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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 377 be subject to settlement and preemption at not over $2.50 an acre. One might say that the Texas Pacific Railroad was surfeited with lands, for through a subsidiary it controlled in Louisiana it had another Federal grant and it gained control of large grants in Texas. However, the Southern Pacific had built its line along the 32d parallel by way of Fort Yuma, reaching El Paso by 1882 where it met the Texas Pacific and the latter was never to get farther west. For noncompliance with conditions of the grant, Congress provided for its forfeiture on February 28, 1885. The Southern Pacific Railroad, already rich in land gained by its subsidiary, the Central Pacific, for its line from Ogden, Utah, to Sacramento and from Sacramento to San Jose, captured the generous grant of the Atlantic and Pacific from San Francisco to the Needles where it was to join with the Atlantic and Pacific.100 Next, it succeeded in having an amendment added to the Texas Pacific Railroad Act that permitted it to build from the Tehachapi Pass to Fort Yuma where it would join the Texas Pacific. By this amendment and the amendment to the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Act it had created-and for a time achieved-the possibility of controlling both routes through California. This line from the Pass to Fort Yuma was to be given the same grant of 20 sections per mile of road, bringing to more than 11 million acres the company acquisition in California. The lands for this branch overlapped those given the Texas Pacific. When the grant of the latter was forfeited the Southern Pacific argued that it was entitled to receive all the odd sections instead of the smaller number that would have been available. Cleveland's Secretary of the Interior refused to accept this"interpretation and the Southern Pacific had to be content with every other odd section, being permitted to select 1, 5, 9, or 3, 7, 11 and so on.101 100 McAllister, "Railroad Land Grant Disposals in California," p. 189. 101 Rae, "Railway Land Subsidy Policy," p. 318. While the Southern Pacific was building its line from Fort Yuma to El Paso, its officials boasted that they could build the line without a land grant. However, when it appeared that the Texas Pacific was not going to build the line west of El Paso for which its grant was given, the Southern Pacific leaders tried to have the land grant through Arizona and New Mexico transferred to it, arguing that they had built the line for which it was granted. Their political power did not quite reach this far and the request was denied.102 Between 100 million and 110 million acres were thus promised the transcontinental railroads, i.e., the Northern Pacific, the Union and Central Pacific and the Kansas-Colorado branch of the Union Pacific, the Atlantic and Pacific, and the Texas Pacific. Congress was not through even yet for between 1862 and 1871, in addition to grants to the Pacific Railroads, the Burlington in Nebraska, four grants to Kansas lines, and enlargement of a number of grants made in the fifties, additional grants were made to states for railroads in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Louisiana, Arkansas, and California. Grants to and by States The grant to California is another variation of grants to states in which the railroad beneficiary, contrary to usual practice, was specifically named. In fact, the Act of March 2, 1867, granted directly to the Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad a 200-foot right-of-way through the public lands and the right to take materials from adjacent public lands, provided that the Legislature of California should give a charter to the company for such construction. To the State of California 102 Donaldson, The Public Domain, pp. 893-94; 16 Stat. 573; 23 Stat. 337. Useful on the Texas Pacific is S. G. Reed, History of the Texas Railroads (Houston, 1941), and on the Southern Pacific is Stuart Dag-gett, Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific (New York, 1922). |