After the federal government appropriated almost three million acres of the Red Lake Indian Reservation in 1889 and offered the land to settlers, little interest followed until 1908, when Beltrami County borrowed money to dig drainage ditches in the Big Bog and planned to sell drained land to homesteaders and speculators for the cost of ditch taxes. Drainage efforts peaked between 1910 and 1916, with 1,500 miles of ditches dredged along section lines at one- or two-mile intervals, but scant attention to water flow or topography meant only a small portion of the bog was drained. Settlers struggled to farm the sodden land or pay their taxes, and by 1916 ditch debt had become a major concern in Beltrami County. In 1922, residents of northern Beltrami County formed Lake of the Woods County without including the entire Big Bog and its ditch debts, and by 1927 Beltrami, Lake of the Woods, and Koochiching counties were nearing bankruptcy. The State of Minnesota assumed the ditch debt in exchange for ownership of tax-delinquent ditched lands, and by 1932 had bailed out seven ditched counties in northern Minnesota. It established the Red Lake Game Preserve, consisting of 1.3 million acres of the Big Bog, for wildlife preservation and hunting, while another 146,000 acres of Consolidated Conservation Lands were later considered suitable for farming and sold by the state. As part of the 1933 Land Utilization Project, the federal government purchased land from struggling Depression-era farmers and resettled them in more productive places, while the Resettlement Administration operated camps at Ludlow Island and Hillman Lake. By the 1930s, W.P.A. and CCC workers were damming ditches to restore natural water flow, and beavers also blocked ditches with dams.