{"id":4579,"date":"2026-08-04T13:49:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T21:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/?page_id=4579"},"modified":"2026-08-05T15:22:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:22:58","slug":"kwua-of-1905","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/history\/kwua-of-1905\/","title":{"rendered":"KWUA of 1905"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 fusion-flex-container has-pattern-background has-mask-background nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row fusion-flex-align-items-flex-start fusion-flex-content-wrap\" style=\"max-width:1248px;margin-left: calc(-4% \/ 2 );margin-right: calc(-4% \/ 2 );\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-flex-column\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;--awb-width-large:100%;--awb-margin-top-large:0px;--awb-spacing-right-large:1.92%;--awb-margin-bottom-large:20px;--awb-spacing-left-large:1.92%;--awb-width-medium:100%;--awb-order-medium:0;--awb-spacing-right-medium:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-medium:1.92%;--awb-width-small:100%;--awb-order-small:0;--awb-spacing-right-small:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-small:1.92%;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-column-has-shadow fusion-flex-justify-content-flex-start fusion-content-layout-column\"><!--\n  ============================================================\n  KLAMATH IRRIGATION DISTRICT\n  The Klamath Water Users Association of 1905\n  File: kid-kwua-1905.html\n  Version: 1.0  |  Built: 2 August 2026\n  Live at: https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/kwua-of-1905\/\n  Paste target: Avada Code Block (full width)\n  ============================================================\n-->\n\n<div class=\"kid-hist\">\n\n  <div class=\"kid-hist__head\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__eyebrow\">1903 \u2013 1929<\/p>\n    <h1 class=\"kid-hist__title\">The Klamath Water Users Association of 1905<\/h1>\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__hook\">They guaranteed the Project before a shovel moved.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <p class=\"kid-hist__deck\">The landowners of this Basin incorporated it on <strong>4 March 1905<\/strong> to guarantee the cost of a federal irrigation project that did not yet exist. They pledged their farms against it and voted <strong>8,598 to nothing<\/strong> to bind themselves to the contract. <strong>The obligation they signed was not discharged for sixty years, and Klamath Irrigation District is the party that finished paying it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n  <p class=\"kid-hist__note\"><a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/\">\u2190 Back to History<\/a><\/p>\n\n  <nav class=\"kid-hist__jump\" aria-label=\"On this page\">\n    <a href=\"#kw-notthesame\">Two Organizations<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-section6\">Section 6<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-why\">Why They Formed It<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-who\">Who They Were<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-names\">The Shareholders<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-purpose\">What It Was For<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-rules\">What He Was Handed<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-agreement\">The 1905 Agreement<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-deal\">What They Signed<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-vote\">8,598 to Nothing<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-trust\">Pledging the Land<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-contractor\">Nearly a Builder<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-thirty\">The Thirty Dollars<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-washington\">Dealing with Washington<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-stock\">The Capital Stock<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-1913\">1913<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-liens\">The Liens<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-power\">The Power<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-handover\">The Handover<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-thread\">The Thread<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-money\">In Today\u2019s Money<\/a>\n    <a href=\"#kw-docs\">The Documents<\/a>\n  <\/nav>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-notthesame\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">Read this first<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-notthesame\">Two organizations, one name<\/h2>\n\n    <p>There have been two bodies called the Klamath Water Users Association, and confusing them makes nonsense of the record.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The <strong>Association of 1905<\/strong> was a stock corporation of landowners, formed under Oregon law, whose members pledged their land as security for the Project's construction cost. Its meetings were curtailed after 1918 and on <strong>6 April 1929<\/strong> A. M. Thomas was appointed secretary to wind up its unfinished business. Its obligations and its standing passed to the irrigation districts formed within the Project \u2014 to this District by <strong>Contract Ilr-173 of 6 July 1918<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__warn\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__warn-label\">Not the same organization<\/p>\n      <p><strong>The Klamath Water Users Protective Association, formed in 1953, is a different entity.<\/strong> It is a trade association of districts and water users. <strong>It did not succeed to the 1905 Association's contractual position, and it holds none of the 1905 Association's rights or obligations.<\/strong><\/p>\n      <p>Those passed to the irrigation districts formed within the Project \u2014 to <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Ilr-173-1918-07-06.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Klamath Irrigation District by Contract Ilr-173 of 6 July 1918<\/a><\/strong>, and the District's own <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1qRQQJhyefDMPpputp0bPED-LH09E9ogC\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1925 draft contract with the United States<\/a> describes it as <em>\u201cthe successor in title and interest, entitled to all the rights and properties belonging to or which belonged to the Klamath Water User's Association at any time prior hereto.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n      <p><strong>Everywhere on this page, \u201cthe Association\u201d means the body incorporated on 4 March 1905.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>The landowners who signed in 1905 guaranteed the cost. <strong>The District their grandchildren voted into existence in 1917 is the party that finished paying it.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/section>\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section kid-hist__section--why\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-section6\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">17 June 1902<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-section6\">The sentence everything rests on<\/h2>\n\n        <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1UUqtwGU3kDMX0qq8odn-s68mxnrr9xer\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reclamation Act of 17 June 1902, Section 6 \u2014 as printed for the Association's members<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201cProvided, That when the payments required by this Act are made for the major portion of the lands irrigated from the waters of any of the works herein provided for, <strong>then the management and operation of such irrigation works shall pass to the owners of the lands irrigated thereby<\/strong>, to be maintained at their expense under such form of organization and under such rules and regulations as may be acceptable to the Secretary of the Interior: Provided, That the title to and the management and operation of the reservoirs and the works necessary for their protection and operation <strong>shall remain in the Government until otherwise provided by Congress<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>This is not something the District worked out later. <strong>It is the promise printed on page seven of the booklet the founders were reading when they pledged their land<\/strong> \u2014 that when the payments were made, the works would pass to the people who paid for them.<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>The second proviso is the one that has done the work ever since. Reservoirs and their protective works stay with the Government <strong>\u201cuntil otherwise provided by Congress\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 which is why Link River Dam is a reserved work today and the canals are not, and why the Dingell Act of 2019 mattered when it came.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-why\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">1904<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-why\">Why they formed it<\/h2>\n\n    <p>In <strong>November or December 1904<\/strong>, <strong>F. H. Newell<\/strong>, Director of the Reclamation Service, stood up in Klamath Falls and told the landowners of the then-proposed Project what it would cost them. Not more than <strong>$20.00 per acre share<\/strong> \u2014 the highest possible amount they would ever be called upon to pay for any part of it. And that sum, Newell said, covered construction and maintenance:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>\u201c\u2026up to such time as the proposed Project <strong>should be turned over to the proposed Klamath Water Users Association<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Read that clause again, because it is the whole of what follows. The costs Newell quoted ran only <em>up to the point of turnover<\/em>. The Project being handed to the water users was not a hope the landowners formed later, and not a demand they invented when the debt came due. It was the premise on which they were asked to sign, and the premise on which they did. Every request the District has made since \u2014 in 1924, in 1969, in 1977, in 2021 \u2014 is a request that the original understanding be honoured.<\/p>\n\n    <p>That Newell was here to say it is not in dispute. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usbr.gov\/projects\/pdf.php?id=129\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reclamation's own project history<\/a> records that Newell came to Klamath in 1904 to assess the Project's possibilities and, while there, addressed a large audience \u2014 telling them he believed the Secretary would approve construction. The 1913 minutes record what he told them it would cost.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Morris Bien, Legal Adviser of the Reclamation Service, concurred. Relying on those representations as inducements, the landowners organized the Association. Had the statements not been made, the minutes record, they \u201cwould not at any time or at all incorporated their lands into the Klamath Water Users Association.\u201d There is no Klamath Project without them joining.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__source\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1Pg1TSAY9J9DRxAuUSZeIsVConIaz5xJk\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Klamath Water Users Association annual meeting minutes, 6 June 1913<\/a>, pp. 82\u201383, Houston Opera House, Klamath Falls. Abel Ady, President; Albert E. Elder, Secretary. The resolution was introduced by John Irwin and adopted unanimously by rising vote.\n    <\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-who\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">February \u2013 March 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-who\">Who they were<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The Association came out of the <strong>U.S. Irrigation Committee<\/strong>, which met on <strong>25 February 1905<\/strong> to draw up the articles of incorporation. It incorporated on <strong>4 March 1905<\/strong> under Oregon law with a capital stock of <strong>two million dollars<\/strong> \u2014 <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">about $75 million today<\/span> \u2014 in shares of twenty dollars each \u2014 a hundred thousand shares, one to the acre.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The founding directors were <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org\/images\/Echoes\/Klamath-Echoes-No.-7---Merrill-Keno.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nathan Smith Merrill<\/a><\/strong>, Jacob Rueck, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org\/images\/Echoes\/Klamath-Echoes-No.-15---Klamath-Basin.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Orson Avery Stearns<\/a><\/strong>, Pleasant L. Fountain, W. F. Hill, Horatio Hill Burnham, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oregonencyclopedia.org\/articles\/applegate_elmer_ivan_1867_1949_\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elmer Ivan Applegate<\/a><\/strong>, Thomas D. Pryor, <strong>William C. Dalton<\/strong> and <strong>C. T. Silvers<\/strong> \u2014 for whom <strong>R. L. Oliver<\/strong> was substituted before the articles were signed \u2014 with <strong>J. Scott Taylor<\/strong> as secretary. By <strong>10 October 1905<\/strong> Jerome P. Churchill was President and Elmer Applegate Secretary; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/klamathcountyhistoricalsociety.org\/images\/Echoes\/Klamath-Echoes-No.-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B. S. Grigsby<\/a><\/strong> and M. F. Orr had joined the board by 3 November.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Several of those names appear elsewhere on these pages, and the overlaps are worth noticing.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">O. A. Stearns<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Emigrant of 1853 over the Applegate Trail, soldier at Fort Klamath, and <strong>the first homesteader in this Basin<\/strong> \u2014 the man whose 1870 letter describes rye grass tall enough to hide a mounted rider. He was a founding director in 1905 and <strong>President of the Association in 1906<\/strong>. Sterns Elementary is named for him.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Nathan Smith Merrill<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">\u201cUncle Nathan,\u201d who bought a ranch in 1894 and laid out the town that carries his name \u2014 and who seconded the 1913 resolution recording Newell's twenty-dollar promise.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Elmer Ivan Applegate<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Grandson of Lindsay Applegate of the 1843 migration, and an important early Oregon botanist known for his monograph on the trout lilies. Secretary of the Association 1905\u20131908.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">William C. Dalton<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Nephew of <strong>Jesse D. Carr<\/strong>, took over management of the Carr Ranch in 1900, and managed <strong>the termination point of the Adams Canal<\/strong> where it reached the ranch from Lower Klamath Lake.