Congress’s decision, in passing the act, to ignore much of John Wesley Powell’s advice made things worse. Powell had proposed that in those inhospitable regions where only livestock could be raised, settlers should be allowed to homestead 2,560 acres of the public domain—but allocated enough water to irrigate only twenty. The Reclamation Act gave everyone up to 160 acres (a man and wife could jointly farm 320 acres), whether they settled in Mediterranean California or in the frigid interior steppes of Wyoming, where the extremes of climate rival those in Mongolia. You could grow wealthy on 160
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