Issues in California

The importance of water is noted as a perpetually controversial factor in California history. In the 1880s, two of the controversies came to a head. The first of these was the struggle of Sacramento Valley against the hydraulic mining industry, and the second was the battle of farmers against "water monopolies" over the control of water for irrigation. Government had to intervene to settle these bitter disputes. The hydraulic miners had been dumping floods of mud, sand, and gravel into various northern rivers and had buried farms in debris. These actions contributed to flooding of various communities. The United States circuit court decided in 1884 that this dumping was to be outlawed, but the battle continued until 1893 and the creation of a federal agency to regulate the matter, the California Debris Commission (Rawls and Bean 194).

Irrigation developed slowly in the state because state policy failed to prevent the monopolization of water rights and in fact encouraged it, a

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and vague. Mexican authorities in California did not provide grantees with adequate evidence of their titles or keep adequate records in the archives. Maps as well were not very precise. California was thus faced from the outset with a huge number of court claims, many covering portions of the 500 ranchos in the area. The U.S. government had promised to honor Mexican property in the territories, but American settlers believed that all of the land should now be owned by Americans. This was clearly a point of controversy that could produce violence, and the issue was not helped by the fact that the Mexican laxity in keeping records and in assigning titles made it more likely that disputes would arise as a matter of course. The Act of 1851 should have helped decide how these matters would be treated and determined. In fact, this act may have contributed to the confusion that would follow, and many writers on the subject have seen the act as contributing to the tragic difficulties of early American land problems in the state. However, as Rawls and Bean note, no one has been able to suggest a better approach than the one that was taken. The land commission addressed the issues and held hearings to make decisions regarding di
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Rawls Bean, Land Issue, Sacramento Valley, Exclusion Act, California Depression, Steinbeck California, Southern California, Irrigation Act, Civil War, Chinese Chinese, rawls bean, federal government, labor building railroads, chinese question, tried life, north south, water north, hetch hetchy, building railroads, chinese immigration, california history, rawls bean note,
Approximate Word count = 1871
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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