One of the most perpetuated, unfounded claims that gets thrown at farmers and ranchers is that the Klamath Project is a desert. Somehow, farmers and ranchers that have made the Klamath Basin home for over a hundred years have been scraping by in the junipers and sagebrush, managing to eek out a living in this barren hellscape.
That, without any shadow of a doubt, is false.
Prior to construction of the Klamath Reclamation Project in 1905, much of the land which is farmed today was covered with 15-30 feet of water, or in other words, the exact opposite of a desert. The balance of the land was subject to seasonal flooding and drying, or was part of the soft, sandy shorelines that bordered bodies of water throughout the Klamath Basin, in particular around Tulelake, Malin and near Merrill.
The abundance of water, topographical advantages and productive opportunity of the rich soils throughout the area made our Basin a prime location for a reclamation project. In fact, there was so much water within the area that one of the Project’s first water infrastructure additions were dams built to control flood water that spilled into Tule Lake, Lower Klamath and the sloughs between the Klamath and Lost Rivers. A carefully engineered water management infrastructure was built to maintain appropriate water levels within the Klamath Project’s storage areas while providing efficient mechanisms for delivering irrigation water to the newly reclaimed, productive farm ground. Water storage, delivery and recirculation systems were carefully and thoughtfully placed in locations where natural flows occurred, in order to maximize the effectiveness of the Project as a whole.
Today, the entire Project requires less water than the amount which would have evaporated every year from the area’s many bodies of water. Wildlife has always been abundant in the Project, and, until the focus turned to one-species management, birds that traveled the Pacific Flyway found amazing nesting sites, places to rest and a bountiful feast in the farmers’ fields and the refuges.
Among many things, the Klamath Basin is scenic, fertile, rich and full of history . . . but it is not a desert.
Image: Topography of valleys and reservoir sites from surveys by the U.S. Reclamation Service in 1905, contour interval 1 to 10 feet. Topography of uplands from surveys by the U.S. Geological Survey, contour interval 50 feet.