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Jerome P. Churchill<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">President in 1905, and an investor in power development and in White Lake City. In 1910 the Churchills hired a new Berkeley engineering graduate as a field surveyor on the Copco No. 1 project: <strong>John Christie Boyle<\/strong> \u2014 the man the John C. Boyle dam is named for.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Abel Ady<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">President 1910\u20131915, and the man who told the 1913 meeting the water users <em>\u201cdid not propose to repudiate\u201d<\/em> the debt. <strong>The Ady Canal carries his name<\/strong>, and it is still named in federal law.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Albert E. Elder<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Secretary of the Association from 1909 until 1917, then its attorney \u2014 and the District's. <strong>It was in Elder's office that the directors of Klamath Irrigation District met to organize on 18 December 1917.<\/strong> The Association's secretary handed the work across the room.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">Nine districts, then five divisions<\/h3>\n\n    <p>In <strong>March 1906<\/strong> the by-laws were amended so that directors were elected by voting district rather than at large. There were nine: <strong>Langell Valley \u00b7 Yonna Valley \u00b7 Poe Valley \u00b7 Klamath Falls and the valley north of Wilson Bridge \u00b7 Stukel, south of Wilson Bridge \u00b7 Merrill \u00b7 Keno \u00b7 Lower Klamath \u00b7 and one at large.<\/strong> Later amendments consolidated them again and again \u2014 six by 1910, five by 1911.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The board shrank as the districts consolidated \u2014 <strong>nine directors, then seven by amendment of 3 June 1910, then five<\/strong>. And in the amendment adopted just before the District was formed, the Association settled on the arrangement its successor still uses: <strong>a board of five directors elected to serve three years<\/strong>, with the first election staggered so that two served one year, two served two, and one served three, <em>\u201cThereafter, as the three year terms expire, their successors shall be elected for a term of three years.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p><strong>Five directors on staggered three-year terms is not a rule the District invented under ORS 545. It is the Association's last governance decision, made on the eve of its own succession.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>That is where the District's five divisions come from. <strong>The principle that a director represents a piece of ground rather than the whole is older than the District itself<\/strong>, and it was settled in 1906.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">Every officer, 1905 to 1929<\/h3>\n\n    <p>Officers were elected annually, so a \u201cterm\u201d is a run of re-elections. Set out by the years each man actually held the office:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__roster\">\n\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__roster-h\">Presidents<\/p>\n      <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1905 \u2013 1906<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">Jerome P. Churchill.<\/span> Signed the contract of 6 November 1905 and presided at the meeting that voted 8,598 to nothing.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1906 \u2013 1907<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">O. A. Stearns.<\/span> Founding director, first homesteader in this Basin, and the man who introduced the retraction of 1909.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1907 \u2013 1909<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">%s<\/span> Banker; led the \u201cConservative Ticket\u201d and the minority report of 120 shareholders in 1909.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1909 \u2013 1910<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">John Irwin.<\/span> Elected at the annual meeting of 4 June 1909; later Vice-President, and the man who introduced all four resolutions of 6 June 1913.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1910 \u2013 1915<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">Abel Ady.<\/span> Three terms. Refused the offer to have the debt written off. <strong>Died in office, 17 September 1915.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1916 \u2013 1917<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">C. A. Bunting.<\/span> The last president before the District existed.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1918 \u2013 1929<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">G. W. Offield.<\/span> <strong>President of the Association and of Klamath Irrigation District at the same time<\/strong>, and signed Contract Ilr-173 for both. Still in the chair at the wind-up.<\/span><\/li>\n      <\/ul>\n\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__roster-h\">Secretaries<\/p>\n      <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1905 \u2013 1908<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">Elmer I. Applegate.<\/span> Grandson of Lindsay Applegate; botanist; simultaneously Secretary-Treasurer of the <strong>National Federation of Water Users Associations<\/strong>. Swore every affidavit behind the 1905 contract.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1909<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">C. P. Chastain.<\/span> Signed the correspondence with Interior over Section 4 of the contract.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1909 \u2013 1917<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">Albert E. Elder.<\/span> Eight years, then attorney to the Association <em>and<\/em> to the District. <strong>The District's first directors organised in his office on 18 December 1917.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1918 \u2013 1928<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">A. L. Wishard.<\/span> Attested Ilr-173 for the Association and appears in Stoutemyer's canal-sale file.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1929<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">A. M. Thomas.<\/span> Appointed <strong>6 April 1929<\/strong> to wind up the Association's unfinished business; still Secretary of the District in 1925 when it drafted its own transfer contract.<\/span><\/li>\n      <\/ul>\n\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__roster-h\">Treasurer and Attorney<\/p>\n      <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1905 \u2013 1910<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">G. W. White<\/span>, Treasurer, throughout the founding years.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1905 \u2013 1906<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">D. V. Kuykendall<\/span>, Attorney \u2014 who drew the Articles of Incorporation, notarised them, and witnessed the 1905 contract.<\/span><\/li>\n        <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1907 \u2013 1910<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><span class=\"kid-hist__name\">R. S. Smith<\/span>, Attorney. In January 1909 the Board sent <strong>Richard Shore Smith to Washington<\/strong> as its authorised agent on the price of water.<\/span><\/li>\n      <\/ul>\n\n    <\/div>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">Names you already know<\/h3>\n\n    <p>These are not strangers. <strong>Most of them are still on the map, and some are still on the board.<\/strong> If you drive this Basin you have been reading the 1905 roster all your life without knowing it.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Merrill<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">N. S. Merrill chaired the general committee that organised the Association and signed the Articles first. <strong>The town is named for his family.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Ady<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Abel Ady, three-term President. The <strong>Ady Canal<\/strong> carries his name, and so does <strong>the town of Ady<\/strong> \u2014 formerly Teeters Landing, then Holland. The railroad named the station after him when his own suggestion, <em>Aard<\/em>, was passed over. Aard was his son.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Applegate<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Elmer I. Applegate, first Secretary, grandson of <strong>Lindsay Applegate<\/strong> of the Applegate Trail \u2014 and a botanist of standing; several Basin plants carry his name. The family appears twice more on the ordinary shareholders' roll.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Kuykendall<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">D. V. Kuykendall drew the Articles of Incorporation and notarised them on 4 March 1905. <strong>By 1917 he was Judge of the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon for Klamath County<\/strong> \u2014 the court that would enter the order establishing this District.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Churchill<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Jerome P. Churchill, first President. When H. E. Green rode through in October 1903 he passed <em>\u201cDry Lake, a large ranch owned by Mr. Churchill of Yreka\u201d<\/em> \u2014 the same man, on the ground, two years before the Association existed.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Stearns<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">O. A. Stearns, founding director and second President \u2014 and <strong>the first homesteader in this Basin<\/strong>. He introduced the February 1909 resolution that restarted the Project.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Adams<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">J. Frank Adams signed <strong>Trust Deed No. 1<\/strong>. Two years earlier a federal engineer had named him as the man <em>\u201cin charge\u201d<\/em> of the Lower Klamath reclamation works. The <strong>Adams Canal<\/strong> and <strong>Adams Pumping Plant<\/strong> are his.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Henley \u00b7 Ankeny \u00b7 Van Brimmer<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Not officers, but on every page of this history \u2014 and the <strong>Henley-Ankeny tracts<\/strong> are named as their own class of land in the District's founding federal contract of 1918.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And some never left<\/h3>\n\n    <p>Read the Association's roster beside <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1fCDMWI1xJNnwsygYE0ilovlRNSNrIuRQ\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the District's Warren Act schedules of 1955<\/a> and the same surnames are still there, fifty years on, farming the same ground:<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Stevenson<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">J. G. Stevenson was a director in 1908 and 1909. George E. Stevenson holds Warren Act contract 18r-582 on sixty-three acres in 1955, and is still named as a Warren Act contractor in Reclamation's cost allocations for 1964.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Marshall<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">A. L. Marshall sits on the Association's board in 1917 and again in 1929. John A. Marshall holds contract 18r-677 in 1955 \u2014 and as <strong>President of Klamath Irrigation District<\/strong> signs the letter of 4 May 1965 enclosing the final payment on the whole debt.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Cheyne<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Robert D. Cheyne is on the Association's board at the wind-up in 1929. Leland Cheyne holds contract 18r-1088 on a hundred and fifty-three acres in 1955. <strong>Rodney Cheyne is President of this District today.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Laughlin \u00b7 Drew \u00b7 Peterson \u00b7 Nichols \u00b7 Short<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">All on the 1905\u201307 rolls, all still holding contracts or water rentals under the Project half a century later.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>A Cheyne signed the Association out of existence in 1929. A Marshall signed the last payment in 1965. <strong>A Cheyne is in the chair now.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\"><strong>Two gaps.<\/strong> No officers are recorded here for <strong>1914<\/strong> or for the individual years <strong>1920 to 1923<\/strong>; both fall inside runs the record treats as continuous, and the minute volumes will confirm them. <strong>And one conflict.<\/strong> The February 1909 letterhead shows Alex Martin Jr. as President and C. P. Chastain as Secretary, while a later roster gives John Irwin and Albert E. Elder for 1909 \u2014 the annual election of <strong>4 June 1909<\/strong> is the likely dividing line, but the minute book should settle it.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And the last officers<\/h3>\n\n    <p>From <strong>1918 to 1928<\/strong> the Association's President was <strong>G. W. Offield<\/strong> and its Secretary <strong>A. L. Wishard<\/strong> \u2014 the same two men who appear in Stoutemyer's correspondence file over the canal sale, Offield appraising the Ankeny in 1919 and Wishard receiving the Assistant Secretary's letter about it. Offield was also the first President of Klamath Irrigation District. In <strong>1929<\/strong>, with Offield still in the chair, <strong>A. M. Thomas<\/strong> was appointed Secretary to wind the Association up.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The full year-by-year rosters, the successive by-law amendments and the district boundaries are in the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1CmkcdZjeuxdRkEg-BujNOmUk4C63GvXb\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">extracts from the Association's minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-names\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">The shareholders<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-names\">The people who actually signed<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Nearly everything above is officers and directors, because officers and directors are who sign minutes. But <strong>8,598 votes were cast at the Court House on 3 November 1905<\/strong>, and every one of them was an acre of somebody's ground. The papers carry their names too, and they are worth reading.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The 1907 ballot, for and against<\/h3>\n\n    <p>When the Association put the question of becoming a construction contractor to its members, it circulated <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1Tka8mom6jjwgUtuTs2tNHq1FPuPsHZxl\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a sheet with two columns<\/a>. The names came in on both sides, in their own hands. <strong>Jacob Rueck<\/strong> \u2014 a founding director \u2014 signed in favour, with <strong>Manuel Vera<\/strong>, <strong>Michael Ruseck<\/strong> and <strong>Peter Distersheiner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The opposing column ran longer: <strong>Thomas Michael \u00b7 John Ling \u00b7 the Flackus family<\/strong> \u2014 A. Flackus and Theo. W. Flackus \u2014 <strong>C. C. Pearson \u00b7 M. Anderson \u00b7 Chas. Drew \u00b7 V. Uhrmann \u00b7 Margaret Buck \u00b7 Charles Woelk \u00b7 H. J. O'Brien \u00b7 Robert Laughlin<\/strong>. German, Irish, Portuguese, Yankee names on one page, arguing about the same corporation.