page_title: Sacramento Valley Development Association
section_title: Initiated and supported projects
hierarchical_section_title: Sacramento Valley Development Association / History / Initiated and supported projects
caption_attribution_description: English: Proposed Iron Canyon Reservoir with approximate canal line to a point near Red Bluff (1919)
context_page_description: The Sacramento Valley Development Association was a quasi-public entity of colony land developers founded in 1900 to advance the area's political and commercial interests as well as market its agricultural products. The organization, headquartered in Sacramento, was founded by 6 counties but came to comprise representatives from 6 more, each selected by their respective county supervisor. It remained operational and influential until 1925 when the Sacramento Valley Regional Advisory for the larger California Development Association filled the void.
context_section_description: As early as 1905, the Association had been pushing Congress for a comprehensive Sacramento Valley Project with a price tag of $40 million. With only $28 million in the Reclamation Fund at the time, the pitch was never plausible but, in his last public activity, Green managed to bring members of the Irrigation Committees of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, accompanied by officials of the Department of the Interior and of the Reclamation Service, out for a two-day tour of the Sacramento Valley's current irrigation situation. At their most important stop in Red Bluff, a banquet was held, during which California Gov. George C. Pardee, Nevada Sen. Francis G. Newlands, Idaho Sen. Fred Dubois, California Reps. Duncan E. McKinlay and Theodore Arlington Bell, Wyoming Rep. Franklin Wheeler Mondell and California Sen. Frank Putnam Flint all spoke. However, it was Green who, weeks from death, stole the show. Detailing the aims and intentions of the Association, he recognized how little work had actually yet been accomplished before finishing with a singular wish: "But, gentlemen, my only hope, as I am on the decline of life, is that some day I may stand on Pisgah  and see a Promised Land for God's people in this valley. Then I will be ready to die."
  Green never saw the completion of it, but one of his organization's early successes was the approval of the Orland Project on December 18, 1906, the result of letters from various officers throughout the years 1902 to 1905 as well as a petition from owners of over 40,000 acres of land conveyed through the Sacramento Valley Development Association to the Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock. Less than four years later, the East Park Dam had been constructed on Stony Creek, the Sacramento River's principal tributary from the west, along with a spillway, dikes and a system of canals capable of irrigating 53,000 acres 210 days out of the year.
  In September 1908, the Association called for a meeting of delegates across the state to discuss plans for improving the highways of California. An earlier suggested plan, which had yet to be enacted was proposed at the meeting by the Governor's secretary in his stead. It called for an $18 million bond to construct 3000 miles of roads including highways across the tules between Davis and Sacramento as well as a state highway connection from Folsom to Placerville. The passage of the State Highways Act in 1909 and subsequent success of Proposition 2, The California State Highway Bonds Proposition, just over two years after the original meeting, provided $18 million in funds. This started the construction of 3,000 miles of roads including the Yolo Causeway in 1914 and the portion of U.S. Route 50 (then State Route 11) connecting Folsom and Placerville sometime before that. The road up the Feather River Canyon (now the northern part of California State Route 49) was also touted as a critical trans-Sierra highway.
  In 1905, at the urging of fellow Yolo County leaders, Marshall Diggs (still state senator) sponsored the State Farm Bill of 1905 which selected Davisville as the site for the University of California's new State Farmers' Institute, an adjunct to the university's College of Agriculture. He and his fellow Yolo County leaders infamously had a hand in pushing Judge Peter J. Shields to pin a blue slip to the bill, which added an irrigation requirement disqualifying more than a dozen other locations (many in Southern California) but not Davisville. Three years later, on behalf of the Sacramento Valley Development Association, Diggs spoke with his predecessor in the state senate A.E. Boynton, U.S. Representatives Benjamin Franklin Rush and Horace Davis as well as UC Berkeley President Benjamin Ide Wheeler on the campus pavilion for the formal opening of short instructional classes open to all adults of at least 17 years of age.
  The Association strongly supported the passage of John E. Raker's H.R. 348 bill, which created Lassen Volcanic National Park, even though it was criticized by some conservationists as a way to siphon 
caption: Proposed Iron Canyon Reservoir with approximate canal line to a point near Red Bluff (1919)
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