development, land monopolization, and the 1933 sale of water rights to Los Angeles. The city's diversion of nearly all fresh water from the Basin triggered an ecological crisis by the 1970s, leading to the legal battles and restoration efforts that have, for now, preserved this ancient landscape.