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>And across the margin, in a shaky hand: <strong>\u201cI hereby authorise J. Rueck to remove my name from the petition being circulated by Dan Driscoll, as I signed by mistake.\u201d<\/strong> Signed, H. J. O'Brien.<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>That is a man changing his mind in public, in writing, and asking a director he evidently trusted to see it done. <strong>It is the most human document in the District's archive.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The roll, with acreages<\/h3>\n\n    <p>Bound with <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1dg-6ECdwxQybrHW4mr7cNepypxDPjxXy\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the District's certified copy of the 1905 contract<\/a> is the shareholders' roll as it stood that November, each name against the shares he held \u2014 and since not more than one share could be allotted to an acre, <strong>the share column is an acreage column<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\"><strong>Jas. Jory, 1,000 \u00b7 B. S. Grigsby, 913 \u00b7 P. L. Fountain, 400 \u00b7 O. R. De Lap, 382 \u00b7 W. F. Hill, 360 \u00b7 J. C. Ferguson, 328 \u00b7 C. Gardner, 320 \u00b7 Galarneau, 200 \u00b7 Grant Harrison, 161 \u00b7 V. R. Evans, Fitch, C. Hoagland, Cyrus Grafis, 160 each \u00b7 T. R. Griffith, 100 \u00b7 C. Hill, 80<\/strong> \u2014 and on through <strong>Jno. Koontz \u00b7 Gottfried Konzuck \u00b7 Robert Laughlin \u00b7 Albert Merk \u00b7 Thos. Martin \u00b7 George W. Moe \u00b7 B. H. Moore \u00b7 E. L. Moore \u00b7 C. N. Meyer \u00b7 J. B. Nichols \u00b7 Jos. Nichols \u00b7 T. Nelson \u00b7 L. P. Neilson \u00b7 H. S. Newton \u00b7 M. F. Orr \u00b7 Peter Distersheiner \u00b7 Van Pattee \u00b7 Jacob Rueck \u00b7 Andrew Ryan \u00b7 Fred Steenen \u00b7 C. Sherman \u00b7 C. Short \u00b7 J. H. Sims \u00b7 W. S. Slough \u00b7 W. T. Smith \u00b7 O. A. Stearns \u00b7 J. G. Stevenson \u00b7 S. T. Summers \u00b7 A. Van Meter \u00b7 P. Van Meter \u00b7 T. Willits<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n    <p>A thousand acres against eighty, on the same sheet, bound by the same guarantee. <strong>And under the By-Laws the thousand-acre man could cast no more than a hundred and sixty votes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">What they did while the votes were counted<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The same record shows the tellers \u2014 <strong>P. L. Fountain and Jacob Rueck<\/strong>, under the inspection of the whole Board \u2014 carrying the ballots away to count them, and the meeting filling the wait with another resolution. It thanked the federal engineers: <strong>F. H. Newell<\/strong> for the interest he had shown in the country, <strong>J. B. Lippincott<\/strong> for his <em>\u201cloyal devotion of his energies,\u201d<\/em> and project engineer <strong>T. H. Humpherys<\/strong> for work they called <em>\u201cintelligent, efficient, honest and successful.\u201d<\/em> Bids for the first construction, they noted, would be opened on 29 December.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Then the count came back: <strong>\u201cTotal vote for the ratification and adoption of the contract\u2026 8598: total vote against said ratification and adoption, nothing.\u201d<\/strong> Two independent copies of that afternoon's record give the same figure.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">A note on provenance. The District's copy of the 1905 contract is not a photocopy. It is a <strong>certified exemplification issued by the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation on 31 December 1940<\/strong> under the Act of 24 August 1912, certifying the annexed text as <em>\u201ca full, true, and literal exemplification of said contract contained in the official files in the custody of this office.\u201d<\/em> <strong>The United States certified this contract to the District, from its own files, twenty-two years after the Association was dissolved.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The names in the cancellations<\/h3>\n\n    <p>In January and February 1907 the Board released some fifty subscribers whose land the Project could not reach, and <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1BhzVnkYVYHUq71mIBka4mc4foRdd8IP_\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">listed them by subscription number<\/a>. The roll reads like a census of the Basin at the moment it was being remade:<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\"><strong>Nannie Stiles \u00b7 L. A. Stiles \u00b7 P. J. Stiles \u00b7 W. Streubel \u00b7 Wm. Stallman \u00b7 E. J. Wood \u00b7 W. H. Wood \u00b7 Fred Beck \u00b7 Louisa Beck \u00b7 Godfrey Beck \u00b7 Teresa Bennett \u00b7 C. F. Brower \u00b7 Alice Collman \u00b7 Lindsay \u00b7 Mrs. Della Miller \u00b7 Hattie Applegate \u00b7 Elmer Applegate \u00b7 Breitenstein \u00b7 Paul Baumann \u00b7 L. Baum \u00b7 Biehn \u00b7 Conger \u00b7 R. Critchlow \u00b7 August Liskey \u00b7 Caroline Liskey \u00b7 Mrs. Hedel \u00b7 A. L. Meier \u00b7 Henry Oden \u00b7 Philip Oden \u00b7 Mrs. Peterson \u00b7 E. W. Roberts and Verner Roberts \u00b7 Geo. Witter and Caroline Witter \u00b7 Susie Pool<\/strong> \u2014 and dozens more.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Some of those names are still on ground this District serves. <strong>Applegate<\/strong> is on the roll twice, and the family that gave the Applegate Trail its name gave the Association its first secretary. <strong>Conger<\/strong> is the Conger of the 1868 garden ditch. <strong>Roberts<\/strong> refused to sign a second subscription and had his first one cancelled and handed back to him \u2014 the Board resolving that it be executed in duplicate and delivered <em>\u201conly upon their endorsing their full acceptance thereof on both copies.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>This was not a distant bureaucracy processing applicants. <strong>It was a few hundred neighbours, most of whom knew each other, running a three-million-dollar obligation out of a rented office above a post office.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-purpose\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">4 March 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-purpose\">What it was for \u2014 and where the District\u2019s mission comes from<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The U.S. Irrigation Committee met on <strong>25 February 1905<\/strong> in the office of the County Judge at Klamath Falls to take steps toward incorporating a water users' association. Ten men sat on it. A sub-committee of <strong>P. L. Fountain, O. A. Stearns and Elmer I. Applegate<\/strong> was appointed to do the preliminary work, and the committee's attorney, <strong>D. V. Kuykendall<\/strong>, drew the articles. They reconvened at the County Court House on <strong>4 March 1905<\/strong> and signed them in triplicate.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Article I gave the corporation its name and set its duration as <strong>unlimited<\/strong>. Article IV fixed the capital stock at two million dollars, Article V the par value of a share at twenty. And <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1CmkcdZjeuxdRkEg-BujNOmUk4C63GvXb\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Article II stated what the Association was for<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1CmkcdZjeuxdRkEg-BujNOmUk4C63GvXb\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Articles of Incorporation, Klamath Water Users Association, 4 March 1905 \u2014 Article II<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201c<strong>To acquire<\/strong>, condemn, appropriate, furnish, <strong>provide for, and distribute<\/strong> to the lands of the shareholders of this corporation <strong>an adequate supply of water<\/strong> for the irrigation thereof; to divert, store, develop, pump, carry and distribute water for irrigation and <strong>all other beneficial uses<\/strong>\u2026 to own, use, sell, transfer, convey, control, <strong>maintain<\/strong>, and operate any irrigation works\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Set that beside the mission this District adopted a hundred and twenty years later:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p><em>To <strong>acquire, maintain, assure and deliver an adequate water supply for beneficial use<\/strong> on qualified land within the Klamath Project.<\/em><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p><strong>Acquire. Maintain. Provide for. Distribute. An adequate supply of water. All other beneficial uses.<\/strong> The four verbs and the two nouns of the modern mission are all in Article II, written in 1905 by ten farmers and a country lawyer at the Klamath County Court House. <strong>The District's mission statement is not a modern summary of an old purpose. It is a paraphrase of the purpose clause of its predecessor's charter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">Two other powers in the same clause<\/h3>\n\n    <p>Article II runs on, and two of its remaining powers explain things that happen later in this history.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Power generation<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The Association was empowered to own and operate <strong>\u201celectric or other power plants, and transmission lines\u201d<\/strong> and <strong>\u201cto generate, create, transmit, use and sell power and electrical energy.\u201d<\/strong> That is why the stockholders could resolve in 1913 that power on this Project be developed for their own benefit \u2014 and why the districts objected when the Ankeny and Keno canals were sold to a power company six years later. <strong>They were not overreaching. It was in the charter from the first day.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Trustee for excess lands<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The Association could <strong>\u201cact as trustee, agent, or attorney for the sale, disposal and transfer of lands\u2026 in order to facilitate the disposal of such lands\u2026 to persons qualified to perfect rights to the use of water\u201d<\/strong> under federal law. That is the authority behind the Excess Land Trust Deeds \u2014 written into the charter a full eight months before J. Frank Adams signed the first of them.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__source\">All quotations in this section from the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1CmkcdZjeuxdRkEg-BujNOmUk4C63GvXb\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Articles of Incorporation of the Klamath Water Users Association<\/a>, signed in triplicate at the Klamath County Court House on 4 March 1905 before notary D. V. Kuykendall \u2014 Articles I, II, IV and V. The same file carries the record of the U.S. Irrigation Committee's meeting of 25 February 1905.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-rules\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">1 April 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-rules\">What a man was handed before he signed<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The Board had the whole thing printed: <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1UUqtwGU3kDMX0qq8odn-s68mxnrr9xer\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>National Irrigation Act, Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the Klamath Water Users Association<\/em><\/a>, Klamath Falls, 1905, <em>\u201cpublished by authority of the Board of Directors.\u201d<\/em> Thirty-two pages \u2014 <strong>the Act first, the Association's own instruments after it<\/strong>. A man being asked to pledge his farm could read the law and the rules together, in one hand, before he put his name to anything.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The title page describes the Association as <strong>\u201corganized with the sanction and at the request of the Secretary of the Interior,\u201d<\/strong> and names the general committee that acted before organisation, with <strong>N. S. Merrill<\/strong> as Chairman and <strong>P. L. Fountain<\/strong> as Vice-Chairman.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Section 6 of the Act \u2014 the promise that the works would pass to the owners \u2014 is <a href=\"#kw-section6\">set out above<\/a>. What follows is everything else he would have read.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">One rule, stated three times<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The single most important thing in the booklet is a rule about ownership, and it appears in all three documents, in the same words. <strong>The right to use the water belongs to the ground, and cannot be taken off it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The Act, Section 8<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The Secretary <strong>\u201cshall proceed in conformity with\u201d<\/strong> state law on the control, appropriation, use and distribution of water, and any vested right acquired under it \u2014 and <strong>\u201cthe right to the use of water acquired under the provisions of this Act shall be appurtenant to the land irrigated, and beneficial use shall be the basis, the measure, and the limit of the right.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The By-Laws, Article I, Section 7<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Every certificate must describe the land, <strong>\u201cto which the aforesaid rights and shares shall be perpetually appurtenant\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 and thereafter <strong>\u201call rights, whatever their source or whatever their manner of acquisition, to the use of water for the irrigation of said lands shall forever be inseparably appurtenant thereto.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The subscription form<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Every shareholder signed a contract binding his shares <strong>\u201cinseparably appurtenant to the following described real estate\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 a blank left for the legal description of his own ground.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>Statute, by-law and signed contract, all saying the same thing in 1905. <strong>The Klamath Basin Adjudication reached that conclusion in 2014.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Two neighbouring by-laws close the door completely. <strong>Section 8<\/strong>: every transfer of the land operates \u2014 <em>\u201cwhether it be expressed therein or not\u201d<\/em> \u2014 as a transfer of the water right and the shares with it. <strong>Section 9<\/strong>: any attempted transfer of shares <em>without<\/em> the land <strong>\u201cshall be of no force or effect for any purpose, and shall confer no rights of any kind whatever\u201d<\/strong> on the person receiving them. <strong>You could not sell the water off the ground. It was not possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And what it cost him to sign<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The subscription was executed <strong>\u201cin the same manner as required by law for the execution and acknowledgment of deeds for conveyance of real property\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 signed, sealed, witnessed and notarised, with his wife joining. It was not a form. It was a deed.