Who Owns Wyoming?: Land Issues

 

I.  Promoting the "Jeffersonian Ideal"--building a nation of yeoman farmers

                a. agriculture as America's bedrock industry

                b. the Land Ordinance of 1785: land into townships 6 miles square, 36 sections

II. Initial Federal gov't. policy on land: give it away as fast as possible to whoever would use it

                a. railroad land grants: UP alone received 4,582,520 acres in Wyoming from federal govt

                b. give away to states in exchange for building public structures and institutions, schools

                c. sell cheaply or give away to former soldiers

                d. the problem with "veterans' scrip": the Yazoo land fraud

                e. Preemption Act of 1841: 160 acres for $1.25 per acre

                f. "rain follows the plow"--or "trees" or "the rails"

III. The Homestead Law Act (1862)

                a. another example of Union legislation (passed once South seceded)

    b. 160 acres, must live on it for at least five years, pay minimal final filing fee

IV.  Timber Culture Act (1873)

                a. Congressional concern with Great Plains and absence of trees

                b. act gave 160 more acres if settler would plant 40 acres in trees (later reduced to 5 acres)

    c. homesteader had to keep the trees surviving at least six of the eight years

   d. ultimately failed--subject to massive fraud

V. Desert Land Act (1877-78)

                a. John Wesley Powell's "Arid Lands Report": min. size of 2,560 acres and along waterway

                b. Congressional response: increase size of homestead to 640 acres in "desert areas"

                c. "desert" defines as places where agriculture impossible without irrigation

                d. primary requirement: had to "bring water" to the land within three years of settlement

                e. final filing fee of 25 cents per acre

VI. Land Ownership Possibilities prior to Statehood for the individual rancher/farmer

    a. possible 1,120 acres under all three homestead acts to 1890

    b. open range, if accessible to one's property

VII. The Open Range: no ownership, no leases, no costs, not taxes--free to (almost) all takers

                a.  the open range cattle companies: Frewen, Swan, Plunkett, Carey

                b.. buying and selling ranches based on "book count"

VIII. Public Land Office and National Politics

                a. William A. J. Sparks and controversy over fencing of government land

                b. land commission offers to sell grazing land for 5 cents/acre; most ranchers oppose offer

                c. the role of land control in state-federal relations

IX.  Land Promotional Schemes by Speculators and Promoters

                a. "rain follows the plow"

                b. "rain follows the rails"

                c. federal government: "rain follows the trees"

X.  Federal "reserves" (parks, forests, monuments, wilderness areas, reclamation districts)

                 a. lands removed from possible "location" by homesteaders

                b. argument made that most of these lands were "worthless" to agriculture anyway

XI. Enlarged Homestead Act (1909)

                a. doubles homestead lands and reduces time required in residence on land

                b. introduced by Wyoming Congressman Frank Mondell

XII. Stock-raising Homestead Act (1916)

                a. 640 acres possible, but no need to demonstrate successful crop agriculture

                b. surface rights passed only--federal government retains mineral rights

XIII. Taylor Grazing Act (1934)

                a. Federal government reverses land policy from giving it away to leasing it

                b. as part of New Deal effort to mitigate Depression prices, overcome "dust bowl"

                c. origins of "scientific" range management

   d. "self-governing" provisions of the act