Iowa Lake Drainage 1880-1920
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From 1880 to 1920, Iowa underwent extensive lake drainage as the demand for agricultural land grew. Private drainage efforts began in the 1850s and expanded, leading to the establishment of public drainage systems and laws governing drainage. This caused disputes over drained lake beds. A 1895 governor's proclamation ordered a survey finding 99 lakes covering 61,729 acres. Efforts to drain lakes were sometimes ruled unconstitutional or opposed by conservation groups wanting to preserve lakes, leading to the establishment of the State Board of Conservation in 1918 to protect remaining lakes.
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Iowa Lake Drainage 1880-1920
- 1. Lake Drainage in Iowa 1880 to 1920 Joseph Otto Director of Special Projects and Partnerships Soil and Water Conservation Society Joe.otto@swcs.org 641-521-3496
- 2. Iowa’s agricultural history, viewed from the water “Drainage of Agricultural Lands,” Fifteenth Census of the United States (Washington, 1932), 131. • From “the bottoms up” • Private first, then public • Origins of public drainage systems • Lake bed controversy
- 3. “Huron Township,” A.T. Andreas, An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Des Moines County, Iowa (Chicago, 1873), 57-58. Newberry Library, General Collection. Des Moines County • First drainage ditches • 1850
- 4. • First drainage ditches • 1860 • John Williams • Surveyor and farmer • Author of state’s first drainage law (1862) “Huron Township,” A.T. Andreas, An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Des Moines County, Iowa (Chicago, 1873), 57-58. Newberry Library, General Collection. Des Moines County
- 5. Drainage Legislation • 1870 – public health mandate • 1872 – county-level ditches • 1874 – Swamp Lands Commissioner abolished • 1876 – Change direction of rivers and streams • 1880 – multi-county drains • 1882 – drains and levees • 1884 – drainage bonds and tile drains • 1886 – crossing public highways and railroads
- 6. The Lake Bed Controversy • Requests for patents to lake beds came as the supply of public lands dried up • Growth of public drainage systems lowers water table • Smallest and shallowest lakes become targets of improvement • Counties unable to resolve disputes by themselves “Drainage of Agricultural Lands,” Fifteenth Census of the United States (Washington, 1932), 131.
- 7. A.T. Andreas, Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1875), 99. Iowa Lake Rose Grove Township, Hamilton County, Iowa (1850). General Land Office Database, U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. URL: https://glorecords.blm.gov/search/.
- 8. Owl Lake A.T. Andreas, Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1875), 50. Lake and Norway Townships, Humboldt County, Iowa (1852). General Land Office Database, U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. URL: https://glorecords.blm.gov/search/ .
- 9. A.T. Andreas, Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1875), 99. Cairo Lake Hamilton and Lyon Townships, Hamilton County, Iowa (1850). General Land Office Database, U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. URL: https://glorecords.blm.gov/search/.
- 10. Governor’s Office Intervenes • 1895 - Governor Jackson’s Proclamation • Orders survey of all meandered lakes Report of the Secretary of State to the Governor of Iowa, of the Transactions of the Land Department, July 1, 1895 (Des Moines, 1895). URL. The policy of the State should be to maintain all the lakes of Iowa in their original extent and beauty,…To convert them into fields for cultivation, appears to me to be utilitarianism run mad…If, by any means, the lakes of Iowa can be preserved, it should by all means be done. A person who drains the lakes commits a public wrong. -Milton Remley, Attorney General, State of Iowa Summer, 1895 Milton Remley to Frank Jackson, June 22, 1895, Attorney General Correspondence: Lands, Islands, and Lake Beds, 1889-1924. Box 1. DM RG 080. State Archives of Iowa, State Historical Society of Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa.
