"Have Faith in God and U.S. Reclamation": Failure on the Boise Project, 1905-1924

“The destiny of man is to possess the whole earth,” agricultural specialist John A. Widtsoe declared in 1928; “and the destiny of earth is to be subject to man.”1 Widtsoe’s comment reflected the U. S. government’s imperative to conquer and manage nature to fulfill the nation’s destiny. Reclamation, the conversion of arid desert into irrigated farmland, was a central program of the conservation movement. A progressive federal government saw the West as the home of a future American empire where strong, independent households would unite to reclaim the land from its desert condition. Believing the secretary of the interior’s promise that agricultural prosperity could be cultivated in the soil of the Boise Valley in Idaho, thousands of prospective settlers boarded the Union Pacific Railroad and headed west.