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">A lien on his land<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Payments and assessments became <strong>a lien on the land and the shares<\/strong>, enforced <em>\u201cby foreclosure and sale\u2026 in the manner provided by law for the foreclosure of mortgages.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Forfeiture<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">If he failed to apply promptly for his water right once water was available, he <strong>forfeited the shares to the Association<\/strong> \u2014 and forfeited stock could never be <em>\u201crenewed, revived or reissued.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">One share to the acre<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Not more than one share could be allotted for each acre, so a man's holding in the corporation was exactly the size of his farm.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">But his seniors were safe<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><strong>Article VII<\/strong>: nothing in the Articles or in joining the Association affects <strong>\u201cthe vested rights of any person to the prior use or delivery of any water.\u201d<\/strong> The senior ditches of this Basin were protected on the first page.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The governance was recognisably this District's. Nine directors serving one year, each required to own land inside the boundaries <em>and to live there<\/em>. One vote per share, <strong>capped at a hundred and sixty<\/strong>. Nothing over ten thousand dollars without a two-thirds vote of the shareholders. And <strong>no provision of Article I amendable at all<\/strong> except with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior. Source: the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1iUuJivLDAKReV_zU4JCgBQxAjsy6Ko8l\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">By-Laws filed 1 April 1905<\/a> \u2014 Article I sections 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 13; Articles III, IV, V and VII; and the Act as printed at pages 4\u20139 of the same booklet.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">One detail of the printing is worth recording. The title page gives the capital stock as <strong>$3,000,000 in 150,000 shares<\/strong> while Article IV inside still reads $2,000,000, and a marginal note against Article I, Section 13 reads <em>\u201camended 1911.\u201d<\/em> <strong>The District's copy is a working document<\/strong>, reprinted after the increase of May 1910 and corrected by hand after 1911.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-agreement\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">5 August 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-agreement\">The agreement with the United States<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Before the contract of 6 November there was an agreement of <strong>5 August 1905<\/strong>, adopted by resolution of the Board and executed for the Association by President <strong>Jerome Churchill<\/strong> and Secretary <strong>Elmer I. Applegate<\/strong>, with <strong>E. A. Hitchcock<\/strong> signing for the United States. <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1-_nO8OQdIEFQ5vL2HHp2BeBB5bERNjEn\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">It is eleven numbered paragraphs<\/a>, and four of them are law the District still stands on.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The By-Laws became part of the federal contract<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The agreement recites that the articles of incorporation and by-laws are appended to it and are <strong>\u201cto be deemed, held, read and considered as if fully written out or printed herein, and deemed as a part hereof\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 and that any later amendment approved by the Secretary <strong>\u201cwill be deemed, held and considered to such extent a change or modification of, or addition to, the terms of this contract.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>That is not a footnote. <strong>It means the appurtenance clause of Article I, Section 7 \u2014 rights \u201cforever inseparably appurtenant\u201d to the land \u2014 is not merely a rule the farmers wrote for themselves. It is a term of their contract with the United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>And the agreement says it again in its own words: the rights the shareholders would acquire <strong>\u201cshall be, and thereafter continue to be, forever appurtenant to designated lands owned by such shareholders.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The adjudication was anticipated in the agreement<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The eighth recital is remarkable for a document of 1905. It records that <strong>\u201cneither the relative priority nor the extent of the individual appropriations\u2026 which are now vested rights, have been ascertained or determined\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 and that the shareholders had agreed among themselves, in the by-laws, on the rules by which those priorities <em>\u201cshould be hereafter recognized.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n    <p><strong>The parties knew in 1905 that the vested rights of this Basin had never been adjudicated, said so in the contract, and provided for the day they would be.<\/strong> That day came in 2014.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">Beneficial use, and state law<\/h3>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Paragraph 3<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The total of rights issued could not exceed the acreage irrigable by <strong>\u201c(1) the amount now appropriated by the shareholders\u2026 and (2) the amount to be delivered from all sources in excess of the water now appropriated\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 the Secretary's determination <strong>\u201cto be based upon and measured and limited by the beneficial use of water.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Paragraph 10<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The members' water rights are to be <strong>\u201cdefined, determined and enjoyed\u201d<\/strong> under the Reclamation Act and <strong>\u201calso by the laws of the States of Oregon and California.\u201d<\/strong> Section 8 deference to state water law, written into the Association's founding agreement.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Paragraph 8<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">If the Association failed to make rules the Secretary could prescribe them \u2014 but <strong>\u201cthe Secretary of the Interior shall impose no rule or regulation interfering with any vested right of the shareholders.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">Paragraphs 4 and 5<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Payment in <strong>not less than ten equal annual instalments<\/strong>, the first due when water was first delivered; and the Association <strong>\u201chereby guarantees the payments\u201d<\/strong> apportioned to each shareholder. The guarantee, in terms.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__source\">All quotations in this section from the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1-_nO8OQdIEFQ5vL2HHp2BeBB5bERNjEn\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Articles of Agreement between the United States and the Klamath Water Users Association, 5 August 1905<\/a> \u2014 recitals and paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10, adopted by resolution of the Board and executed by President Jerome Churchill and Secretary Elmer I. Applegate.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-deal\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">3 November 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-deal\">What they signed, and what it cost<\/h2>\n\n    <p>On <strong>3 November 1905<\/strong>, the stockholders met in special session at the Court House, President Jerome P. Churchill in the chair and Elmer I. Applegate acting as secretary. The notice mailed to every shareholder twenty days earlier stated the purpose plainly: to consider and ratify or reject the contract with the United States, under which the Association would guarantee payment of the cost of the irrigation works apportioned to each of its shareholders. On a motion by W. S. Slough, they <strong>unanimously<\/strong> authorized and directed the Board to enter into it. The contract itself is <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1905_History_Contract_KWUA_KID.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dated 6 November 1905<\/a>. Construction began in 1906. The farmers were paying from the first shovel.<\/p>\n\n    <p>They paid a second time, in ground. The Project needed land to put canals on, and the landowners deeded it over. In 1905 <strong>Sophia S. Henley<\/strong> of Klamath Falls signed a <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1owNxmLhGbXDLdzdImkThNrNG4qHNSLeY\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">warranty deed<\/a> conveying her land \u2014 already fenced, already cultivated, already irrigated \u2014 to the United States of America and its assigns forever. The consideration recited on the face of the deed is <strong>one dollar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n    <p>And the United States could not have built the Project around them in any case:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>\u201cThe Ankeny-Henley Canal occupied such a strategic location, that it was <strong>practically impossible to convey project water from the Upper Klamath Lake without entering into an agreement with the Klamath Falls Irrigation Co.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>So the government bought its way in. On <strong>7 April 1905<\/strong>, Reclamation paid <strong>$337,500<\/strong> for rights to land and water from the owners of three concerns \u2014 the Little Klamath Ditch, the Ankeny-Henley Canal, and the Jesse D. Carr Land & Livestock Company. It paid another $150,000 to the <strong>Klamath Canal Company<\/strong> \u2014 three men who had incorporated in May 1904 and filed on water rights equal to the entire flow of Link River, and who were, in Reclamation's own account, the only company that threatened the Project's authorization. Companies were paid for canals. Individual landowners, like Sophia Henley, deeded their ground for a dollar.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">What the Association had bought, the United States then built. The contract for the \u201cA\u201d Canal was let in December 1905, work began in March 1906, and water ran on <strong>22 May 1907<\/strong>. That construction \u2014 the canals, the branches, the pumping units \u2014 is told on the <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/\">History<\/a> page. <strong>This Association did not build anything.<\/strong> It secured the policy, the law, the finance and the contracts, dealt with the federal agencies, and represented the people the works were built to serve.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__caption\">The government bought the ditch. It never bought the water.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note kid-hist__note--inline\">It never brought the water either. Irrigation ran here on the natural flow of the river from 1878 until the first storage in 1919 \u2014 and when storage came, a power company built it. See <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/#kid-hist-project\">Who brought the water<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n    <p>And the Project was authorized on terms. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usbr.gov\/projects\/pdf.php?id=129\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reclamation's history sets out four conditions<\/a> on which approval rested: cession of rights in Lower Klamath and Tule Lakes by Oregon and California, Congressional approval to destroy navigability, surrender of certain rights on those lakes \u2014 and, first among them, <strong>the adjudication of all vested and conflicting water rights<\/strong>. The Klamath Basin Adjudication was not something that happened to the Project a century later. It was a condition of the Project existing at all.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>The Klamath Basin Adjudication was not something that happened to this Project a century later. <strong>It was a condition of the Project existing at all<\/strong> \u2014 and the agency that imposed it said so in its own published history.<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">That condition is the foundation of everything the District argues about water and about title. It is set out at length on <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/district-governance-accountability\/title-transfer\/\">Title Transfer<\/a>.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-vote\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">7 October \u2013 6 November 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-vote\">Eight thousand five hundred and ninety-eight to nothing<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The contract of 6 November was not signed on anyone's say-so. <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1kvvBKVAruHLVo9d20TsuV_ZSy8FzSgFU\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The whole chain of authority survives<\/a>, sworn to and notarised, and it takes exactly a month.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">7 October 1905<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">At its regular meeting the Board resolves to call a special meeting of the stockholders, at the Court House, on 3 November at one o'clock, <strong>\u201cto consider and ratify or reject by an election to be held for that purpose\u201d<\/strong> the proposed contract. Unanimous.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">10 October 1905<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Secretary Applegate mails notice to <strong>every stockholder at his last known residence<\/strong>, twenty days clear. The notice states the proposition plainly \u2014 that the Association <em>\u201cproposes to guarantee the payments for that part of the cost of the irrigation works which shall be apportioned by the Secretary of the Interior to each of its shareholders\u201d<\/em> \u2014 and adds: <strong>\u201cNo stockholder will be allowed to vote at this election on any stock on which any assessment is delinquent and unpaid.