Reclamation Districts: The State’s Oldest Special Districts Turned Swamps Into Fertile Farmland

California’s water crisis was set in motion the moment James Marshall discovered gold in a stream flowing beneath Sutter’s Mill in Coloma in 1848. The following year, after President James Polk endorsed the find, more than 100,000 people migrated to California. These “’49ers” brought not only mining operations to California but most every other kind of business, from banking to transportation to retail sales, as thousands of corporations and entrepreneurs realized that there was as much money to be made from the influx of immigrants as from gold mining itself.

Starting with the mining industry, which built sluices, flumes and dams to divert water to the purpose of extracting gold from the Earth, all of these businesses together consumed vast amounts of water, permanently altering the physical landscape of California and leading to the crisis that still plagues the state today.

In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the focus of early land reclamation projects in the state, only about 3 percent of historical wetlands continue to exist today. The reasons are various, but land reclamation is a big one.

The now-populous state needed more land to grow food, and that also required management of water resources. Large swaths of land in the Central Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region, which had for centuries been periodically flooded by seasonal overflow from rivers and streams, were now designated as “swamp.”

These lands, the state’s new government and the landowners themselves decided, would now be “reclaimed.”

What is Land Reclamation?

Reclamation was the first type of public infrastructure improvement project in California. The U.S. Congress passed the Swamp and Overflowed Lands Act in 1850, the same year that California became a state. The law gave state governments title to all lands that could be classified as, per the name of the law, “swamp” or “overflowed.” In other words, wetlands that were otherwise unusable for agriculture or development.

The law was directed primarily at Florida with its soggy Everglades, but Arkansas also claimed large swaths of swampland. In all, 65 million acres in a dozen states including California (there were only 31 states in the Union at the time) reverted to state ownership. Under the act, states could sell the wetlands to private owners on the condition that they reclaim those lands, that is, make them usable again—mainly to grow crops. 

What did it mean to “reclaim” land that had been soggy marsh since well before the earliest Spanish explorers made their way to California? For the most part, reclamation consists of flood control, mainly by the construction of levees and drainage systems all designed to dry out the wetlands and control floodwaters. 

Similar to other special district types, the first function of a reclamation district is to raise money.

In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the focus of early land reclamation projects in the state—only about 3 percent of historical wetlands continue to exist today. The reasons are various, but land reclamation is a big one.

Back in 1850, most reclamation projects consisted of constructing levees, which in those days were large piles of soil, rocks and sand positioned to block and divert floodwaters away from areas that landowners want to use for farming or other types of development.

At first, the landowners had the levees built the old-fashioned way—with shovels and wheelbarrows. Within a couple of decades, steam-powered dredges were employed. As time has gone on, levees have been constructed not only from dirt, but from wood, metal and even plastic. 

In any case, it took about 70 years, but reclamation finally turned the watery Delta into one of California’s most fertile agricultural regions, with 1,100 miles of levees creating islands of farmland amid the tidal marshes.

When Spanish explorers showed up way back in the 16th century, they found what modern estimates put at 7 million acres of vernal pools—land that is covered by water in the winter and spring but dries up in the summer and autumn. Today only about 13 percent of that wetland remains. 

Why Reclamation Districts Exist

California received about 2 million acres of so-called swampland as a result of the 1850 federal law, and rather quickly managed to sell it off. Under the law, revenue from the sales was earmarked for reclamation projects, allowing the new landowners to convert their newly acquired wetlands into what they hoped would be a goldmine, in the proverbial sense, of arable land. 

Large-scale reclamation projects of the late-19th and early 20th centuries eradicated most of the wetlands in the Delta and Central Valley region, destroying the natural habitat for innumerable wildlife species who had lived there for centuries. 

The reality was somewhat more fraught. The revenues derived from the land sales weren’t great, and though they helped get reclamation of the lands started, there wasn’t enough money to get them finished. Making matters more difficult, the legal status of water rights on the land was often murky, which discouraged the new landowners from diving into reclamation projects.

The most vexing issue standing in the way of large-scale reclamation projects, however, was the legal and bureaucratic morass surrounding any attempt to finance the massive endeavor. The state provided an answer in 1861, creating the Board of Swamp Land Commissioners. The board was the first state agency that promoted and administered reclamation projects. 

One of its duties was to organize the reclamation efforts by district, giving rise to what stands today as the oldest type of special district in California, the reclamation district.

What Do Reclamation Districts Actually Do?

The Board was abolished in 1866, transferring its duties to county supervisors. Under an act of Congress, counties were authorized to set the boundaries of reclamation districts, which, like the categories of special districts that came after them, functioned as mostly autonomous governments—albeit for a “special” purpose.

And similar to other special district types, the first function of a reclamation district is to raise money. Today, reclamation districts are governed by the California Water Code—starting with Section 50000. Their allowable function is to do whatever is “necessary and convenient” to reclaim land that has been subject to any sort of flooding or overflow.

They can charge taxes, usually on a per-parcel basis depending on the reclamation needs of each parcel, as well as assess fees for individual services. The money raised goes to a range of water projects, not only building levees. Under the code, they can set up irrigation systems, sewage facilities and anything else needed to restore land to a usable condition and keep it that way.

Landowners in any area can start a reclamation district, or try to, by gathering signatures from owners of the land whose value totals at least half the assessed worth of all land in the proposed district. Once the county approves the petition, creation of the district goes to a vote. But instead of “one person, one vote,” each landowner gets one vote for each $1 of assessed value of the land that person owns.

According to a dataset compiled by the Oregon-based nonprofit Conservation Biology Institute, there are now 139 reclamation districts in California, almost all in the Central Valley. But while reclamation in California’s early days, when almost all were formed (most reclamation districts in the state are at least 100 years old), seemed like a necessity, times—and the public’s consciousness of the environment—have changed.

The large-scale reclamation projects of the late-19th and early 20th centuries eradicated most of the wetlands in the Delta and Central Valley region, destroying the natural habitat for innumerable wildlife species who had lived there for centuries.

Just as importantly, wetlands are what climate scientists call carbon “sinks,” drawing out and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That gives wetland areas an important role to play in helping to slow climate change. 

Only recently, areas of the state have begun attempts to restore wetlands. A $63 million restoration project in Contra Costa County was the largest in the state so far. The restoration finished in 2021, and almost immediately river otters, sea birds and even a black bear showed up there, after disappearing decades earlier.