Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

IRRIGATION WORK IN LA GRANGE DAM, CALIFORNIA. benefits until 1901. During the last six years there has been great activity in many of the States in the reclamation of large areas of land under this Act. The last and most important legislative measure for the reclamation of the desert was the Reclamation Act, which The Reclama became Jaw on June 17 1902. tion Act. The principal features of the Act briefly are :— 1. A reclamation fund in the Treasury, consisting of the proceeds from the sales of public lands in the sixteen arid and semi- arid States and Territories. 2. The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to construct works and to let contracts, provided the money is available in the fund. 3. The return to the fund of the actual cost of each project by the sale of water rights, payments to be made in a series of instalments running over a period of ten years. 4. The holding of public lands for actual settlers under the Homestead Act in small farm units sufficient to support a family. 5. The sale of water rights to private land- owners, but not for more than 160 acres, making land monopoly impossible, and .forc- ing the division of large estates. 6. The ultimate turning over to the people of the irrigation works, except the reservoirs, THE UNITED STATES. 93 to be operated and managed by them under a system of home rule. The Reclamation Act was passed by Congress at a most opportune time. The question of providing homes for the rapidly growing popu- lation was becoming acute. The rapid narrowing of the Vigorous . .. Measures. limits or the unoccupied public domain, and the tremendous increase in land values in all the settled portions of the country, combined to make it yearly more and more difficult for men of moderate means to secure a foothold on the land. The hunger for land assumed such proportions that within four years 250,000 families, largely from the Middle West, emigrated to Canada, where cheap lands were offered by the Dominion Government. Immediately after the passage of the Reclama- tion Act, the Reclamation Service prosecuted the preliminary work of investigation and survey with such vigour that in September 1903 a contract was let, and actual construc- tion was begun on one of the important works in Nevada. In the comparatively brief period of its existence, and notwithstanding the enormous extent of the country embraced in the arid regions, three-fifths of the United States, the Reclamation Service has completed surveys and perfected estimates for thirty large irrigation projects, all of which have been approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Of these, ten are completed, and on eleven others the construction is advanced sufficiently IRRIGATION WHEEL ON SNAKE RIVER.