{"id":4277,"date":"2026-06-25T07:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/?page_id=4277"},"modified":"2026-07-16T11:02:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T19:02:55","slug":"title-transfer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/district-governance-accountability\/title-transfer\/","title":{"rendered":"Title Transfer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n \n
\n

Title Transfer<\/p>\n

Title Transfer 101<\/h1>\n

Who owns the ditch, and why it matters.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n

The whole story, start to finish \u2014 who dug these ditches, who paid for them, what the government promised, and why the deed still hasn't come. For the contract, the statute and the record, the Questions & Answers<\/a> page goes deeper on every point below.<\/p>\n\n \n

\n

Start with the ditch<\/h2>\n

Somewhere near you there is a canal. Water moves down it in April and stops in October. A District employee opens a headgate, watches for muskrat holes, pulls weeds out of a screen, and pours concrete on it in January when the water is gone.<\/p>\n

That employee works for Klamath Irrigation District \u2014 a district the farmers of this Basin formed themselves and funded themselves. The District has operated and maintained that canal since January 1, 1955<\/strong>: every hour of the work, every repair, every replacement, seventy-one years of it, out of the District's own assessments.<\/p>\n

But the paying started half a century before that. These families were paying for this canal from the day the first shovel went into the ground in 1906<\/strong> \u2014 first through the Water Users' Association they organized in 1905, and then through the District itself, which they organized in December 1917<\/strong>, as soon as Oregon changed its law to let an irrigation district contract with the federal government. The debt passed to the District in 1918. Same families, same obligation, new name on the paperwork.<\/p>\n

They paid for fifty-nine years. Three generations of them. The last payment cleared on May 4, 1965<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What the District has never been given is the title.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Under Article 4<\/strong><\/a> of its contract with the United States, that canal is one of the Transferred Works. Under Article 5<\/strong><\/a>, title to it shall<\/em> be vested in the District whenever the law allows. The law has allowed it since 2019.<\/p>\n

It has not been vested.<\/p>\n <\/section>\n\n \n

\n

Think of it like a house<\/h2>\n\n

Most people in this Basin have already made this deal. It just had a different name on it.<\/p>\n\n

You buy a house. The bank puts up the money. You move in \u2014 and from that first day the house is yours<\/em> to look after. You fix the roof. You clear the gutters. You pay the taxes and carry the insurance. If the porch step gives way under the mail carrier, that is on you, not on the bank. The bank has never once mowed the lawn.<\/p>\n\n

You make the payments for thirty years. And on the day the last one clears, the lender signs the release and the deed is yours. Not as a favor. Not because someone at the bank felt generous. Because that was the arrangement from the very first signature.<\/p>\n\n

That is the Klamath Project.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The District has carried the roof and the gutters since 1955<\/strong>. It has carried the liability too \u2014 under Article 25<\/strong><\/a> of the same contract, the District holds the United States harmless for anything that happens on these works. Seventy-one years of repairs, replacements, payroll and risk, every dollar of it paid by the people who farm behind these ditches.<\/p>\n\n

The last payment cleared on May 4, 1965<\/strong>. The government wrote back and confirmed it in 1966. Confirmed it again in 1980<\/a>. And again in 1985.<\/p>\n\n

The deed never came.<\/p>\n\n

Here in Oregon, when you pay off a trust deed the trustee signs a reconveyance and title comes home to you. Article 5 is the District's reconveyance clause.<\/strong><\/a> It has been sitting unsigned since the debt cleared.<\/p>\n\n

\n

Imagine paying off your house sixty years ago and the bank still holding the deed. Still sending inspectors. Still deciding what you may do with your own kitchen. And when you ask for the paperwork, it doesn't say no. It just doesn't answer.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n

\n

Add your name<\/p>\n

Demand the Federal Government Transfer the Klamath Project Title<\/p>\n

The bank never mowed the lawn. Sixty years after the last payment cleared, the deed still has not come \u2014 and the District is still waiting for an answer that has never arrived. Add your name and tell the Department of the Interior the Basin is watching.<\/p>\n Sign the petition \u2192<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n

\n

What title transfer changes<\/h2>\n

People hear \u201ctransfer\u201d and picture water moving, or gates changing hands, or somebody new deciding who gets a delivery. None of that is what this is. Here is the entire change, in one table.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n
\u00a0<\/th>\n Today<\/th>\n After transfer<\/th>\n <\/tr>\n <\/thead>\n
Who operates and maintains it<\/th>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
Who pays for it<\/th>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
Who is liable for it<\/th>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
Who decides who gets water<\/th>\n Oregon water law & the adjudication<\/td>\n Oregon water law & the adjudication<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
Who holds the deed<\/th>\n The United States<\/td>\n Klamath Irrigation District<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/tbody>\n <\/table>\n <\/div>\n\n

One row changes. That is title transfer.<\/p>\n <\/section>\n\n \n

\n

The deal that built this place<\/h2>\n\n

The ditches were here first.<\/strong> Not folklore \u2014 adjudicated fact, determined by the State of Oregon after years of evidence.<\/p>\n\n

On March 15, 1878<\/strong>, a group of Linkville citizens \u2014 Linkville is now Klamath Falls \u2014 incorporated the Linkville Water Ditch Company<\/strong> and dug a ditch off the head of Link River to water the town lots. Forty miners' inches. One cubic foot per second. Twenty-four years before Congress passed the Reclamation Act.<\/p>\n\n

In 1884<\/strong> a rancher named William Steele<\/strong> widened it to six feet on the bottom and ran it fifteen and a half miles into the Klamath Valley, putting some 16,000 acres in reach of water. When Steele died in 1888 the ditch passed to his widow Esther, then in 1891 to two of her children \u2014 one of them S. S. Henley<\/strong> \u2014 and then to the Klamath Falls Irrigation Company. By the turn of the century Mr. Ankeny, Mr. Cantrall and Mrs. Henley owned the canal outright. By 1905 it was twenty feet wide at the bottom and carried fifty cubic feet per second.<\/p>\n\n