The State Land Settlements at Delhi and Durham were begun in 1919 and 1918, respectively. The Delhi settlement was located in Merced County, California, about 6 miles south of Turlock, between the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads. The settlements were based on a 1917 land settlement program initiated by the state of California to encourage and improve land development methods. Delhi settlement had about 230 settlers who owned the segments of land on which they worked. Previously, agriculture in California had been in the hands of individuals whose efforts were not always good for the land. The program was a means by which to educate large groups of people on better farming techniques. The settlement, in which settlers shared land, supplies, and workflow, was intended to demonstrate desirable land settlement methods in a communal setting and encourage cooperation and social organization. Settlers were chosen by the California State Land Settlement Board (chaired by Dr. Elwood Mead) based on their capital, experience, and attitude towards cooperative effort. Each prospective settler had to appear before the Board for questioning, and was watched carefully even after being accepted into the program. Two basic aims of the program were to improve the living conditions of the settlers and to increase the number of people on the farms.
The 8,000 acres of Delhi settlement were divided into about 66 laborers' land allotments, averaging about 28 acres in size. The settlement was furnished with a somewhat complex irrigation system, which was one of the most expensive elements of the program. Areas of poor soil were made into poultry farms, allowing people with less money to be able to buy into the Delhi settlement. The settlement, actually a townsite, included residential districts, with playgrounds, schools, and a civic center. The Board furnished the townsite with buildings and even a layout for each allotment's gardens, orchards, and farm fields, so settlers started out with a functional tract of land.
The Board's criteria for the selection of settlers at Delhi vanished as they realized that there were not enough applicants to fill the existing land allotments. However, the townsite still managed to attract a good number of people with some farming experience. Veterans made up a large segment of the Delhi settlers.
At first, the settlers were enthusiastic about the program. Early attempts at cooperation included group purchasing of dairy cows and a group milk-selling association. However, disputes soon made these ventures unsuccessful, and even community social activities began to disappear. The Board's need to keep land under contract often harmed the ideals of the settlement, in that settlers who put little or no effort into farming were allowed to remain on the land. For those who did work, the allotments proved to be too small for some crops. The Delhi settlement was plagued with poor harvests and bad weather, and the need to reinvest initial profits from the first few years of harvests was unattractive to most settlers. After the first five years the Delhi settlement was almost a complete failure, and the state gave up much of its investment. In retrospect, the causes of failure of the settlement as a whole were seen to be crop failures, expensive but poor land, higher-than-anticipated expenses in general, and economic conditions at the time which were unfavorable to this type of land development.
(Source: Smith, Roy James. The California State Land Settlements at Durham and Delhi. Berkeley: University of California, 1943.)