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Show Chapter XIV Land Grants for Railroads and Internal Improvements Congress early recognized that public aid for the construction of roads, canals, river improvements, and railroads was necessary to make possible the settlement of the interior lands and that these internal improvements would increase the demand for the public lands and enhance their selling price.1 The 5-percent clause in the Ohio Enabling Act marked the first sharing of income from land revenues with the states. The legislatures of six public land states were allowed to dispose of three-fifths of the 5 percent for roads, with Congress appropriating the balance; the remaining public land states received the full 5 percent of the net proceeds to appropriate for roads or education as they saw fit. The sums received by the states do not appear large today but the allocation of $712,744 to Illinois and $596,634 to Ohio before 1860 provided for numerous projects in those days. By 1883 a total of $7,123,549 had been distributed to the states.2 1 For a useful study of the road work required of all property owners in New York and the possibility of commuting it to a cash payment in the colonial and early national period see Gould Colman, "Highway Development in New York State, 1691-1906" (Master's thesis, Cornell University, 1953). It is interesting to note that New York set aside 50,000 acres of public land to compensate persons building bridges or laying out roads on the state's public lands. Ibid., p. 11. 2 California was the one state that did not receive a share of the 5-percent fund for many years after its admission. Not until 1906 did Congress vote it the full 5 percent of the net proceeds from sales since 1850. Thomas Donaldson, The Public Domain, p. 238; Act of June 27, 1906, 34 Stat., Part 1, p. 518. As originally planned and applied to the early states two-fifths of the 5-percent fund was to be used by the Federal government to build roads and other internal improvements leading to the West, all of which, like the money spent for the same purpose within the western states, would draw settlers and land buyers and assure continued demand for the land. Whatever doubts Congress might have had about appropriating money to the states for road building, it could have none about using part of this fund itself for such construction, for the Constitution declared that Congress "shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States" and to establish post roads. The Cumberland Road In 1806 Congress authorized the laying out of a road 4 rods wide from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River and appropriated $30,000 from the 2-percent fund to begin it. The road was to be "raised in the middle of the Carriage-way with stone, earth or gravel or sand" and was to be well drained. Preliminary surveys led to the selection of a route by way of Uniontown and Washington, Pennsylvania, to Wheeling, Virginia, on the Ohio. In 1811 construction was begun and by 1818 the Cumberland, or National Road, had been completed to Wheeling, though in somewhat rough form. Water transportation being available there, the necessity for ex- 341 |