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">3 November 1905<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Churchill presides, Applegate keeps the record, the roll is called and the names of those present entered. Seven directors are appointed tellers and inspectors: <strong>Applegate, P. L. Fountain, M. F. Orr, O. A. Stearns, B. S. Grigsby, W. F. Hill and Jacob Rueck.<\/strong> Ballots are distributed and the polls closed.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>\u201cthe tellers thereupon proceeded to count and upon the completion of the count announced the result of the ballot as follows: <strong>in favor of the adoption of the resolution 8598, opposed 0.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p><strong>Eight thousand five hundred and ninety-eight votes for. None against.<\/strong> Every vote weighted to an acre of ground, and not one acre in this Basin voted no.<\/p>\n\n    <p>What they adopted was an authorisation, not the contract itself: the Board was <strong>\u201cspecially authorized and directed to enter into an agreement, on behalf of said corporation, with the United States of America in the words and figures as follows\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 the whole text set out in the resolution, so that nobody voted on a document they had not seen. The stockholders added that they <em>\u201cratify and confirm the same, and all else that said Board of Directors shall lawfully do in the premises.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n    <p>The Board met the next day, <strong>4 November<\/strong>, and resolved to execute. On <strong>6 November 1905<\/strong> <strong>Jerome P. Churchill<\/strong> and <strong>Elmer I. Applegate<\/strong> signed and sealed it, witnessed by <strong>D. V. Kuykendall<\/strong> \u2014 the lawyer who had drawn the Articles eight months earlier \u2014 and <strong>P. L. Fountain<\/strong>, both of Klamath Falls, and acknowledged before a notary the same day as <em>\u201cthe free act and deed of the said corporation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The distinction matters and is often got wrong. <strong>The stockholders did not ratify a signed contract on 3 November; they authorised and directed their Board to sign one, and the contract itself is dated 6 November.<\/strong> Applegate swore to each step separately \u2014 the call, the mailing, the meeting, the count, the Board's resolution \u2014 and had every affidavit notarised on 6 November so the package would stand on its own.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-trust\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">3 November 1905<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-trust\">What \u201cpledged their land\u201d actually meant<\/h2>\n\n    <p>It is easy to write that the landowners pledged their land against the cost of the Project. The <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/drive\/folders\/1RN4OrkeEhPOjzLmEt5Jk-uusGDruG6zs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Excess Land Trust Deeds<\/a> show what that sentence meant in practice, and it is stronger than the phrase suggests.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The Reclamation Act would not let a man perfect a water right on more than a hundred and sixty acres. Owners holding more than that were, in the deed's own words, <em>\u201cnot at present qualified to perfect a water right.\u201d<\/em> So they conveyed the land itself \u2014 <strong>\u201cgrant, bargain, sell and convey unto the party of the second part, in trust FOREVER\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 to the Klamath Water Users Association, for one dollar.<\/p>\n\n    <p>And they gave the Association the power to sell it:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\">Excess Land Trust Deed No. 1 \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1rpMOrUWlRK8r3lOUtk3GzOS04Lt8R0C3\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">J. Frank Adams and Martha Adams, 3 November 1905<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201cThe said THE KLAMATH WATER USERS ASSOCIATION shall have power and is hereby empowered <strong>upon the direction of the Secretary of the Interior to sell and dispose of the said premises<\/strong>\u2026 <strong>at public auction<\/strong> at or subsequent to the time when the Secretary of the Interior shall announce that the water is ready for delivery\u2026 at the front door of the Court House in the County of Klamath.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Not less than a quarter down, the balance over five years at eight per cent, four weeks' notice in the newspaper. The owner appointed the Association his <em>\u201ctrue and lawful attorney\u2026 and that this power shall be irrevocable during the life of this trust.\u201d<\/em> The trust ended only when he qualified as a subscriber and took his stock \u2014 or if the United States decided not to build, in which case the land came back to him.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>The security behind the 1905 contract was not a signature. <strong>It was the farms themselves, conveyed in trust, with an irrevocable power of sale at the courthouse door.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Trust Deed <strong>No. 1<\/strong> was signed by <strong>J. Frank Adams<\/strong> and his wife Martha \u2014 the man who had built the Adams canal, William Steele's son-in-law, one of the men who had stood up at White Lake City five months earlier urging his neighbours to sign. He went first.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The District still holds these deeds, together with the stock subscriptions and contracts numbered into the hundreds and the 1919 releases of lien recorded against them. They are the physical record of what this Basin put up.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-contractor\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">18 \u2013 20 May 1907<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-contractor\">The year it nearly became a builder<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Four days before the first water reached the \u201cA\u201d Canal, the stockholders met in adjourned session and took up a proposition that would have made this a completely different organization:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1Tka8mom6jjwgUtuTs2tNHq1FPuPsHZxl\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Circular to the stockholders of the Klamath Water Users Association, 20 May 1907<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201cThat the Klamath Water Users Association, as a corporation, <strong>take up the work of construction of dams, canals, ditches and any other works in connection with the Klamath Project by entering the field as a contractor<\/strong>. The funds with which to finance the enterprise would either have to be raised by <strong>an assessment on the stock of the Association or borrowed<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>A committee of five was appointed to look into it and report to the Board on 1 June. The circular went out with two columns for signature \u2014 one to <strong>APPROVE<\/strong> and one to <strong>OPPOSE<\/strong> \u2014 and the sheets that survive show the names filling up on both sides, with the opposing column considerably the longer. <strong>The Association never became a contractor.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p>The margin of that page carries something better than the vote. One shareholder wrote across it: <em>\u201cI hereby authorise J. Rueck to remove my name from the petition being circulated\u2026 as I signed by mistake.\u201d<\/em> <strong>These were farmers arguing in the open about what their own corporation should be, and changing their minds in writing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p>It matters because of what it settles. The Association could have built the Project \u2014 its charter empowered it to construct and operate irrigation works, and it had the stock to assess. <strong>It considered doing so, in the open, and declined.<\/strong> What it chose to remain was what it had been organised as: the legal and financial instrument of the landowners, holding the contract, guaranteeing the charges, and dealing with Washington on their behalf.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The 1907 letterhead names <strong>Alex Martin Jr.<\/strong> as President, <strong>O. A. Stearns<\/strong> Vice-President, <strong>Elmer I. Applegate<\/strong> Secretary, <strong>G. W. White<\/strong> Treasurer and <strong>R. S. Smith<\/strong> Attorney; the directors include <strong>J. Frank Adams<\/strong> \u2014 who had signed Trust Deed No. 1 \u2014 and <strong>D. F. Driscoll<\/strong>. Applegate is listed on the same letterhead as Secretary of the <strong>National Federation of Water Users Associations<\/strong>: two years after incorporating, this Basin's association held the secretaryship of the national body.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-thirty\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">18 November 1908 \u2013 25 March 1910<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-thirty\">The thirty dollars<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Newell had said twenty dollars an acre. On <strong>18 November 1908<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1MNWrKT_4XK7cDa3ygk4bwWhGuoynhODd\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield issued the Public Notice<\/a> that fixed what the landowners would actually be charged:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1MNWrKT_4XK7cDa3ygk4bwWhGuoynhODd\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Public Notice, Klamath Project, Oregon-California, 18 November 1908<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201cThe building of the irrigation system, <strong>$30 per acre of irrigable land<\/strong>, payable in not more than ten annual instalments, each payment not less than $3.00 per acre\u2026 The operation and maintenance charge for the irrigation season of 1909 and until further notice will be <strong>75 cents per acre of irrigable land, whether water is used thereon or not<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p><strong>Half as much again as the figure on which the Association had been organised<\/strong> \u2014 roughly <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">$1,090 an acre in today's money against Newell's $760<\/span>. The first instalment \u2014 three dollars for building and seventy-five cents for operation, <strong>$3.75 an acre<\/strong>, <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">about $136 today<\/span> \u2014 fell due on <strong>1 May 1909<\/strong>, five years after Newell spoke and two after the first water ran. That is the charge the stockholders were still protesting in the Opera House in 1913.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Three other terms of that notice are worth recording, because they set the pattern the Project has followed ever since.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The duty of water<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The instructions accompanying the notice state that <strong>\u201cthe amount of water to be furnished is 1.8 acre feet per acre per annum.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">No payment, no water<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><strong>\u201cNo water will be furnished in any year until all operation and maintenance charges then due shall have been paid.\u201d<\/strong> Non-payment \u2014 and only non-payment \u2014 was the ground for withholding water. It is the same ground the 1954 contract states today.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The 160 acres, and thirty miles<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Water-right applications for land in private ownership were limited to <strong>160 acres of irrigable land for each land owner<\/strong> \u2014 the rule that made the Excess Land Trust Deeds necessary. Residence <em>\u201cin the neighborhood\u201d<\/em> was fixed at <strong>thirty miles<\/strong>.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The Association refused \u2014 and the Project stopped<\/h3>\n\n    <p>What the stockholders did about the thirty dollars is the most consequential thing this Association ever did, and it nearly destroyed the Project.<\/p>\n\n    <p><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1Sc48NCyykOgtIyiQ79h93OWirO3giRzQ\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">George Moss Driscoll's account<\/a>, drawn from the Reclamation correspondence, sets out the sequence: the Association <strong>passed a resolution denying any obligation to pay in excess of the originally estimated maximum cost of $20 an acre<\/strong>. Secretary <strong>Garfield<\/strong>, in one of his last official acts before leaving office, <strong>suspended construction on the Klamath Project in January 1909<\/strong>. Only when the Association retracted its resolution did the incoming Secretary, <strong>Richard A. Ballinger<\/strong>, order the work resumed.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>The landowners of this Basin held to Newell's twenty dollars hard enough that the United States stopped building the Project. <strong>Then they backed down, and the work went on.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1BhzVnkYVYHUq71mIBka4mc4foRdd8IP_\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Board's resolution book survives<\/a>, and the retraction is in it, dated <strong>23 February 1909<\/strong> and introduced by founding director <strong>O. A. Stearns<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\">Resolution of the Board of Directors, 23 February 1909<\/p>\n      <p>\u201c\u2026the Secretary of the Interior has construed the letter of December 7th\u2026 as meaning that this Board refuses to comply with its contract with the United States Reclamation Service in the matter of guaranteeing the payment\u2026 <strong>we as members of the Board of Directors hereby distinctly disclaim any such determination or intention<\/strong>, as we fully realize that not only our contract with the Honorable Secretary of the Interior is binding but that <strong>the Stock Subscription contracts signed by each and every member of the Association is equally binding, and that nothing the Board of Directors could do or fail to do would relieve either the shareholders or the Water Users' Association from the provisions of the contracts.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>They regretted that their December letter had been read <em>\u201cas to cause suspension of work on the Project,\u201d<\/em> because suspending construction and diverting the funds <em>\u201cwould result in a greater loss to this community than we could hope might be gained by a reduction of the estimated cost.\u201d<\/em> And they closed by naming where they would go instead:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>\u201cin case the enforcement of the collection under the contracts become too burdensome for the people under the irrigation system <strong>we would then look to Congress for such legislation as will afford adequate relief.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p><strong>That is the sentence the District has been acting on ever since.<\/strong> Not repudiation, not default \u2014 acknowledge the obligation, pay it, and take the hardship to Congress.