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State Land Settlement, Durham, California, 1918-1919
BANC PIC 1966.034--fALB
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Collection Title: State Land Settlement, Durham, California,
Date: 1918-1919
Collection Number: BANC PIC 1966.034--fALB
Creator:
Mead, Elwood, 1858-1936
Extent:
4 albums (267 photographic prints) and 6 boxes of glass negatives ; various sizes
267 digital objects
Repository:
The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Languages Represented:
English
Photograph albums are available for use. Glass negatives are unarranged and not available for use.
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish photographs must be submitted
in writing to the Curator of Pictorial Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library
as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must
also be obtained by the reader.
Copyright restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted
to research and educational purposes.
[Identification of item]
State Land Settlement, Durham, California, 1918-1919 , BANC PIC 1966.034--fALB, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Digital Representations Available
Digital representations of selected original pictorial materials are available in the list of materials below. Digital image files were prepared from selected Library originals by the Library Photographic Service. Library originals were
copied onto 35mm color transparency film; the film was scanned and transferred to Kodak Photo CD (by Custom Process); and
the Photo CD files were color-corrected and saved in JFIF (JPEG) format for use as viewing files.
Title: Elwood Mead papers,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS C-B 1041
Title: State Land Settlement, Delhi, California, 1920-1922 / Elwood Mead,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC PIC 1966.033--fALB
The Durham photographs were transferred from the Elwood Mead papers (BANC MSS C-B 1041).
The State Land Settlements at Durham and Delhi were begun in 1918 and 1919, respectively. The Durham settlement was located
near Chico in Butte County, California. The settlements were based on a 1917 land settlement program initiated by the state
of California to encourage and improve land development methods. Durham settlement had about 130 settlers who owned the segment
of land on which they worked. Previously, agriculture in California had been in the hands of individuals whose efforts were
not always good for the land. The program was a means by which to educate large groups of people on better farming techniques.
The settlement, in which settlers shared land, supplies, and workflow, was intended to demonstrate desirable land settlement
methods in a communal setting and encourage cooperation and social organization. Settlers were chosen by the California State
Land Settlement Board (chaired by Dr. Elwood Mead) based on their capital, experience, and attitude towards cooperative effort.
Each prospective settler had to appear before the Board for questioning, and was watched carefully even after being accepted
into the program. Two basic aims of the program were to improve the living conditions of the settlers and to increase the
number of people on the farms.
The Durham settlement was divided into land allotments for purchase, most varying in size from 20 to 80 acres. The settlement
was furnished with a somewhat complex irrigation system, which was one of the most expensive elements of the program. Initially,
the Durham settlement fared quite well, attracting many potential buyers and selling all of its laborers' allotments. The
settlement included a community park and meeting place as well as administrative buildings.
A first, the settlers were enthusiastic about the program. Early attempts at cooperation included group purchasing of dairy
cows and a group milk-selling association. However, disputes soon made these ventures unsuccessful, and even community social
activities began to disappear. Agriculture was initially fairly successful, the only major production problem being the adobe
soil, which was difficult to irrigate. After the first few years, however, satisfactory crops were few and far between. The
settlers needed more land than they could afford in order to make a living from the low-income crops they were trying to grow.
The Board's need to keep land under contract often harmed the ideals of the settlement, in that settlers who put forth little
or no effort into farming were allowed to remain on the land. The Durham settlement was plagued with poor drainage and the
loss of profitable alfalfa and prune crops to disease. The need to reinvest initial profits from the first few years of harvests
was unattractive to most settlers. In retrospect, the causes of failure of the settlement as a whole were seen to be crop
failures, expensive but poor land, higher-than-anticipated expenses in general, and economic conditions at the time which
were unfavorable to this type of land development.
(Source: Smith, Roy James.
The California State Land Settlements at Durham and Delhi. Berkeley: University of California, 1943.)
The collection consists of three albums and an accopress binder of photographs documenting the development of the State Land
Settlement Project at Durham, California, from 1918-1919. Included are views of houses and floor plans, agricultural buildings
and machinery, crops, and livestock. The photographer or photographers are unknown. The three albums include captions printed
on photographs or typewritten captions pasted below photographs, and the accopress binder has handwritten captions below each
photograph - all captions are reprinted in the container listing.
The collection also contains six boxes of glass negatives which are unarranged and not available for use.