UC Davis

The settlement of the Sacramento Valley by people from the United States between 1850 and 1920 was shaped by the practical challenges for settler reclamation in a volatile political, social, and environmental climate. Nineteenth and early twentieth century Americans believed that white settlers possessed the unique capacity to reclaim land. Californians considered it only natural that settlers would transform swamp and overflowed lands into productive small farms. But droughts forced settlers to abandon their lands, floods destroyed their farms, and economic activities such as hydraulic mining and extensive agriculture depleted soil fertility or made the rivers incapable of transporting crops.The practical challenges of reclaiming the Sacramento Valley compelled settlers to deviate from the idealized notions and popular theories about reclamation. It meant breaking from the tradition of family farming and directly appealing to so-called “capitalists,” men whose principal living came not from directly laboring on the land but from investing in its development and exploitation. Settlers also sought state interventions, but they usually disagreed on how much taxes they should pay or whether the state should be able to compel construction of reclamation and flood control works on private lands. Engineers tasked with making the valley safe for settlers also had to grapple with the Sacramento Valley’s topological and climactic diversity. Engineers sought guidance from nature, but nature’s lessons were ambiguous and capricious. Their proposals operated on assumptions, understandably overgeneralized, based on incomplete information. Thus, even after the creation of the Sacramento River Flood Control Project in 1911, the processes of adapting to a volatile climate and environment shaped by settler and capitalistic process yet never fully subordinated to them would continue.