RECLAMATION

August 31 - November 15, 2008
Museum De Paviljoens, SITE 2F7
Outdoors and open to the public at all times

about metropolis

introduction

images

directions

newspaper

brochure

advertisement

lincoln school

links & thanks

Made possible by
the Jan van Eyck Academie
and Museum De Paviljoens

Metropolis was founded in 1910 as a planned city in Nevada, USA. A group
of investors incorporated as the Pacific Reclamation Company purchased
40,000 acres of remote, high desert land. The land was to be partially irrigated
and resold for farming. A one-mile square city plan was laid out with modern
conveniences rare in the rural west, including sidewalks, electricity, and two
showpiece buildings. For the settlers who invested in Metropolis, these two
splendid multi-storey brick structures embodied the security of their family’s future.

The Pacific Reclamation Company had an acute business sense, and used every
means at its disposal to cultivate an image of Metropolis as a desirable, modern,
fertile and permanent settlement. Metropolis was promoted heavily throughout
the western states and Canada via advertising, a brochure and newspaper. The
Company built a dam and reservoir with plans to irrigate 30,000 acres; negotiated
with the Southern Pacific Railroad to build an extension from the transcontinental
railroad into Metropolis; and maintained an onsite demonstration farm with luxuriant
crops of oats, apples, corn, beans, beets and so on. A sagebrush standing six
feet high, with a trunk the size of a small tree, was proudly displayed in the offices
of the Company as testament to the astonishing fertility of the soil. Settlers, many
with no prior experience in farming, moved their families across the country on
the Company’s promises of wealth and prosperity.

However, all was not as it seemed. The Company did not own the rights to the
water which was diverted and distributed for farming. Following a lawsuit by
the town of Lovelock, located downstream, the use of this water was suspended
and the Company was forced into bankruptcy. The impressive statistics on soil
quality and rainfall touted in the town’s brochure had been exaggerated, and
the demonstration farm had received more water than other parcels. The land
proved to be far more difficult and expensive to farm than most settlers were
prepared for. The population of Metropolis reached its height of about 1,000
residents around 1913, only two to three years after its founding. Following
water rights litigation, drought, influenza outbreaks, infestations of crickets and
jackrabbits, and other harsh conditions of high desert life, by 1921 the town had
dwindled to 35 families.