UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1257 
REVLoiiD 
Washington, D. C. 
Issued August, 1924 
Revised January, 1927 
LAND RECLAMATION POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 
By R. P. Teele, Associate Agricultural Economist, Bureau of Agricultural 
Economics. 
CONTENTS. 
Page. 
Past land reclamation policies 3 
Federal policies 3 
Swamp land acts 3 
Relation of the homestead act 
to reclamation policies 3 
Act of 1866 4 
The desert land act 4 
Irrigation survey 5 
The Carey Act 6 
Reclamation act 7 
Irrigation district act 13 
Page. 
State land reclamation policies 14 
General considerations 14 
Irrigation districts 14 
California State land settlement- 20 
Proposed Federal and State coop- 
eration 23 
Drainage reclamation 24 
State drainage policies 24 
Summary of acreage reclaimed 27 
The future of reclamation 34 
Conclusions 40 
Land reclamation, strictly speaking, includes the bringing into 
cultivation of all types of unused land, but the term has come to be 
limited in common practice to the construction of canals and other 
works necessary to protection from overflow or the removing of sur- 
plus water from wet lands, or to supplying water to dry lands. In 
popular usage, land provided with these works is reclaimed, although 
no steps toward putting into cultivation have been taken. 
Without regard to the correctness of this use of the word, the lands 
referred to do form a separate category, and their reclamation in- 
volves problems peculiar to this class. Their reclamation is beyond 
the powers of the owner of a single farm and requires community or 
corporate action of some kind ; and this reclamation must take place 
in advance of settlement, involving the expenditure of large sums 
before the lands can be put to use. There are small areas of both 
wet and dry lands in which it is possible to reclaim single farms, but 
these areas are so limited that they may be disregarded. 
The other classes of land available for the expansion of our farm 
area — forest and cut-over land requiring clearing only, and open 
pasture and range land — do not possess these characteristics. These 
farms may be developed without previous preparation and inde- 
pendently of each other. 
1 The manuscript of this bulletin was examined and recommended for publication by 
the Committee of Special Advisers on Reclamation appointed by the Secretary of the 
Interior. 
24728°— 27 1 