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And what Washington actually asked for was six million<\/h3>\n\n    <p>On <strong>23 July 1909<\/strong> the Board recorded that supervising engineer <strong>E. G. Hopson<\/strong> had asked it to obtain the stockholders' agreement to <strong>increase the capital stock from $2,000,000 to $6,000,000<\/strong>, and the par value of a share from twenty dollars to sixty \u2014 on the understanding that once a favourable report came, <em>\u201cthe price of water in the Upper Project will soon be announced.\u201d<\/em> The Board resolved to render <em>\u201call assistance within its power,\u201d<\/em> and a special meeting of stockholders on <strong>8 November 1909<\/strong> authorised it.<\/p>\n\n    <p>A note in the Association's own book records what happened next: <strong>\u201cThis increase was never certified to Secretary of State.\u201d<\/strong> What was certified, on 12 May 1910, was an increase to <strong>three<\/strong> million at thirty dollars a share.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>Washington asked these farmers to treble their guarantee. <strong>They voted for it, then filed half of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Through 1910 the shareholders <strong>repeatedly refused to increase the Association's capitalisation<\/strong> to match the repayment obligation Reclamation now expected \u2014 until supervising engineer <strong>E. G. Hopson<\/strong> threatened to divert that year's appropriations to other projects. <strong>The increase to three million dollars, certified at Salem on 12 May 1910, was made under that threat.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p>It was ugly, and both sides knew it. Two factions had formed inside the Association \u2014 the <strong>\u201cRanchers Ticket\u201d<\/strong> behind Abel Ady, and the <strong>\u201cConservative Ticket\u201d<\/strong> of men who favoured cooperating with the government. After a Senate committee took evidence at Klamath Falls on 9 November 1909, <strong>Alex Martin<\/strong> \u2014 former President of the Association and leader of the conservatives \u2014 got up a minority report <strong>signed by 120 shareholders representing 39,000 acres<\/strong>, asking that the Project not be judged on what the Board had told the Senators. Newell wrote to founding director <strong>O. A. Stearns<\/strong> that <em>\u201cit looks as though the project would lie under the condemnation of its own people,\u201d<\/em> and that it had <em>\u201cprobably the worst showing of any project in the West.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And the Project was reorganised around the argument<\/h3>\n\n    <p>On <strong>17 February 1910<\/strong> Ballinger wrote to Secretary Elder with his decision. Construction costs for parts of the Project would far exceed the estimates, so he would <strong>\u201cexclude from the general project\u201d<\/strong> the lands of <strong>Langell and Yonna valleys<\/strong> \u2014 the Upper Project \u2014 together with the elevated tracts that could only be served by pumping. Those lands were released from their stock subscription contracts and from the liens on them.<\/p>\n\n    <p>Reclamation stayed willing to serve them if some arrangement could be made to secure the construction charges. <strong>The arrangement, when it came, was the Warren Act of 1911<\/strong> \u2014 and that is where the Project's contract classes come from.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\">Driscoll, <em>John Abel Ady, \u201cSwamp King\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n      <p>\u201cThis distinction in forms of contracting is <strong>the general basis for the current contractual priorities within the Klamath Project, often referred to as the \u2018A-B-C\u2019 system<\/strong>. The Klamath Project is no smaller or larger than originally authorized in 1905, but the various contractual types within the Project was prompted in part due to the actions of Abel Ady.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>So the pattern the District still lives with \u2014 some lands holding water-right applications under the 1902 Act, others holding Warren Act contracts \u2014 was not designed. <strong>It is the residue of an argument about thirty dollars an acre, settled in 1910 by a Secretary of the Interior drawing a line around the ground he thought too expensive to serve.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And Washington told the Association to collect it<\/h3>\n\n    <p>On <strong>25 March 1910<\/strong> Secretary <strong>R. A. Ballinger<\/strong> wrote reminding the Association that it had <em>\u201cguaranteed the payment of the charges\u2026 against the lands of its shareholders\u201d<\/em> and directing it to make a call and assessment of $3.00 a share for building and 75 cents for operation, in force before 1 May 1910 \u2014 and if unpaid, <strong>\u201cimmediately enforced by way of the foreclosure of the assessment lien provided for in the bylaws and stock-subscription contracts.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p>He enclosed a draft set of rules for the Association to adopt, noting that its provisions had <em>\u201cbeen carefully considered in connection with other projects\u201d<\/em> and asking that any amendments be sent <strong>by telegram<\/strong> to save time. <strong>The guarantee the landowners gave in 1905 was being called in, and the instrument for calling it was the lien on their own farms.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__source\">Public Notices of 18 November 1908 and 7 December 1908 over the signature of <strong>James Rudolph Garfield<\/strong>, and of 24 August 1909 over that of Acting Secretary <strong>Frank Pierce<\/strong>; letters from Secretary <strong>R. A. Ballinger<\/strong> to the Association of 25 March and 20 April 1910. <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1MNWrKT_4XK7cDa3ygk4bwWhGuoynhODd\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">All in one file<\/a>, with the township plats listed.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-washington\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">January \u2013 February 1909<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-washington\">How it dealt with Washington<\/h2>\n\n    <p>This is what the Association's work actually looked like between the founding and the wind-up: not building, but reading contracts closely and corresponding with the Department of the Interior about what they meant.<\/p>\n\n    <p>On <strong>19 January 1909<\/strong> the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1HM3szpJ4SY3owGzmFvcWbOwaOLb3oNf7\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Secretary of the Interior wrote to the Association<\/a> about an apparent conflict he had spotted in his own paperwork. <strong>Section 4 of the contract of 6 November 1905<\/strong> required that payments for water rights be divided into <strong>\u201cnot less than ten equal annual payments.\u201d<\/strong> But his <strong>Public Notice of 18 November 1908<\/strong> allowed the building charge to be paid <strong>\u201cin not more than ten annual instalments\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 which left open the option of paying it off faster.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1HM3szpJ4SY3owGzmFvcWbOwaOLb3oNf7\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Secretary of the Interior to the Klamath Water Users' Association, 19 January 1909<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201cThis option has been given because it was deemed an advantage to the water users association, and <strong>is not regarded as a departure from the terms of the contract<\/strong>\u2026 This point is called to your attention in order that any supplemental agreement deemed necessary by your association may be prepared and entered into\u2026 but in my opinion the agreement is sufficient as it now stands. <strong>If you regard this letter sufficient evidence of this construction of the contract please attach it to your copy of the agreement<\/strong>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>The Board met on <strong>6 February 1909<\/strong> and replied three days later over the signatures of its President and Secretary. It accepted the Secretary's reading, undertook to attach his letter and its own reply to the copy of the agreement held in its office, and to <strong>\u201cregard same as sufficient evidence of this construction of the contract.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>A term of a federal contract was construed by an exchange of two letters, filed with the agreement itself. <strong>That is how this Basin's water obligations were actually settled \u2014 carefully, in writing, and on the record.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The Association's letterhead of February 1909 names its officers: <strong>Alex Martin Jr.<\/strong> President, <strong>Jacob Rueck<\/strong> Vice-President, <strong>C. P. Chastain<\/strong> Secretary, <strong>G. W. White<\/strong> Treasurer, <strong>R. S. Smith<\/strong> Attorney \u2014 with J. R. Dixon, W. C. Dalton, John Irwin, O. A. Stearns, H. T. Anderson, J. G. Stevenson and E. R. C. Williams as directors.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-stock\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">1905 \u00b7 1910 \u00b7 1912<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-stock\">The capital stock, and what happened to it<\/h2>\n\n    <p>One share to the acre, twenty dollars a share. That rule from Article I means the Association's capital stock is a direct measure of how much ground the Project was expected to serve \u2014 and the Oregon Secretary of State's file records every change.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">4 March 1905 \u2014 $2,000,000<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Article IV of the Articles of Incorporation. <strong>100,000 shares, and so 100,000 acres.<\/strong> <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">About $75 million today.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">12 May 1910 \u2014 $3,000,000<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1gIAZegsFNI0jPVi7zU2s2N9b4Pf3yMF5\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">certificate of increase<\/a> filed at Salem. <strong>150,000 shares<\/strong> \u2014 <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">about $104 million today<\/span>. The Project was growing, and the Association's books grew with it.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">6 December 1912 \u2014 $1,800,000<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Voted at the Houston Opera House and <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1WAK81lj6IZHrzkCiJqxEK1Ak_HJUh6Nt\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">certified at Salem twelve days later<\/a>. <strong>90,000 shares. Sixty thousand shares cancelled in a single afternoon<\/strong> \u2014 <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">roughly $41 million of subscribed capital, in today's money, struck off the books<\/span>.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <p>The reduction was not a failure of nerve. It was the By-Laws working exactly as written. Article I, Section 10 provided that if the United States determined the available water insufficient to irrigate an acre for every share, <strong>\u201cthen the number of shares shall be so reduced as not to exceed the number of acres determined by the United States as irrigable.\u201d<\/strong> Washington measured the ground; the stock followed the measurement down.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The question \u2014 <em>\u201cShall the Capital Stock of the Klamath Water Users Association be reduced from THREE MILLION DOLLARS to ONE MILLION EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND?\u201d<\/em> \u2014 had been put in the call for the annual meeting of <strong>31 May 1912<\/strong> and carried over to an adjourned session on <strong>6 December<\/strong>, introduced by <strong>A. B. Libbey<\/strong>, seconded by <strong>C. A. Bunting<\/strong>, and adopted by ballot.<\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">A small thing in the file is worth keeping. Secretary Elder, remitting the five-dollar filing fee, pointed out that under <strong>Chapter 100 of the Laws of Oregon for 1907<\/strong> the Association had been <em>\u201crelieved from the payment of any corporation tax whatever\u201d<\/em> \u2014 then paid the fee anyway and left the question to the Secretary of State. Ben Olcott replied that he did not understand the exemption to reach a fee of this kind. <strong>The Association had its own act of the Oregon legislature, and still argued the five dollars in writing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And it defended the Project's boundaries<\/h3>\n\n    <p>In 1910 <strong>R. A. Emmett, O. A. Stearns and others<\/strong> applied to have the lands under the <strong>Keno Canal<\/strong> excluded from the Klamath Project altogether. The Board considered it at its monthly meeting on 3 June and <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1hmsDhV-2BMU5jWU1znsWLWafll-Pyk91\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">answered the Secretary of the Interior<\/a> in one sentence:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\">Resolution of the Board of Directors, 3 June 1910<\/p>\n      <p>\u201cResolved, that the Board of Directors of the Water User's Association <strong>disapprove of the release of the land owners under what is known as the Keno Canal from the general Klamath project<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>O. A. Stearns had been a founding director of the Association and its President in 1906. <strong>He applied to take his own ground out, and the board he had helped create told Washington no.<\/strong> Nine years later the Keno Canal was sold to the power company, and the districts fought that too.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-1913\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">6 June 1913<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-1913\">What the stockholders put on the record in 1913<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Eight years in, the Association met for its annual meeting in the Houston Opera House \u2014 the same room where they had raised the capital stock in 1905. Abel Ady in the chair, John Irwin as Vice-President, <strong>Albert E. Elder<\/strong> as Secretary. They passed four resolutions unanimously, on a rising vote, and <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1jEgnKPq1EVaB1ZO2fr7lDH5UYwmq4vjk\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the minutes record every word<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">The twenty dollars, sworn to by the men who heard it<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The first is the one the District still relies on. Eight and a half years after the promise was made, the men who heard it put it in the minute book:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\"><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1jEgnKPq1EVaB1ZO2fr7lDH5UYwmq4vjk\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minutes, Klamath Water Users Association annual meeting, 6 June 1913, pp. 82\u201383<\/a><\/p>\n      <p>\u201c\u2026it is a fact that prior to incorporating the Klamath Water Users Association, <strong>Director F. H. Newell of the Reclamation Service<\/strong>, during the months of November or December, 1904, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, verbally represented to the land owners\u2026 that the charges per acre\u2026 <strong>would not cost\u2026 at a greater rate than $20.00 per acre share<\/strong>; That at said meeting said land owners were assured that said $20.00 was the highest possible amount per acre share that they would ever be called upon to pay for any part of the proposed project, <strong>which sum included cost of construction and maintenance up to such time as the proposed Project should be turned over to the proposed Klamath Water Users Association<\/strong>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>Read that last clause twice. <strong>The promise was not merely a price. It was a price good until the Project was turned over to the water users<\/strong> \u2014 turnover assumed, in 1904, as the ordinary end of the arrangement.