Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

transportation systems were not adequate to ship
any supplies or produce in or out of the area. After
freight and wagon lines became firmly established
in the 1880s, settlers came to the area in larger
numbers and began to farm for commercial as well
as subsistence purposes.
Most of the homesteaders arriving in the late
1800s settled along the Big Lost River. The first
permanent settlers arrived in 1878, and the first
official water right claim was recorded in 1879
(Bottolfsen 1926b). Many settlers were prompted
to move into the area by the Homestead Act of
1862, which allowed the head of a family to obtain
160 acres of land by meeting certain criteria such
as residing on the land and cultivating it for a
period of five consecutive years. The Desert Land
Act of 1877 also encouraged settlement in the Big
Lost River area by permitting families to acquire
640 acres of land if water could be brought to it
(Bottolfsen 1926b).
Water was a rare commodity in the desert
areas of the eastern Snake River Plain and the
success of farming efforts in the area hinged on
the homesteaders’ ability to obtain it. With
passage of the Carey Land Act in 1894 (Scott
1983; Williams 1970) and passage of the Desert
Reclamation Act in 1902, the federal government
stepped in to assist homesteaders in this endeavor.
The 1894 act set aside one million acres of public
land in Idaho for homesteading, provided the
settlers participate in state-sponsored irrigation
projects, and the 1902 act provided the funding
necessary to reclaim these arid and semi-arid acres
(see Figure 16).
Southeastern Idaho was a major beneficiary of
this federal aid and, as a result, the years from
1905 to 1920 saw a dramatic upswing in
agricultural activity on land within and around the
present-day INL boundaries. The population of
Idaho Falls quadrupled from approximately 1,262
in 1900 to 4,827 in 1910, and this growth is
directly attributed to the promise of irrigable land.
Irrigation companies formed, and with financial
backing by the federal government, proceeded to
start construction on a number of dams, including
the Mackay Dam on the Big Lost River upstream
of INL, and canal projects that brought
much-needed water to homesteaders (Pettite
1983). The town of Powell—later named
Pioneer—sprang up along the Oregon Shortline
Railroad in the southwestern portion of INL to
supply local residents with necessary mercantile
goods and serve as a stock-shipping station
(Gerard 1982; Schmalz 1963). Unfortunately,
gross miscalculations of precipitation and water
flow in the area coupled with ignorance of the
fractured bedrock strata and porous gravels of the
Big Lost River led to the failure and ultimate
abandonment of all but a few of these projects in
the 1920s (Pettite 1983; Staley 1978). Many of the
small homesteads on and around INL were forced
to fold, although a few notable exceptions in the
Mud Lake area east of INL and far upstream in the
Big Lost River valley continued to flourish. Many
of the historic sites located within INL boundaries
are representative of these short-lived efforts to
reclaim the high desert for agricultural purposes
(see Figure 17).
Figure 16. Headgate from early 1900s irrigation
project in the area now known as INL.
Figure 17. Historic artifacts from a failed
homestead in the area now known as INL.
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