From DARING TO LOOK: Photographs and Reports from the Field by Dorothea Lange, by Anne Whiston Spirn (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

DATE:  October 11 – October 16, 1939

PLACE: Malheur County, Southeast Oregon.

***SUBJECT: Malheur County.

The United States Bureau of Reclamation has spent $22,000,000 in the construction of the Vale and Owyhee Projects. While these two projects join one another in Malheur County they are actually distinct and receive irrigation water from different sources: the Vale from the Malheur River, and the Owyhee from the Owyhee River. The last water was brought to the land in 1938.

About 100,000 acres of raw lands have been appraised and classified under the direction of the Department of the Interior and offered for settlement at an unimproved land price. The price of the land is from $5 to $15 per acre. Electric power is available, three Oregon states highways traverse the project, the Union Pacific Railroad serves the area. The soil is of lava origin; the elevation about 2500 feet.

The Farm Security Administration is assisting many land-hungry families to set up a pattern for orderly and sound development of their new farms. Many of the new settlers are refugees from dust and drought on the Great Plains. Six hundred and twelve standard Rural Rehabilitation loans have been set up in Malheur County. Ninety per cent of the farms are eighty-acre units.

On this project (1939) almost no tents or tenthouses are now seen, but housing has been developed on the new lands over the first five years in this manner.

First year                                 Tent and trailer

Second year                            Shack and garden

Third year                                Basement house, dugout basement, and flat roof

Fourth year                              House, on basement foundation

There are 612 standard loans totaling $595,966 in Malheur county, Oregon, of which amount $133,860 principal has been repaid with $12,445 in interest. A total of 119 families have received grants, 111 of whom are also standard loan borrowers. Grants total $17,745. At present there are only five families in the county receiving grant assistance.