Drainage of surface water has been vital to development, from town sites to agricultural cropland. As the United States expanded westward, vegetated wetlands called swamp lands covered more than 215 million acres, including about one-fifth of Minnesota’s usable land. Across Minnesota, V-shaped roadside ditches were dug to drain excess water from the land. The first such ditches in the Red River Valley were dug in 1893 with the formation of the Red River Drainage Commission. At first, the state built the ditches and counties were required to maintain and repair them. Between 1900 and 1915, numerous drainage ditches were constructed, but demand later declined because of World War I and the Depression. By the late 1930s, demand for new ditches and repairs was rising again. Legislative changes in the 1940s authorized district courts and county boards to establish drainage systems, removed state and township authority, and led to the common name Judicial Ditches. The widespread use of ditches and drain tile that followed can be seen in the Minnesota River Basin, where only 58.3 percent of the land is considered well drained, but ditches and tiling made an additional 1,925,672 acres, or 20.2 percent, more productive. Since the 1950s, growing emphasis on the environmental and conservation effects of drainage projects has been reflected in state and federal legislation, balancing concerns over new systems, repairs, and improvements with the complexity and controversy surrounding ditches.