In 1894 the United States Congress passed the Carey Land Act, amending the earlier Desert Land Act, to "aid the public land states in the reclamation of the desert lands therein, and the settlement, cultivation and sale thereof in small tracts to actual settlers." The Act granted to the states, free of cost, "such desert lands ... as the state may cause to be irrigated, reclaimed, occupied, and not less than 20 acres of each 160 acre tract cultivated by actual settlers." The state was required to file a map with the Secretary of Interior showing which lands were to be irrigated and a plan showing the mode of irrigation and the source of the water. To take advantage of this law, the Montana legislature passed the Lynde Act establishing the State Arid Land Grant Commission, consisting of five commissioners. The irrigation work was to be paid for by the issuance of 6% warrants on the estimated value of the completed work.

The original commissioners were E.W. Beattie, J.T. Armington, A.L. Babcock, A.J. Talbott, and H.S. Corbett. At its first substantive meeting on April 9, 1895, the Commission set up a committee to ascertain the location of desert lands and to hire temporary engineers to survey and examine these lands. A second committee was formed to establish rules for the governance of the Commission. A third committee was empowered to seek "ready money" to fund the operation. The early survey work concentrated on the Yellowstone River Valley, since the Northern Pacific Railway provided free rail passes to Commission members, while the Great Northern did not.

The original legislation had extremely restrictive financial limitations that essentially prevented the Commission from doing its work. The 1897 legislature passed SB 95, expanding and clarifying the powers of the Commission. In April 1897 Governor Robert B. Smith requested the resignations of all of the commission members "for political reasons". He appointed to replace them C.O. Reed, Donald Bradford, Thomas C. Marshall, Armistead H. Mitchell, and Joseph K. Toole. Mitchell died in 1898 and was replaced by David A. Cory; Toole resigned in 1899 and was replaced by Joseph T. Brown.

During the course of its existence the Arid Land Grant Commission set up District 1 near Billings, District 2 near Big Timber, District 3 on Rock Creek in Carbon County, District 4 on the Dearborn River near Augusta, and District 5 on the Sun River. Districts 1, 3, and 5 were abandoned for lack of funds and never built. The Big Timber ditch, already under construction by Andrew Wormser's Holland Irrigation Canal Company, was brought under the Commission but faced repeated delays and was also not completed. The Dearborn Canal, begun by Commission members Donald Bradford and David A. Cory in 1888, became District 4 in 1900. By 1903 only 19 of the contemplated 55 miles of ditch had been built and no farmers had settled on the land.

The 1903 legislature set up a committee to investigate the Arid Land Grant Commission and, as a result of its findings, abolished the Commission. To replace it, they established the Carey Land Act Board [RS 32].

[Note: this historical sketch is based on "The Montana Arid Land Grant Commission, 1895-1903" by Lesley M. Heathcote, Agricultural History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (1964).]