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Show 512 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT ercise its skills in classifying lands suitable for farming was the adoption by Congress of the Forest Homestead Act of June 11, 1906. There was a considerable acreage of nontimbered land included within the national forests which had agricultural possibilities. The Forest Homestead Act was designed to make possible homesteading on such land after it had been classified by the Department as suitable for farming and after it had been decided that selling the land would not cause injury to the forests. The act declared that settlers who had either exercised their homestead right or who had otherwise lost it might, if they were settled on the land they wished to enter on January 1, 1906, have an additional right of entry but must pay $2.50 an acre for the land. Since surveys were rarely extended over the forests, the lines of the forest homesteads might be surveyed according to metes and bounds. No commutation was to be allowed. Eleven counties in southern California where the forest reserves had been made more for watershed protection than for forest management and where the fire menace always existed were excluded from the provisions of the act, and some restrictions were placed on entries in the Black Hills Forest Reserve of South Dakota.38 The Forest Homestead Act was never to offer the many opportunities to settlers that the Kinkaid Act, the Enlarged Homestead Act, and the later Stock Raising Homestead Act did. Officials of the Forest Service were under pressure to open up potential agricultural land to settlers and to eliminate from the forests such areas as were not essential for watershed protection or for forest growth. On the other hand the Service was probably not anxious to have homesteaders within forest areas subject to extreme danger from fire. More agricultural land was therefore eliminated from the forests than was made available within them for homesteading. Between 1906 and 1915 the Department approved 13,000 forest homestead entries and rejected only 4,000. By 1915, 1,900,000 acres had been classified as open to entry which were sufficient for 18,000 settlers.39 Subsequently the government was to regret that the Forest Homestead Act had been interpreted so generously. At the time this liberality made the Department of Agriculture popular with those basically interested in getting public land on the tax rolls. Stock Raising Homesteads Considered One more homestead law-one even more unwise-was yet to be enacted. In 1914 Harvey B. Fergusson introduced a bill to authorize 640-acre grazing homesteads. Fergusson was a long time resident of New Mexico whose seat in Congress was but lightly held and was soon to be lost. It was obvious he thought that in the 640-acre grazing homestead he had a popular issue and he took up much of the time of the Committee on Public Lands, of which he was a member, discoursing on the possibilities of development in New Mexico. Fergusson likened his state to Iowa except that he admitted that a full section, not a 160-acre homestead, would be necessary for a successful farm in New Mexico. A firm believer in free homesteads, he thought that if the homestead unit were increased to 640 acres it would accelerate the growth of his state as the Act of 1862 had Iowa's. (Actually, only lands that had gone begging, 2.5 percent of the area, were home-steaded in the Hawkeye State). When asked about water, Fergusson showed some embarrassment but thought that underground sources would be sufficient for domestic purposes and for stock. Classification was a bugaboo to him, as it was to other members of the committee who 38 34 Stat. 233. 39 Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1914, p. 69, and 1915, p. 67. |