The Klamath Reclamation Project
Near Klamath Falls, Oregon
The green farm fields that surround Klamath Falls are not natural. They were made, drained out of lakes and marshes by one of the earliest federal irrigation efforts in the West. After Congress passed the Reclamation Act in nineteen oh two, the new Reclamation Service chose the Klamath Basin as one of its first projects, authorizing it in nineteen oh five and beginning construction in nineteen oh six.
Engineers built dams, canals, and ditches, and drew down the shallow waters of Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake. Tule Lake, once a vast sheet of water, was shrunk to a fraction of its former size, a managed sump. The exposed lakebed, rich black soil, was opened to homesteaders.
After the First World War and again after the Second, the government held famous public lotteries to give this reclaimed farmland to returning veterans. In the years after World War Two, many veterans applied for a chance at a limited number of farm units. The project turned a basin of birds and water into a checkerboard of potato and grain fields, feeding families for generations, but it also set the stage for a long and bitter fight over who the water really belongs to.
