an avid sport fisherman, on a fishing trip through Florida. During the trip, Disston realized the possibility that enormous tracts of land could be reclaimed for agriculture by using canals to drain Florida's Lake Okeechobee. An application for foreclosure of the IIF and its land was filed in federal court in 1880. Negotiations to relieve the debt were held with various potential investors, including Sanford and Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, but did not come to fruition. Disston and five associates, meanwhile, entered into a land reclamation contract with the Internal Improvement Fund in January 1881. The contract stipulated that Disston and associates would be deeded half of whatever land his Atlantic and Gulf Coast Canal and Okeechobee Land Company reclaimed around Lake Okeechobee, the Kissimmee, Caloosahatchee and Miami Rivers. Congressman and Disston family friend, William D. "Pig Iron" Kelley, described Disston's first contract: "He instituted broad preliminary investigations from which he received satisfactory reports; he surveyed the entire field of the proposed work, and with Napoleonic instinct and foresight saw in the proposition an opportunity to promote his country's welfare by the reclamation of a more than kingly domain. Disston stood to gain up to with his drainage contract, although it would displace numerous squatters. Florida's Armed Occupation Act of 1842 had granted land to squatters in order to force the local Seminole Indians off the land, but Disston's contract would force the squatters off any land that Disston could show was submerged. The drainage contract, however, was in jeopardy because it did not affect the massive debt bearing down on the Internal Improvement Fund. Court orders related to the debt threatened to derail the contract so Governor William D. Bloxham visited Disston in Philadelphia to persuade him to relieve the debt. During the visit, Disston tentatively agreed to purchase four million acres (16,000 km²) of Internal Improvement Fund land for 25 cents per acre, an agreement which became a formal contract on June 1, 1881. Disston signed the contract on June 14, and The New York Times described the transaction with, "What is claimed to be the largest purchase of land ever made by a single person in the world". It made him the largest landowner in the United States. On December 17, 1881, Disston sold two million acres (8,000 km²) of his land to English Member of Parliament, Sir Edward James Reed, for $600,000. Promotion and politics While some