- 11. • 1895-1904: Lakes survey – Governor’s Office • 99 lakes covering 61,729 acres • Legislature and Governor reviewed petitions to drain/lease lakes • 1904-09: period of change • Drainage law ruled unconstitutional • Constitutional amendment passed • 1909-11: State Drainage, Waterways, and Conservation Commission • USDA Office of Drainage Investigations surveys conditions • Recommends permanent conservation commission, est. state engineer office, upstream/downstream management districts • Discontinued by state legislature • 1915: Lakes Survey – State Highway Commission + State Engineer • 68 lakes covering 44,553 acres (others ordered drained by legislature) • 1918-19: State Board of Conservation est. • Forerunner to Iowa DNR • 31 lakes recommended sites for state parks Management of Iowa’s lakes
- 12. Research Opportunities • Holding capacity studies of drained prairies • Historic erosion benchmarks from surveyor journals • Moving beyond the pre-agricultural, before/after comparison • Identifying target areas for reconstructed wetlands / oxbows • History of county-state-federal jurisdictional relationships • Public history of drainage infrastructure and law • Some good stories to tell
- 13. Lake Drainage in Iowa 1880 to 1920 Joseph Otto Director of Special Projects and Partnerships Soil and Water Conservation Society Joe.otto@swcs.org 641-521-3496 END
- 14. 1895 Lake Inventory: Size Breakdown Surface area in square miles (acres) Number of Lakes Percentage of whole Above five sq. miles (3,200 acres and above) 5 4.5% Four to five sq. miles (2,560 to 3,199 acres) 1 1% Three to four sq. miles (1,920 to 2,559 acres) 0 0% Two to three sq. miles (1,280 to 1,919 acres) 5 4.5% One to two sq. miles (641 to 1279 acres) 13 13% Less than one sq. mile (640 acres and below) 75 76% Total surface area: 98 sq. miles (61,270 acres) 99 100%
- 15. Not all lakes recorded A.T. Andreas, Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1875), 181. Polk County – Dean and Horseshoe Lakes A.T. Andreas, Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1875), 45. Hancock County – George and Edward Lakes
- 16. Group 1 of 4: Large Lakes • Deep water capable of supporting fish life year-round, functioned as a state-wide tourist destination. Protected by state at an early date, drainage an impossibility and never attempted.
- 17. Spirit Lake: 1861 v 2016
- 18. West Okoboji Lake: 1861 v 2016
- 19. Group 2 of 4: Medium Lakes • Same as large lakes, but functioned as a county-wide tourist destination. Drainage attempted, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. For some, locals organized to protect its value as a tourist or outdoor recreation attraction, thereby leading to state stewardship. For others, drainage attempts were partially successful, thereby reducing the lake’s surface area. Still for others, drainage was a failure, yet the lake nonetheless lost its lake-like qualities because of drainage to adjacent farmland.
- 20. North and South Twin Lakes: 1853 v 2015
- 21. Rice Lake: 1855 v 2015
- 22. Centre and Swan Lakes: 1856 v 2016
- 23. Group 3 of 4: Small Lakes • Naturally shallow, during drought can be reduced to swamp-like conditions or dry up altogether. Spatial and temporal variability made them unable to support fish life year-round, yet because they were part of a larger hydrological environment, they supported fish population as spawning grounds. The most numerous of the three groups, yet the least protected from drainage. Local governments asserted control over them at an early date. Commonly enveloped by private land and discreetly drained over a number of years. State attempts at stewardship were minimal, if not absent altogether. • Made up ¾ of all the state’s natural lakes
- 24. Iowa Lake: 1850 v 2015
- 25. Owl Lake: 1852 v 2015
- 26. Cairo Lake: 1850 v 2015
- 27. Group 4 of 4: Riverine Lakes • Unlike the lakes in the other three categories, these lakes were formed in the bottomlands of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. On the east and west borders of Iowa, these lakes formed at the mouth of the state’s interior rivers.