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The resolution goes further than a recollection. It states that the landowners organised the Association <em>\u201crelying upon such verbal representations and statements as inducements\u201d<\/em>; that the representations <strong>\u201cwere concurred in by Morris Bien, Legal Adviser of the Reclamation Service\u201d<\/strong>; and that but for them, the landowners <strong>\u201cwould not at any time or at all incorporated their lands into the Klamath Water Users Association.\u201d<\/strong> It was introduced by <strong>John Irwin<\/strong> and seconded by <strong>N. S. Merrill<\/strong> \u2014 the man Merrill is named for.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And they refused to have the debt forgiven<\/h3>\n\n    <p>Later in the same meeting a Mr Robinson of the Pacific Telegraph and Telephone Company put it to the stockholders that the Government ought to build irrigation works and charge them to general expenses, as it did with rivers and harbours. It was an invitation to have the whole obligation written off.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>\u201cMr. Ady replied that <strong>the water users did not propose to repudiate the payment of any money expended in construction of irrigation works.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p>They were, on their own account that afternoon, struggling. A second resolution asked the Secretary of the Interior to consider graduating the payments, stating plainly that what had been paid so far had <em>\u201cbeen largely derived from sources other than the produce of the soil, having to date hereof exhausted our credit beyond the product of the soil.\u201d<\/em> They were paying the United States out of borrowings and outside income \u2014 and in the same meeting they declined to be relieved of the debt.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And they asked for the power<\/h3>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__source\">The resolutions, the vote and Mr Ady's reply are recorded in the <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1jEgnKPq1EVaB1ZO2fr7lDH5UYwmq4vjk\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">minutes of the annual meeting of 6 June 1913, pages 82\u201383<\/a>, attested by Secretary Albert E. Elder and President Abel Ady.<\/p>\n\n    <p>A third resolution instructed the Board to take up with the Secretary <strong>\u201cthe question of power development under the Klamath Project\u2026 for the purpose of creating electrical power under said project for the benefit of said Stockholders, both from domestic and commercial standpoints.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p><strong>That is 1913 \u2014 four years before the Copco contract and five before the canal sale began.<\/strong> The water users had already asked, formally and unanimously, that the power on this Project be developed for the people who were paying for the Project. When the districts objected to the sale of the Ankeny and Keno canals in 1919, they were not raising a new idea. They were defending one they had put on the record six years earlier.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-liens\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">1907 \u2013 1929<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-liens\">What it did with the power it held<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The Association held an extraordinary power over its own members. Assessments were a lien on their land and their shares, enforceable <em>\u201cby foreclosure and sale\u2026 in the manner provided by law for the foreclosure of mortgages.\u201d<\/em> Shares could be forfeited outright and never <em>\u201crenewed, revived or reissued.\u201d<\/em> The excess-land trust deeds gave it an irrevocable power to sell a man's farm at the courthouse door. And in March 1910 the Secretary of the Interior <strong>instructed it to use that power<\/strong> on anyone unpaid by the first of May.<\/p>\n\n    <p>So the question worth asking of <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1BhzVnkYVYHUq71mIBka4mc4foRdd8IP_\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Board's own resolution book<\/a> is what it actually did. <strong>The pattern in it is not foreclosure. It is release.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">January \u2013 February 1907<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Resolution after resolution cancelling and satisfying stock subscriptions and returning them to the signers \u2014 <strong>in one sitting, some fifty subscriptions listed by number and name<\/strong>, for land the Project could not reach. Each cancellation executed in duplicate, one copy kept, one delivered, and only on the subscriber's written acceptance of both.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">October 1907<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">With no work yet begun on the Lower Klamath marshes or the Upper Project, the Board <strong>removed the penalty for non-subscription on those lands for ninety days<\/strong> \u2014 reasoning that <em>\u201cthe reasons for enforcing the penalty\u2026 are not applicable to said lands.\u201d<\/em> It also began accepting contract and bond-for-deed holders, not just those with title.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">4 January 1908<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The Board rescinded the penalty resolution altogether, and directed that back assessments on land subscribed thereafter go into a sinking fund <strong>\u201cfor the purpose of refunding all penalties collected previous to this date.\u201d<\/strong> It gave the money back.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">May 1908<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">G. W. White's sixty acres, found not to be irrigable from any source, released from the subscription and the contract so that he could <em>\u201cmake other arrangements for irrigating said lands.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">October 1908<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Rather than sell the trust-deeded land, the Association set itself up as a <strong>land agent<\/strong> to help owners of excess acreage find qualified buyers \u2014 a dollar to list a quarter-section, and trust-deeded land <em>\u201cgiven first consideration\u2026 but not to the extent of the losing a possible sale.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>It held an irrevocable power of sale over its neighbours' farms for fourteen years. <strong>The record of what it did with that power is a record of cancellations, refunds and releases.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And in 1919 it let the liens go<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The District still holds the volumes: <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/drive\/folders\/1RN4OrkeEhPOjzLmEt5Jk-uusGDruG6zs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the stock subscriptions and contracts, numbered one to beyond six hundred and fifty<\/a> \u2014 and bound with them, <strong>the 1919 Releases of Lien Under Stock Subscriptions and Contracts<\/strong>. The year after Contract Ilr-173 passed the Association's obligations to Klamath Irrigation District, the liens on the shareholders' land were released.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The Association's meetings were curtailed after 1918. On <strong>6 April 1929<\/strong>, with G. W. Offield still in the chair, <strong>A. M. Thomas<\/strong> was appointed secretary to wind up its unfinished business. <strong>It had lived twenty-four years, guaranteed a federal project, and let its members' land go free.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">Those volumes have never been read. They run from ninety-five to three hundred megabytes apiece \u2014 the largest files in the District's archive \u2014 and they hold every subscriber's name, acreage and release. <strong>Whether the Association ever foreclosed on anyone is answerable, and the answer is in that folder.<\/strong><\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-power\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">1905 \u2013 1925<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-power\">The other thread: who the power belonged to<\/h2>\n\n    <p>There is a second argument running through these papers, and it has never been told in one place because the pieces sit on four different pages. It is about <strong>who the power on this river was supposed to be developed for<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1905 \u2014 in the charter<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Article II of the Articles of Incorporation empowers the Association to own and operate <strong>\u201celectric or other power plants, and transmission lines\u201d<\/strong> and <strong>\u201cto generate, create, transmit, use, and sell power and electrical energy.\u201d<\/strong> It is in the founding purpose clause, beside the water.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1907 \u2014 the Keno Canal fight<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">A petition went to the Klamath Falls City Council to prohibit open canals inside the city limits. <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1BhzVnkYVYHUq71mIBka4mc4foRdd8IP_\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Board's Resolution No. 25<\/a> called it what it was: aimed <strong>\u201cdirectly\u2026 at the construction of the Keno Canal by the U.S. Reclamation Service in an endeavor to hold up the construction of the same, or to mulct the Water Users Association of a large sum of money\u2026 while the benefits to be derived from such canal will inure to the whole country.\u201d<\/strong> The Board asked the Council to vacate a street instead, to clear the right of way.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1908 \u2014 finish it<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">In November the Board recorded that it had secured a city franchise for a conduit, that <strong>the Keno Canal was complete only as far as the Moore Brothers' power plant<\/strong>, and that <em>\u201cthere will be no beneficial use to irrigators from the said canal until it is fully completed.\u201d<\/em> It urged completion in 1909 and asked that rights-of-way be secured and condemned at once.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1913 \u2014 develop it for us<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The stockholders resolve unanimously that the Board take up with the Secretary <strong>\u201cthe question of power development under the Klamath Project\u2026 for the purpose of creating electrical power under said project for the benefit of said Stockholders, both from domestic and commercial standpoints.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1918\u201319 \u2014 sold<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The Ankeny and Keno canals pass to the power company. The districts object. <strong>They were not raising a new idea; they were defending one their own corporation had chartered in 1905 and resolved on in 1913.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1925 \u2014 written into a draft contract<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The District's own draft transfer contract provides that all lands of the original Project <strong>\u201cshall have the first right to and call upon the waters of Upper Klamath Lake and its tributaries before the same is used for power or other purposes than irrigation.\u201d<\/strong> Two years after the sale, still asking.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>Twenty years, four documents, one position: <strong>the power on this river was to be developed for the people who were paying for the works that made it possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">The middle of this story \u2014 the Association's own minutes for <strong>1918 to 1924<\/strong>, when the canal sale was fought \u2014 has never been read. It is in the two large minute volumes in the District's archive. <strong>Until those are opened, this thread runs from the charter to 1913 and picks up again in 1925, with the years of the argument itself missing.<\/strong><\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-handover\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">6 July 1918<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-handover\">The handover<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The Association did not simply fade. It signed itself out of existence in a three-party contract with the United States and its own successor, and <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1qWrsCHNWZaap8GewbdixmbtRlvwhLga9\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that contract survives<\/a>. Its recital is plain about whose idea it was:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\">Contract Ilr-173, United States \u00b7 Klamath Irrigation District \u00b7 Klamath Water Users Association, 6 July 1918<\/p>\n      <p>\u201cWHEREAS the Association executed contract with the United States dated November 6, 1905, whereby the Association <strong>guaranteed to the United States the payments<\/strong>\u2026 and <strong>it is now the desire of the said shareholders that the said Association be dissolved and cooperation with the United States be carried on through the District<\/strong>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <p><strong>G. W. Offield signed it twice<\/strong> \u2014 as President of the Klamath Irrigation District and as President of the Klamath Water Users Association. <strong>Albert E. Elder<\/strong> attested for the District, <strong>A. L. Wishard<\/strong> for the Association. One man handing an obligation from his left hand to his right, before a notary, on 21 August 1918.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">What the District took on: $1,363,036.26<\/h3>\n\n    <p>Article 3 fixes the number. <strong>\u201cThe maximum aggregate sum payable to the United States under this contract, exclusive of operation and maintenance charges, penalties, and interest, shall be One Million, Three Hundred Sixty-three Thousand and Thirty-six Dollars and Twenty-six Cents\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 <span class=\"kid-hist__now\">about $29.8 million today<\/span> \u2014 payable in two instalments a year, on 20 April and 20 October, beginning in 1919. No interest on deferred payments; one per cent a month if late.