Looking at Ottoman, British, French, and Italian studies on water management in the Sahara, this paper will trace how access to water shaped both the physical landscape and regional power structures in the Libyan territories during the late Ottoman administration and the early years of the Italian occupation. In the nineteenth century, well-digging techniques in the Sahara concentrated access to water in the hands of a constellation of power brokers. Ottoman state officials further encouraged the consolidation of control over water resources in the late nineteenth century as part of a broader effort to facilitate an increased integration of the region into the empire. State officials in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not necessarily recognize how important control over water access points was in their identification of regional power brokers; they were more likely to cite religious leadership or tribal affiliations in determining the influence of particular individuals. The correlation between access to water supplies and regional power structures came into stark relief only when the expansion of Italian state presence after the First World War threatened to overturn a fragile balance of power. Plans to construct railways into the desert interior under the Italian occupation promised to decrease the value of access to water, in the short term by increasing water access points along the construction zone, and in the long term by providing a cheaper alternative to camel trade and its overwhelming reliance on regular water supplies. Documentary evidence to construct a social history of the region in the nineteenth century is notoriously difficult to access, and my analysis of how well-drilling techniques mapped power structures onto the physical landscape will provide a rare glimpse into how those practices impacted one aspect of daily life in the Libyan territories. This paper will also explore how the power structures determined by access to water in Ottoman Libya persisted after independence. To what extent did Qaddafi’s extensive irrigation projects graft onto older patterns of regional power structures?