George Hebard Maxwell

From the late 1890s to the 1940s, Maxwell was a known public advocate for social causes such as support of farming communities, city, and suburban gardening as a source of food supply as well as environmental issues.

[1] After becoming the secretary of the San Francisco Merchants Committee, Maxwell worked with the Salvation Army in raising funds for its communal agricultural experiment in the Salinas Valley.

At that time reclamation stood for irrigation projects that would reclaim arid land and make it habitable to be used by people and encourage Western settlement.

In 1925 and 1926, he spoke before the Senate and House Committees on Irrigation and Reclamation about the influence the proposed Highline Canal would have on development in the lower Colorado River basin.

Consequently, Maxwell became the leader of Homecroft, a grassroots conservation movement promoting home gardening and the development of urban "acre-culture," rather than depending on agriculture and overtaking of wildland.

In his 1915 book Patriotism of Peace, Maxwell argued that the Colorado River needed comprehensive damming as otherwise, its water would be used by Japanese imperialists, who were colonizing Baja California.