Bonanza farms were encouraged by John Wesley Powell who, by the 1870s, had found that the land he studied needed larger-scale irrigation systems that would lead to larger areas of land being taken care of. Powell, a geologist, asserted that family-owned farms that had been in use in accordance to the Homestead Act of 1862 did not quite give the land the type of help required to keep it fit. Though less numerous than family farms, the Bonanza operations began to be competitive with the smaller operations.
