Water and Economic Opportunity: Homesteaders, Speculators, and the U.S. Reclamation Service, 1904-1924

Abstract

In 1902 Congress approved Newlands Act, enormously expanding role of federal government in western water development. In July of that year Reclamation Service (RS) was established to carry out provisions of new law by developing reclamation projects in West. The degree to which RS succeeded in its objectives is historically important: Paul Gates has called Newlands Act one of most significant mea? sures in shaping development of West while R. Douglas Hurt identi? fied it as the most important land legislation since Homestead Act.1 The Newlands Act specified that no entryman on a federal reclamation project was entitled to more land than may be reasonably required for support of a family. F. H. Newell, RS director, explained reasons for this provision: the object of reclamation law is primarily to put public domain into hands of small landowners?men who live upon land, support themselves, make prosperous homes. While some established land? owners intended to profit from act and lobbied RS officials to that end, in vicinity of reclamation projects themselves it was nevertheless com? monly understood that the original purpose of Reclamation Act [was]