- 28. Big Lake: 1850 v 2013
- 29. Blue Lake: 1853 v 2016
- 30. Lake Drainage in Iowa 1880 to 1920 Joseph Otto Director of Special Projects and Partnerships Soil and Water Conservation Society Joe.otto@swcs.org 641-521-3496 END
Editor's Notes
- Iowa’s history, and much of the Midwest’s, is tied to the transformation of the tallgrass prairies into fields of crops. When we think about Iowa’s natural advantages for crop production (fertile soil, moisture content, climate), it becomes almost second nature to see the emergence of row crop agriculture as an inevitability. Viewed from the land, anyway. But history is way messier than that! Especially when you bring water into the equation – the story gets a lot muddier (pause). By looking at Iowa’s history through the lens of water management – the story gets a lot muddier, and a lot more interesting. Iowa was and still is a very wet place – and creating optimal crop growing conditions across its varying geography means finding a way to manage that water. Drainage systems allow us to do that, and are the reason Iowa looks the way it does. In that sense, understanding how drainage systems started, expanded, and changed over time, helps us gain a better understanding of why Iowa looks the way it does, and more importantly, the constant human effort required to keep it looking like it does. Iowa was settled from bottom to top – the river valleys and sloping hillsides were cultivated first, while the headwaters of the rivers came much later. The transition from prairie to corn belt followed the same trajectory – you wanted to be close to water, but not too close. Land is a finite resource, and after the best lands were purchased and cultivated, people seeking lands to improve into farms turned their attention to the less desirable, wetter, lands, that required more effort to improve – hard labor digging ditches and draining swamps, BEFORE the hard labor of turning the soil and sowing crops. Origins of the word pioneer – pioneer was a French military term for soldiers whose job it was to dig ditches. And because digging ditches is extremely hard and costly work, it was avoided as much as possible. Early farmers dug their own ditches or hired small outfits to run draglines and scrapers, pulled by teams of horses, to cut shallow ditches through their lands. As the prairies became more settled and populated, collaborations with neighbors became possible. Still hard work, but many hands make for lighter work. A ditch that ran freely across property lines was also more functional and effective.
- The first drainage ditches in Iowa were dug in the late 1850s – along the Mississippi River in what is now Des Moines County, north of the city of Burlington. Burlington was Iowa’s first capital city, having been the territorial capital of Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s, before newcomers in Iowa organized their own territorial government which was sited in Iowa City, and Wisconsin’s capital was sited at Madison. (Fun trivia – Burlington as the first capital of Iowa and Wisconsin). The Anglo Americans coming into Iowa were from New England – hence naming their capital Burlington, after the city in Vermont on Lake Champlain, and they were steeped in frontier lore and literature about the French and Indian Wars, hence their being nicknamed “Hawkeyes,” after the mythic frontier character from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote Last of the Mohicans in the 1820s, as part of a set of novels about the European settlement of North America. These books were not historically accurate, but the people coming into Iowa before the Civil War would have been steeped in those stories since childhood. And when they grew up, moved west, found jobs, and bought land, draining swamps became part of their daily routines. On your screen is a map of Huron Township in Des Moines County. The blue areas are riverine swamps, and the green areas mark the lands of a person named John Williams. Williams was from Vermont and moved to Iowa in the 1850s, after having worked for the federal government as a surveyor of swamp lands in the upper Mississippi River valley. Between 1850 and 1860 Williams improved his lands and gradually built a farm on top of the low lying swamps along the main river channel.
- Fast forward to the 1870s, and you can see that Williams expanded his holdings, which he connected by a series of drainage ditches that are highlighted in red – running from one water body to the next, providing him an outlet at the Mississippi River. Williams was an experienced surveyor and lowland farmer who well-suited to this sort of project. In fact it gained him notoriety as a drainage authority – while serving in the state legislature he authored the state’s first drainage law in 1862. National Register of Historic Places – Iowa’s first drainage ditch! This is the origin point of Iowa’s public drainage infrastructure – built as a supplement to existing private infrastructure, in order to relieve farmland of flooding and provide an outlet for excess water.
- And more legislation followed. After the Civil War Iowa’s legislature actively considered drainage bills every session. In 1870 the legislature passed a law that required any public drainage system promote the public health, convenience, and welfare. Then they allowed counties to hold general elections where the entire voting public voted on large drainage projects just like they voted for a senator or for the president. In the 1880s the laws changed again, allowing for multi-jurisdiction drainage projects that crossed county lines, the construction of levees, and the financing of projects through the sale of public bonds. And in 1884 the law changed again to distinguish open ditches from tile drains, which were becoming more prevalent. Not surprisingly, the growth of drainage laws accelerated drainage activity. Particularly the 1884 law that allowed for the sale of bonds. In order to differentiate one project’s bonds from another, the projects were identified as separate drainage districts, having their own budget, tax assessments, repayment schedules, and contracts. After that the legislature added provisions that allowed drains to cross public highways and railroads, which led to tensions over how to levy taxes against roads and railways that were impacted by drainage activity. By the 1880s, people had settled Iowa’s river valleys and had entered the headwaters and started farming those wetter prairies as well. And while this went on, the state’s drainage laws changed into their modern form, which I define as the county and district system. With county governments as the chief administrators, or trustees, of drainage districts, with the elected board of supervisors as the executive body. Everything became centralized in Iowa’s courthouses – just as it does today.
