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Show 736 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT resentative Mondell's statement, quoted above, must certainly have been an astute political observation. After the passage of the Pickett Act, the 1909 petroleum withdrawal was ratified and confirmed by the President on July 2, 1910, under the authority of the new act. In the decade which followed, substantially all of the unappropriated public domain was withdrawn from nonmetalliferous location under the mining laws. In order to conserve an adequate supply of oil for the Navy, two naval reserves were established by Executive order in 1912: No. 1 located in Elk Hills and No. 2 in Buena Vista Hills, Kern County, California. The theory seemed to be that the most effective way to conserve oil for the future use of the Navy was to keep it stored in the ground. These withdrawals were followed in 1915 by the Teapot Dome Reserve No. 3 near Casper, Wyoming (9,581 acres) ; in 1916 by the naval oil shale reserves in Colorado and Utah (132,028); and in 1923 by the extensive Reserve No. 4 in Alaska. After 1910 land known to be valuable for metalliferous minerals was rarely the subject of a withdrawal order. Undoubtedly this was because the Pickett Act itself provided that withdrawn land continued to be subject to mining location. One exception occurred in 1912, when 9,787 acres were withdrawn in the Warren mining district in Bisbee, Arizona.270 Investigation by the United States Geological Survey had revealed the possibility of deepseated deposits of copper ore, which were not susceptible to surface discovery so as to comply with the Mining Law of 1872. The Interior Department felt that before expensive drilling or deep shafting could occur, attempts would be made to obtain title to the land by means of state selections or other nonmineral entries. Accordingly, the land was simply withdrawn from nonmineral entries. Much of it was later restored. This is the only known situation in which hard mineral locators were protected in their prospecting from agricultural or other nonmineral entrymen. The constitutionality of the original withdrawal in 1909 by President Taft was finally tested 6 years later in United States v. Midwest Oil Co.211 After the Interior Department had concluded that the order was valid,272 the government instituted suit to recover public land occupied by the defendant oil company in Wyoming and to obtain an accounting for oil which allegedly had been illegally appropriated. The land in question had been entered 6 months after the withdrawal order, and, after a discovery of oil, the defendant had filed a location certificate and extracted oil. Judge John A. Riner of the Federal District Court for Wyoming sustained the defendant's demurrer, holding that the withdrawal was void.273 Astonishing as it may seem for a matter of such importance, the trial judge's opinion was handed down orally from the bench.274 Even the Circuit Court of Appeals did no more than to certify certain questions to the Supreme Court, which then ordered the entire record sent up for review. The importance of the legal issue is apparent from the fact that several amici curiae filed briefs. Among them were Messrs. Pillsbury and Sutro of San Francisco, longtime counsel for Standard Oil of California. As a matter of fact, Mr. Sutro had quite consistently after 1909 advised his client that it should proceed on the assumption that the withdrawal order might be upheld.275 8701 Annual Report, Department of the Interior 432 (1913). 271 236 U.S. 459 (1915) , discussed in Colby, The Neiv Public Land Policy With Special Reference to Oil Lands, 3 Cal. L. Rev. 269, 276-85 (1915) ; 1 American Law of Mining 79-80 (Martz ed. 1960). 278 In re Lowell, 40 I.D. 303 (1911) . 273 A contemporary decision holding that the 1909 order was invalid is United States v. Midway Northern Oil Co., 216 Fed. 802 (S.D. Cal. 1914) . 274 See Colby, supra n. 271 at 277; 1 Lindley, Mines 440, n. 83a (1914). 175 See White, supra note 229, at 438. |