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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 643 Desert Land Entries for Selected Years Year Original Final Number Acres Number Acres 1877 . 731 269,307 1880 538 155,639 1885 2,766 928,250 475 190,984 1890 1,594 478,848 868 244,534 1895_____ 1900____ 1,759 3,479 230,816 590,155 388 912 77,376 138,452 1905 4,067 711,124 1,293 225,623 1908_____ 8,965 1,563,027 2,242 369,770 1910 83,899 15,620 17,662,036 2,899,730 28,587 2,041 4,869,368-Totals through 1908 324,246 1915 2,681 460,023 2,327 386,742 1916...... 1,041 174,695 1,876 297,591 1966 150,785 133 31,398,465 37,787 39,628 178 7,503,547-Totals through 1916 42,847 164,756 33,960,929 57,259 10,601,334-Totals through 1966 Compiled from GLO Reports. arid lands the act was of great importance, though not as beneficial as the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902. The states in which the desert land entries were principally made were Montana, California, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and New Mexico. In two states desert land entries far exceeded the homestead entries for a number of years. Thus in Wyoming between 1878 and 1888 inclusive, the desert land entries amounted to 1,592,295 acres while the homestead entries were 287,701 acres: in Arizona the desert land entries for 1878 to 1893 were 899,129 acres as compared with 433,665 acres in homestead entries. The number of desert land entries reached their high point in 1910 when 15,620 were filed for a total of 2,899,730 acres. Long before that date Congress was moving in other directions to facilitate the development of the arid lands.21 21 John T. Ganoe has two articles on the Desert Land Act in Agricultural History, XI (April and October, 1937), pp. 142-57 and 266-77, entitled "The Desert Land Act in Operation," and "The Desert Land Act since 1891." Early Studies of Irrigability The anxiety of westerners to secure ownership of as large a quantity of land as possible without regard to their ability to make effective use of it, and the resulting accumulation of underdeveloped land in private ownership, proved a major deterrent to the progress of reclamation after 1902. The reservation authority given in the Act of 1888 came too late to retain in public ownership much of the land most suitable for public irrigation projects. There were many places in the West where irrigation of desert lands was achieved, or at least tried, without great expense by groups of landowners working together. Sometimes they formed an irrigation district or simply organized as a company to which the members subscribed capital in proportion to the amount of land to be benefited. Such groups generally controlled, or quickly acquired ownership of, the land best suited for irrigation and they managed to get control of sites for small reservoirs and for the essential canals and ditches. |