- Remember when I said that the story gets muddy? Well, put on your boots and maybe even your chest waders if you got em, because in the 1890s a drainage conflict, or a series of conflicts, rather, emerge that I call the Lake Bed Controversy. The conflict was about how to use Iowa’s natural lakes – should they be managed to conserve their water resources, or should they be managed to conserve their soil resources. The former meant preserving them as lakes for fish and game animals, as scientific sites to study native prairie flora and fauna, and as sites of recreation, for picnics, camping, and tourism. The latter meant removing the excess water in order to access the fertile prairie soils making up the lake beds. The Lake Bed Controversy started in the headwater counties of north central and northwest Iowa, where most of Iowa’s natural lakes are located. As people came into the headwater prairies, they began the process of building drainage systems. Small, private ditches connected to one another, which were in turn connected to public ditches and tile mains. The broader impact was a gradual lowering of the water table, which naturally impacted Iowa’s lakes to varying degrees. The larger and deeper a lake was, the less it was impacted by drainage activity. So the controversy emerged around the smallest and shallowest lakes, of which there were many more of. The controversy comes from the fact that draining lakes was seen by some as a poor and even illegal use of public funds. By law public drainage projects had to promote the public welfare, which up to that point had been a non-issue. It was assumed and widely accepted that drainage was a public good – it improved soil and allowed for more prosperous and stable farming. Opposition to a specific drainage project was not uncommon to dispute a boundary, a benefit classification, or a ditch route – drainage trustees dealt with these conflicts regularly and still do. But new conflicts emerged over whether or not Iowa’s drainage law applied to lake beds, which legally were public bodies of water that could not be owned, let alone bought, sold, or taxed. Counties generally assumed they were in the right and plowed ahead with procedure, while opponents began writing letters to the governor and the state attorney general.
- One cause of the controversy was the presence of land speculators looking for investments. It was not uncommon for land newly organized into a drainage district to rise in value. Lake beds were no different. Let me explain how it worked with an example of Iowa Lake in Hamilton County. December 1894: a Des Moines banker tries to buy the lake bed. $4500 + $1275 = $5775 for both lakes (814 and 160 acres = 974) $6.31 per acre. A legal battle ensues – not over the right to sell the lakes, but the manner in which he paid. He paid for the small one up front, but not the big one. The BOS refused to issue the deed for the small one until the big one was also paid for, arguing that it was a package deal. Because he failed to buy both at the same time, he had no right to the deed of either. Long then sues Hamilton County. 6 months later, in April 1895, the district court rules in favor of Long, Hamilton County ordered to issue the deeds. Hamilton County appeals to the Iowa Supreme Court. October 1895: While the court case was pending, Long suddenly shows up at the courthouse with all the money. He brought $4000 in gold and $500 in currency. The County Treasurer refuses to accept it. Long sues the county again, demanding that they honor the original package deal contract. The argument being that the county accepted his bid for the lake bed lands, which constituted a contract. January 1896: 3 months later. The BOS issues the deeds to Long, who immediately transfers them to another investor – W.J. Chamberlain, another banker. State Bank of Jewell. One month later, in February of 1896, Chamberlain sells the title of the small lake, Island, to another investor. 160 acres. Sold for $5360. $33.50 per acre. %430 increase in price. In a span of 14 months, these lakes changed hands four times, and were involved in three lawsuits. Nothing about the lake beds changed physically at that time. Nobody drained them or grew a crop on them. It was purely about speculation.
- Railroad investor near Fort Dodge in Webster County. Bought up land all around the bed of Owl Lake to make a giant hobby farm. Brought in an experimental ditching machine to do the work. Was highly publicized in the local newspapers – captain of industry.
