North Dakota was the land of bonanza farms. They were first established in the Red River Valley after John Wesley Powell’s study of the Great Plains in the 1870s. He felt that a larger scale of irrigation would result in more land coming under cultivation. In his opinion, the family-owned farms of the Homestead Act were unable to cultivate the land in the way needed to get the most out of it. Soon after his analysis, the bonanza farms began to spring up.