Wichita County Water Improvement District No. 2
Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Wichita County Water Improvement Districts No. 1 and No. 2 played major roles in the agricultural development of Wichita County. By 1900, Joseph Kemp, whose business activities were vital for the growth of Wichita Falls, developed plans for irrigation, leading to the construction of Lake Wichita. By 1914, Kemp and his brother-in-law, Frank Kell, filed a plat for irrigation subdivisions. They hoped agriculture would become the backbone of Wichita County's economy, even after the area later experienced an oil boom.In 1919, Water Improvement District No. 1 organized, consisting of 15,543 acres including all of Wichita Falls and areas to the north, south and east. In 1920, District No. 2 formed, encompassing 76,784 acres west and northeast of the city. Under the leadership of Kemp, Lake Kemp and Lake Diversion, two large reservoirs with a gravity irrigation system, were constructed between 1921 and 1924. The completed system provided water for irrigation and municipal purposes, as well as a means of flood control for the city of Wichita Falls from periodic flooding of the Wichita River.Although co-owned and operated on the same system by District No. 2, two different boards governed the district using different revenue sources. in 1961, the city of Whichita Falls abolished Disctrict No. 1 by annexing its lands, taking conrol of its assets and liabilites, and assuming performance if its functions and services. Even though a major agricultural ecnomy never developed in Wichita County, Water Improvement District No. 2 provides an important source of water for minicpal use to the cty's erverse osmosis plant and continues to play a vital role in irrigation and flood control. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1900, Wichita Falls booster Joseph Kemp began dreaming of turning the dry country around the city into irrigated farmland, and by 1914 he and brother-in-law Frank Kell had platted irrigation subdivisions. Water Improvement Districts formed in 1919 and 1920, and between 1921 and 1924 Lake Kemp and Lake Diversion rose to supply a gravity irrigation system, municipal water, and flood control on the Wichita River. Though the hoped-for farm economy never eclipsed oil, District No. 2 still delivers water and tames floods today.
Why it matters
It shows how early-20th-century Texans engineered scarce water into the foundation for settlement and growth across an arid region.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, the country around Wichita Falls was dry, and its boosters knew that water — not rainfall alone — would decide whether the region prospered. This was an era of grand faith in engineering, when Americans across the arid West believed that dams, canals, and reservoirs could transform marginal land into gardens.
Wichita Falls was a town on the make, led by businessmen who tied their own fortunes to its growth. Before oil reshaped everything, the dream here was agricultural: turn the sunbaked country into irrigated farmland and build a stable economy on crops rather than the boom-and-bust of anything drawn from beneath the ground.
That ambition required organization on a scale beyond any single farmer. It meant surveying land, forming public districts, raising money, and building infrastructure — the kind of coordinated undertaking that defined the Progressive Era's confidence in planning and public works.
People & events
The vision belonged largely to Joseph Kemp, whose business activities were central to the growth of Wichita Falls. By 1900 he was drawing up plans for irrigation, work that led to the construction of Lake Wichita. By 1914 he and his brother-in-law Frank Kell had filed a plat for irrigation subdivisions, betting that agriculture would become the backbone of the county's economy.
To carry the plan out, they turned to the machinery of public districts. Water Improvement District No. 1 organized in 1919, taking in more than fifteen thousand acres including all of Wichita Falls; District No. 2 followed in 1920, encompassing over seventy-six thousand acres around the city. Under Kemp's leadership, the great works rose between 1921 and 1924 — Lake Kemp and Lake Diversion, two large reservoirs feeding a gravity irrigation system.
The completed system did three jobs at once: it watered fields, supplied the city, and tamed the periodic flooding of the Wichita River. The two districts shared the same system but kept separate boards and revenues — until 1961, when the city of Wichita Falls absorbed District No. 1 by annexing its lands and assuming its functions, leaving District No. 2 to carry the work forward.
Its place in the American story
This is a Texas chapter of a story written all across the American West: the conquest of aridity through public water works. In the early twentieth century, whole regions were reengineered on the belief that stored and diverted water could summon settlement and prosperity from dry ground.
What happened here also illustrates a quieter truth about that faith — that the results rarely matched the vision, but the infrastructure endured and found new purposes. The hoped-for farm economy never eclipsed the oil boom that swept the area, yet the reservoirs and canals kept working, supplying water and controlling floods long after the original dream faded.
The institutional design is part of the lesson too. Americans learned to build these systems through special public districts — locally governed, self-financing entities created to do what individuals and even cities could not. District No. 2's survival, still delivering water to a modern reverse-osmosis plant and still managing floods, shows how durable those Progressive-era structures proved to be.
If you visit
This marker asks you to see water as infrastructure and history at once. Around Wichita Falls, the lakes and diversion works aren't just scenery — they're a century-old engineering answer to the problem of living in dry country, and they're still on the job.
Let the marker reframe the landscape for you. The reservoirs that anchor recreation and water supply today were conceived as the foundation of a farming empire that never fully arrived. Knowing that gives the ordinary sight of a Texas lake an unexpected depth: it's a monument to ambition, adaptation, and the long life of public works.
If you're exploring the region, pair this stop with the waterways it describes. Think about the difference between the vision — irrigated farmland stretching to the horizon — and the reality that oil, not crops, made the economy, while the water system quietly kept its promises to the city instead.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Joseph Kemp
- · Frank Kell
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