- Cairo Lake in Hamilton County. 1895 – about 5 years after Owl Lake David Kent – Professor at Iowa State. Impressed with Owl Lake and wanted to try it for himself. 1895 – acquires from county for $5000, or $3.16 per acre. Sinks a small fortune into it, secures outside capital from a speculator. Manages to partially drain the lake and raise some watermelons. 1898 – heavily in debt, loses his property to the speculator 1900 – Cairo Lake bought for $30,000 by Charles Rand Estate. $18.90 per acre. %498 increase. After 1900 – Kent is hired by Rand Estate to manage the farm. Succeeds in organizing a drainage district. Lake is gradually drained between 1909 and 1915. What was different about Cairo Lake? The Cairo Lake case is important because it was the last meandered lake to be sold off this way. Cairo Lake was nearer the urban centers of Des Moines and Ames. Legislators and professors came out publicly against the project and urged the county supervisors to stop what they were doing. A horticulture professor at Iowa State, Joseph Budd, called the idea “a burning shame” and worried that removing the lake would make the area more susceptible to drought. Moreover, he thought the lake was “one of the most beautiful lakes of northern Iowa,” and that instead of draining lakes, “thousands more should be made over all parts of the state.” Legislator and historian Charles Aldrich saw it as bad business. He criticized local officials for foolishly and shortsightedly parting with their only natural tourist attraction. “If the county could not improve her lakes just now there can be little doubt that she could do so in the future. It could easily have been a summer resort for hundreds of people who cannot go to the greater lakes.” Aldrich knew that locals valued the lake as a recreation and beauty spot. Residents described Cairo Lake as a “fine body of water, abounding in fish,” and an ideal site for a party. Over the years it hosted a number of celebrations, including Fourth of July festivals and mass-baptisms. Destroying the lake for the personal gain of one man appeared to some to be unethical and very much against the public interest. Just because a county had public lands on hand did not mean they were destined to become farmland.
- Up until Cairo Lake, the discussion about drainage was absolutely in favor of it. Legislation passed overwhelmingly and across party lines. Owl Lake’s drainage was celebrated in the newspapers, and even some coverage of Cairo Lake took a similar tone. But here we see the first instance of a dialogue forming around multiple use conservation, with drainage being part of it but not the whole. The policy of the State should be to maintain all the lakes of Iowa in their original extent and beauty,…To convert them into fields for cultivation, appears to me to be utilitarianism run mad…If, by any means, the lakes of Iowa can be preserved, it should by all means be done. A person who drains the lakes commits a public wrong. The impact: State of Iowa asserting its right to manage the lakes. Did not expand government authority, because lakes were always under state control. In the preceding years counties had overasserted their rights to drain and people started complaining that their outdoor hunting and fishing spots were being threatened. When local authorities refused to hear them, they started complaining to the governor. The result was a new function of the governor’s office to act of steward of the lakes. First it ordered an inventory of all the lakes. Then it began to mediate disputes between people wanting to drain and people wanting to preserve them.
- The lake bed controversy kicked off a period of change for Iowa’s laws relating to drainage and conservation. The legislature got involved shortly after the governor’s office did by passing laws that allowed lakes to be drained on certain conditions. 1904 was a particularly chaotic year because the drainage laws were ruled unconstitutional, which led to an effort to amend the state constitution in 1909. Around the same time the legislature created a new conservation commission to study Iowa’s drainage problems and made recommendations. That report came out in 1911 and included a permanent conservation agency, a state drainage engineer’s office, and a watershed-based planning model that broke the state in two regions – rivers valleys and lakes, basically, with the engineer’s office having oversight of county projects. This report was not adopted and it would take eight more years before a permanent Board of Conservation was created in 1918, which was the forerunner to what would become the Iowa DNR. In the meantime, some lakes were drained while others were not. Some were fought over in the papers, or in very heated discussions in county courthouses, a few were physically fought over, and I have found instance where shots were fired, and still others were unceremoniously drained without incident. By the time the State Board of Conservation was established in 1918, the number of lakes had been reduced by about a third. Of the 99 lakes on the original 1895 survey, only 68 of them appeared on the next survey taken in 1915. And of those, the state board of conservation recommended 31 of them become state parks.
- Just an aside