COLLECTIONS

Samson Iron Works Centrifugal Pump No. 20 was used by Reclamation District 524 on Roberts Island starting in the early 1900s. It has two twenty-inch diameter suction pipes and one twenty-inch discharge pipe. It was used to pump water from the Delta to irrigate crops and to remove water from the land when it flooded. It was donated to the San Joaquin County Historical Museum in 1997 by Isaac Newton Robinson Jr.

The development of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta began with the passage of the Swamp and Overflow Land Act of 1850 that transferred ownership of swamp, overflow land, and Delta marshes from the federal government to the State of California. Initially, the state’s Board of Swamp and Overflowed Land Commissioners was created in 1861 to manage reclamation projects. In 1869, George D. Roberts, a land speculator and developer from San Francisco, acquired over 120,000 acres through his company the Tideland Reclamation Company. Roberts Island, which covers 64,000 acres was named for George Robert. Initially, levees to reclaim the land were built by hand by Chinese workers, but the fragile peat-based levees were not strong enough to hold back the Delta waters. Later, dredges would be used to help build up the levees to protect from water intrusion, transitioning the island to agriculture, where farmers experimented with crops such as potatoes, onion, and beans, which could withstand the waterlogged peat soils. Reclamation districts were formed on Roberts Island starting in 1889 with the Middle Roberts Island Reclamation District 524, the Upper Roberts Island Reclamation District 544 in 1892, and the Lower Roberts Island Reclamation District 684 in 1897.

John Minor Kroyer was born in Denmark in 1869 and immigrated to the United States in 1887. He settled in California in 1888 and worked for Matteson and Williamson Manufacturing in Stockton as a foreman. Five years later, he was working for the Holt Manufacturing company until he started the Samson Iron Works in 1898. The Samson Iron Works was located on the southeast corner of California and Washington Streets and at first only made centrifugal pumps, but they soon added stationary gas engines to sell with their pumps. At the time, Samson Iron Works was the only company making pumps in the western United States. The pumps were so popular that there were distribution branches in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Fresno, and Seattle by 1909. Samson’s reputation must have been recognized in Europe, because in January 1909 they shipped a centrifugal pump to Antwerp, Belgium from Stockton.

Kroyer’s pumps came in various sizes based on the buyer’s needs. They were used to pump water for irrigation, drinking wells, mining, and reclamation. The “open-vaned” impeller on the pumps could easily move sand and gravel with the water without the pump getting clogged. The smallest pump Samson manufactured was the Number One which had a capacity of up to thirty gallons per minute, while the largest the Number Fifty had a capacity of 90,000 gallons per minute.