The material in this collection is largely devoted to Dr. Israelsen's professional life as a teacher, researcher, and private consultant in the dual fields of irrigation and drainage science. It includes his correspondence, class notes, research projects, and published and manuscript works. There are additional papers on irrigation and drainage science by other authors which were collected by Dr. Israelsen in the course of his own research.

The Israelsen papers cover the years 1894 to 1966 and are heavily weighted to the research notes and data from which his final publications were written. There are surveys of irrigation companies, water rights' studies, drainage reports and investigations, field notes and surveys, and reports of the many projects in which Dr. Israelsen was involved.

Geographically, the collection is heavily found in Utah, Southern Idaho, and southeastern Nevada. The vast time span assures that the collection covers the transformation from pioneer irrigation and drainage systems to the exact science outlined in Israelsen's classic, Irrigation Practices and Principles (1932).

This collection also contains an addendum that was added in January 2006. This addendum contains papers concerning Project 211 and survey-plot books concerning Project 151. Project 211 was an experimental undertaking during the 1940s which sought to find a more economical method for lining canals and ditches to prevent water loss and conserve soil. The papers concerning Project 211 consist of ten boxes of material in the form of reports, correspondence, publications, financial papers, maps, and other papers. The eleven oversized plot books concerning Project 151 are irrigation surveys conducted in the 1930s of various counties in the state of Utah, such as Cache, Salt Lake, Utah, Wasatch, and Summit Counties. These materials have been organized and placed at the end of the collection.

The addendum material in 5a contains family correspondence and personal papers of Orson Israelsen. folders 1 and 2 contain his outgoing correspondence and folders 3-13 contain incoming correspondence from his sister Alice Gardner, father Andrew (AMI), mother Boletta, nephew Boyd, brother John A., and brother Vernon all arranged alphabetically then chronologically. folders 13 and 14 contain miscellaneous incoming correspondence and folders 16-21 consist of materials pertaining to various Israelsen family members.

Suggested Research Use:

Because the papers cover such a vast time period, a period of seminal work in the science of irrigation and drainage, they represent a major source of research data for area studies in the field. In Utah from whence most of the data is derived, they give a good account of the change from the early pioneer irrigation distribution to the more developed, interconnected systems of the present--systems draining from State and Federal reclamation projects. The notes and proceedings of major conferences (particularly the Colorado River studies) which proceeded National Reclamation Acts might be used as basic research materials for an account of the beginnings of such projects.

Suggested research projects are listed below.