efore installation of the drainage system began, a group of private investors offered to buy the lake from the State Board of Education and assume the commitments made by the State to the district. The State accepted the offer and on January 14, 1911, sold Lake Mattamuskeet to the Southern Land Reclamation Company, Douglas Nelson Graves, president, for $99,660 or $2.04 per acre.  

The Southern Land Reclamation Company was primarily in the land development business and planned to invest an additional $10.00 per acre in draining and improving the property and then sell it for $100 or more per acre. They fully expected a ten-fold return on their investment. They had no intention of farming the lake bed themselves, but saw it as a huge real estate development. 

The new owners exercised their rights to have two representatives on the drainage board and thereby took control of the drainage plan.  

In 1915, this corporation changed its name to New Holland Farms, Inc. These same owners laid out a town adjacent to the pumping plant site and called it “New Holland.” From that time forward, the drainage project was called the “New Holland Project.”