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Drain the Swamps for Health and Home‖: Wetlands

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Drain the Swamps for Health and Home‖: Wetlands UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE ―DRAIN THE SWAMPS FOR HEALTH AND HOME‖: WETLANDS DRAINAGE, LAND CONSERVATION, AND NATIONALWATER POLICY, 1850-1917 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By ANTHONY E. CARLSON Norman, Oklahoma 2010 ―DRAIN THE SWAMPS FOR HEALTH AND HOME‖: WETLANDS DRAINAGE, LAND CONSERVATION, AND NATIONAL WATER POLICY, 1850-1917 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY _____________________________ Dr. Donald J. Pisani, Chair _____________________________ Dr. Albert L. Hurtado _____________________________ Dr. Judith S. Lewis _____________________________ Dr. Joshua A. Piker _____________________________ Dr. Zev Trachtenberg © Copyright by ANTHONY E. CARLSON All Rights Reserved. For Tera Acknowledgements The successful completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of several family members. First and foremost, the debt of gratitude that I owe to my wife, Tera, for her love, patience, and friendship during the past six years can never be repaid. Meeting Tera was the best thing that has happened in my life, and her kindness and sense of humor made graduate school a rewarding experience. I love Tera dearly, and dedicate this dissertation to her. Second, my parents, Dennis and Charlotte Carlson, have always encouraged me to pursue my dreams and encouraged me from a young age to appreciate the value of education. I am grateful for their steadfast support. Third, my relationship and friendship with my sister, Andrea, has enriched my life. Andrea never hesitated in pulling me away from research and writing to discuss football and other related topics and, as this dissertation nears completion, I appreciate these welcome diversions and her kindheartedness. Finally, the birth of Eden Jo, my first child and daughter, one year ago opened my eyes to the most important things in life: innocence, gentleness, and unconditional joy. Generous financial support for this project was provided by several institutions. The Forest History Society (Duke University), American Heritage Center (University of Wyoming), Charles Redd Center for Western Studies (Brigham Young University), and James Jerome Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this dissertation with grant and fellowship money. At the University of Oklahoma, I received funding from the Department of History, Graduate College, and College of Arts and Sciences. I am particularly thankful for the generosity of H. Wayne Morgan and Anne Hodges Morgan. iv I am indebted to archivists and reference staff at libraries and manuscript repositories throughout the United States. Staff at the Forest History Society Archives, Northeast Minnesota Historical Center at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, University of Florida Special Collections, Minnesota Historical Society, North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, University of North Carolina Special Collections, Northwest Minnesota Historical Center at Minnesota State University-Moorhead, Norwegian- American Historical Association Archives, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Library of Congress, Clay County Historical Society (Minnesota), and National Archives and Records Administration repositories in Washington, D. C., Denver, and College Park provided knowledgeable and insightful assistance. Steve Nielsen, Nick Duncan, Mark Peihl, Pat Maus, Molly MacGregor, W. Thomas White, Eileen McCormack, Korella Selzler, and J. Bonnie Rehder deserve special thanks. I have benefitted from the instruction of many excellent teachers in my life, but none of them have inspired me to look at the past with such humility and enthusiasm as Professor Donald J. Pisani, the director of this dissertation. Professor Pisani‘s track record as a scholar speaks for itself, but his unselfishness, generosity, and dedication to his graduate students rivals his scholarly accomplishments. He has purchased countless meals at conferences for me, given away books and other supplies, arranged for me to meet other scholars, and, most importantly, selflessly given his time so we could discuss complex research questions and historical methodology. Professor Pisani has a meticulous eye for detail and demands that his students demonstrate diligence and rigor in research and writing. In addition to teaching me the historian‘s craft, he made graduate school enjoyable, exhilarating, and intellectually stimulating. Some of my v fondest memories in life are of sitting in Professor Pisani‘s office and talking about water resource history and, of course, contemporary politics. I will miss those office visits. vi Table of Contents Introduction: Wetlands Drainage, Historians, and the History of Water in the United States / 1 Chapter 1: ―Vast Factories of this Febrile Poison‖: American Wetlands and Eighteenth-Century Atmospheric Reform / 14 Chapter 2: ―The Foundation of All Correct Tillage‖: Drainage, the Rural Press, and Idea of Enlightened Land Stewardship / 49 Chapter 3: The American State and Nineteenth- Century National Water Policy / 80 Chapter 4: ―I Am No Socialist‖: Farmers, Land Drainage, and Railroads in the Valley of the Red River of the North, 1879-1901 / 153 Chapter 5: ―The Extension and Perpetuation of a Class of Small Landowners‖: Wetlands Drainage in an Age of National Water Politics and Social Reform, 1902-1917 / 221 Conclusion: Wetlands Drainage and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement in Retrospective / 282 Bibliography / 292 vii List of Tables Table 1: Number of Acres Organized in Drainage Enterprises by Decade / 279 Table 2: Capital Invested in Drainage Enterprises by Decade / 280 Table 3: Number of Miles of Ditches Constructed by Drainage Enterprises by Decade / 280 viii List of Figures Figure 1: Wisconsin Glaciation / 168 Figure 2: Glacial Lake Agassiz / 169 ix Abstract Wetlands drainage is one of the oldest and commonest forms of land modification in American history. Colonists and later Americans perceived wetlands as a threat to progress and prosperity. Wetlands impeded travel, depressed property values, harbored dangerous predators, segregated otherwise arable land from cultivation, and were thought to discharge miasmas and miasmata into the atmosphere that caused a variety of febrile illnesses. In response to these fears, local communities and the national government implemented policies and created institutions to drain wetlands for health and agricultural purposes. By 1900, Americans identified wetlands drainage as a form of enlightened land stewardship that rivaled forest preservation, the protection of migratory waterfowl, western irrigation, flood control, and the regulation of grazing and mineral extraction on public lands in importance. Surface water removal was a paramount public policy objective in United States history and shaped Americans‘ relationship to their physical environment and one another. x INTRODUCTION: WETLANDS DRAINAGE, HISTORIANS, AND THE HISTORY OF WATER IN THE UNITED STATES: A REAPPRAISAL In the United States, as in other countries, intensive agriculture required the control of water. Since the colonial period, rural Americans have diverted and stored water to convert Atlantic coastal wetlands into rice fields, maximize hay output in New England meadows, transform riparian and interior swamps into crop fields, and irrigate western deserts. The history of rural America is one of people creating political institutions and adopting technologies that enabled them to harness watercourses, wetlands, and underground aquifers for cultivation. The managerial relationship of people towards water, which predominated in every community that practiced a form of monoculture, shaped much of the history of the rural United States. Over the past half century, historians have begun to study the contested and contentious history of water in the United States. There have been many excellent studies that evaluate the role of irrigation in overcoming the arid climate of the American West. In the eastern half of the country, however, the history of water has been ignored and marginalized.1 As a result, the hundredth meridian, the north-south axis running 1 There is a voluminous literature on western irrigation and the federal reclamation program, which Congress established in 1902. Some of the most important works include Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954); Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985); Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water (New York: Viking, 1986); Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim A Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848-1902 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992); and Pisani, Water and American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902-1935 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). For a concise and insightful introduction to the literature‘s major interpretative themes, see William D. Rowley, ―Introduction,‖ Agricultural History 76 (Spring 2002): 137-41. There are a small number of studies that evaluate the role of state legislatures and Congress in developing water resources in the eastern United States before World War I. The manipulation of New England‘s rivers by textile mills and dams beginning in the late eighteenth century has attracted scholarly attention.
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