<\/p>\n\n    <p>The sum expressly excluded future drainage, replacement of perishable structures, and <strong>\u201cany rights to the Ankeny Canal.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And Article 6 puts Section 6 in the District's own contract<\/h3>\n\n    <p>This is the provision that matters most, and it names the statute:<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__box\">\n      <p class=\"kid-hist__box-kicker\">Contract Ilr-173, Article 6<\/p>\n      <p>\u201cThe United States will continue the operation and maintenance of the project\u2026 until otherwise provided by contract after vote by the electorate of the District, <strong>or until the payments required by the Reclamation Law are made for the major portion of the lands irrigated from the project works; then in the latter case the management and operation of said works shall pass to the District<\/strong> to be maintained at the cost of the District under such rules and regulations as may be acceptable to the Secretary, <strong>pursuant to Section 6 of the Reclamation Act<\/strong>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>Section 6 is not something the District found in the statute book afterwards. <strong>It is written by name into the first contract the District ever signed with the United States, and the United States wrote it.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">Two more things Ilr-173 settles<\/h3>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The liens were to be released \u2014 by contract<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Article 2: when the Association's affairs permit, <strong>\u201cthe lien contained in the stock subscriptions to the Association will be discharged of record,\u201d<\/strong> the United States assenting to that release, to the discharge of the Association from the 1905 contract, to its dissolution, and <strong>to the release of all liens created or evidenced by water right applications<\/strong> on land within the District. <strong>That is why the 1919 Releases of Lien exist.<\/strong> They were not a kindness; they were Article 2.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">The Henley-Ankeny tracts stood apart<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Article 1 sorts the District's ground into five classes, and the fifth is <strong>\u201cLands known as the Henley-Ankeny tracts which are understood to have a pre-existing water right under contracts, which lands will not be covered by public notice and <em>whose owners are obligated to pay for no part of the cost of irrigation works heretofore constructed<\/em> under the authority of the United States.\u201d<\/strong> In 1918 the United States acknowledged in writing that this ground carried a right that came before the Project and owed the Project nothing.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">One further echo. Article 4 gives the District's officials <strong>\u201cfull and free access to the project books and official records\u2026 with the right at any time during office hours to make copies\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 the same right the District holds under Article 11 of the 1954 contract, and the same right it was still asking Reclamation to honour in 2024.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-thread\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">What it all amounts to<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-thread\">The thread through all of it<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Read separately, the documents on this page are the papers of a farmers' corporation. Read together, they are one argument made continuously from 1902 to the present, and the District is still making it.<\/p>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">That the works would pass to the people who paid for them<\/h3>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1902 \u2014 the statute<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\"><strong>Section 6<\/strong> of the Reclamation Act: when the payments are made for the major portion of the lands, <strong>\u201cthe management and operation of such irrigation works shall pass to the owners of the lands irrigated thereby.\u201d<\/strong> Printed by the Association in its own booklet and handed to every man asked to sign.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1904 \u2014 the promise<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Newell's twenty dollars an acre, covering construction and maintenance <strong>\u201cup to such time as the proposed Project should be turned over to the proposed Klamath Water Users Association.\u201d<\/strong> Turnover assumed as the ordinary end of the arrangement.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1905 \u2014 the security<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The landowners guarantee the cost, pledge their farms in trust with an irrevocable power of sale, and vote <strong>8,598 to nothing<\/strong> to bind themselves to it.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1908 \u2014 the confirmation<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The federal Soil Survey tells the landowners the cost will be paid in ten annual payments, <strong>\u201cafter which the system will become the property of the landowners.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1913 \u2014 sworn to<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The stockholders put Newell's promise, and its turnover clause, unanimously into the minute book \u2014 and in the same meeting <strong>decline an invitation to have the debt written off<\/strong>.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1925 \u2014 drafted<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The District writes its own transfer contract and sends it to Reclamation's counsel: it runs <strong>\u201cuntil the project is turned over to this organization, which, according to law, is ultimately to succeed to the interests of the United States.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">1965 \u2014 paid<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The District clears the construction charges <strong>three years early<\/strong>, by warrant, and holds the receipt.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__pull\">\n      <p>The condition in Section 6 was payment. <strong>The payment was made on 4 May 1965. The thing it was the condition for has not happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n    <\/div>\n\n    <h3 class=\"kid-hist__h3\">And that the right to the water belongs to the land<\/h3>\n\n    <p>The second thread is shorter and even less broken. <strong>Section 8<\/strong> of the Act: the right acquired under it <em>\u201cshall be appurtenant to the land irrigated, and beneficial use shall be the basis, the measure, and the limit of the right,\u201d<\/em> and the Secretary <em>\u201cshall proceed in conformity\u201d<\/em> with state law. <strong>Article I, Section 7<\/strong> of the By-Laws: rights <em>\u201cforever inseparably appurtenant\u201d<\/em> to the described ground \u2014 and by the agreement of 5 August 1905 those By-Laws are <strong>a term of the contract with the United States<\/strong>. <strong>Article VII<\/strong>: nothing in joining affects <em>\u201cthe vested rights of any person to the prior use or delivery of any water.\u201d<\/em> And the 1905 agreement recites that those vested rights <em>\u201chave not been ascertained or determined\u201d<\/em> and provides for the day they would be.<\/p>\n\n    <p>That day was <strong>2014<\/strong>, and the Klamath Basin Adjudication reached the same conclusion the founders had written into their own by-laws in 1905. <strong>The District did not discover this position. It inherited it, in writing, from the men who guaranteed the Project.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">Where this leads next is set out on <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/district-governance-accountability\/title-transfer\/\">Title Transfer 101<\/a> and in the <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/warren-act-of-1911\/\">Warren Act<\/a> page. This page's business is to show that the argument is not new.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-money\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">A note on the figures<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-money\">What these sums are worth now<\/h2>\n\n    <p>The dollars on this page are small numbers describing very large commitments, and the gap between the two is the whole difficulty of reading a hundred-and-twenty-year-old record. Converted for inflation, at roughly <strong>thirty-six to thirty-eight times<\/strong> for the years around 1905:<\/p>\n\n    <ul class=\"kid-hist__ditches\">\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$20 an acre \u2192 about $760<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">Newell's promise of 1904, and the par value of one share.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$30 an acre \u2192 about $1,090<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The Public Notice of 18 November 1908 \u2014 the charge as actually fixed.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$3.75 an acre \u2192 about $136<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The first instalment, due 1 May 1909. On a quarter-section of 160 acres, <strong>about $21,800 in one payment.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$337,500 \u2192 about $12.7 million<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">What Reclamation paid on 7 April 1905 for the Little Klamath Ditch, the Ankeny-Henley Canal and the Jesse D. Carr Land & Livestock Company together.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$150,000 \u2192 about $5.6 million<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">What it paid the Klamath Canal Company \u2014 three men who had filed on the entire flow of Link River.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$4.4 million \u2192 about $165 million<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">The construction the Secretary authorised on 15 May 1905, with a million of it allocated immediately.<\/span><\/li>\n      <li><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-name\">$2 million of capital stock \u2192 about $75 million<\/span><span class=\"kid-hist__ditch-note\">What the landowners subscribed and guaranteed at incorporation, on 4 March 1905, before a shovel moved.<\/span><\/li>\n    <\/ul>\n\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\"><strong>How these were worked out, and what they are worth.<\/strong> Each figure is the sum in the year stated, multiplied by the change in consumer prices to 2026. <strong>Consumer price data before 1913 is estimated rather than measured<\/strong>, so treat the earliest conversions as indicative. And a price index is the most conservative comparison available: measured instead against wages, or against the size of the national economy, a public work of this kind would translate to a very much larger figure. <strong>These numbers understate rather than overstate what this Basin took on.<\/strong><\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-docs\">\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__span\">The papers<\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-docs\">The founding documents<\/h2>\n\n    <p>Nine documents carry this bargain, from the Reclamation Act to the contract that made the District the Association's successor. They are gathered in the archive at the foot of this page, and every one of them can be opened and read.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n  <section class=\"kid-hist__section\" aria-labelledby=\"kw-more\">\n    <h2 class=\"kid-hist__h2\" id=\"kw-more\">Where the rest of this is told<\/h2>\n    <div class=\"kid-hist__links\">\n      <a class=\"kid-hist__linkrow\" href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/the-archives\/\">\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-label\">The Archives<\/span>\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-meta\">Ninety documents \u2014 the founding papers of 1905, the federal investigations and legal opinions, films, story maps, and which county holds the early record<\/span>\n      <\/a>\n      <a class=\"kid-hist__linkrow\" href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/\">\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-label\">History \u2014 Klamath Irrigation District<\/span>\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-meta\">The chronology, era by era, and the founding documents in full<\/span>\n      <\/a>\n      <a class=\"kid-hist__linkrow\" href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/who-paid-for-the-project\/\">\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-label\">Who Paid for the Project \u2014 the People Behind the Project<\/span>\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-meta\">What the guarantee those men signed actually cost, and who cleared it<\/span>\n      <\/a>\n      <a class=\"kid-hist__linkrow\" href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/history\/everglades-of-the-west\/\">\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-label\">The Everglades of the West<\/span>\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-meta\">What this Basin was before the Project, and who brought its water to the land<\/span>\n      <\/a>\n      <a class=\"kid-hist__linkrow\" href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/home\/district-governance-accountability\/title-transfer\/\">\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-label\">Title Transfer<\/span>\n        <span class=\"kid-hist__linkrow-meta\">Where the 1905 bargain leads \u2014 the 1954 contract and the request still pending<\/span>\n      <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n    <p class=\"kid-hist__note\">Found an error? The District would rather correct the record than defend it. <a href=\"https:\/\/klamathid.org\/home\/contact-k-i-d\/\">Contact us<\/a>.<\/p>\n  <\/section>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<style>\n@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Zilla+Slab:wght@500;600;700&family=Libre+Franklin:wght@400;500;600&family=IBM+Plex+Mono:wght@500;600&display=swap');\n\n.kid-hist{\n  --kid-navy:#1b2a4e;\n  --kid-red:#b22234;\n  --kid-red-hover:#8e1a29;\n  --kid-gold:#c39a3e;\n  --kid-gold-dark:#9a7a2f;\n  --kid-cream:#f6f2e9;\n  --kid-ink:#22262e;\n  --kid-muted:#5a6473;\n  --kid-line:#e4ddcd;\n\n  max-width:1100px;\n  margin:0 auto;\n  padding:8px 4px 24px;\n  color:var(--kid-ink);\n  font-family:'Libre Franklin',Arial,sans-serif;\n  line-height:1.65;\n  overflow-wrap:break-word;\n  -webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;\n}\n.kid-hist *{box-sizing:border-box;}\n.kid-hist p{margin:0 0 14px;}\n.kid-hist a{color:var(--kid-red);}\n\n\/* ===== Head ===== *\/\n.kid-hist__head{\n  border-top:4px solid 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