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Show 502 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Unreserved and Unappropriated Lands, 1905" State or Territory Surveyed Unsurveyed Total Alabama_________________________________________ 183,480 ______________ 183,480 Arizona__________________________________________ 12,440,032 34,642,289 47,082,321 Arkansas__________......._________________________ 2,109,464 ______________ 2,109,464 California___________________________________...... 26,175,146 6,981,731 33,156,877 Colorado_______________________________....._____ 27,717,469 2,393,117 30,110,586 Florida______________________......_______________ 873,482 247,691 1,121,173 Idaho____________________________.....,....._____ 10,118,854 23,366,535 33,485,389 Kansas___________________________________________ 942,483 ______________ 942,483 Louisiana_________________________________________ 91,372 65,018 156,390 Michigan_________________________________________ 323,947 ______________ 323,947 Minnesota________________________________________ 2,063,430 759,408 2,822,838 Mississippi________________________________________ 60,440 ______________ 60,440 Missouri__________________________________________ 149,039 ______________ 149,039 Montana_________________________________________ 19,241,294 36,507,106 55,748,400 Nebraska_________________________________________ 4,481,958 ______________ 4,481,958 Nevada___________________________________________ 30,993,494 30,233,280 61,226,774 New Mexico_______________________________________ 37,599,949 14,495,363 52,095,312 North Dakota______________________________________ 5,729,015 1,321,291 7,050,306 Oklahoma________________________________________ 1,983,249 ______________ 1,983,249 South Dakota______________________________________ 9,625,282 306,831 9,932,113 Utah_____________________________________________ 11,925,111 26,922,230 38,847,341 Washington______________________________.....____ 3,982,442 4,584,121 8,566,563 Wisconsin_________________________________________ 51,149 ______________ 51,149 Wyoming_________________________________________ 34,877,894 2,745,535 37,623,329 Totals________________________________________258,151,044 191,347,263 449,498,307 Department of the Interior, Annual Report, H. Doc, 59th Cong., 1st sess. (Serial No. 4958), Vol. 18, p. 383. vantage of the government's bounty,14 and judging by the experience in the past decade or two, it was to be feared that many of them were concerned with getting land for sale, not for farming. Representatives of other western states, witnessing the rush for homesteads in Nebraska in 1905 and listening to Moses P. Kinkaid assure them that his act was resulting in increased immigration to Nebraska, the growth of communities, and an increase in taxable property and social facilities were lulled into believing that such growth was to be attributed to the breakup of the range and that the new settlers were doing well on their larger tracts. Pressure was building up for the " Mary Wilma M. Hargraves, Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains, 1900-1925 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957) , pp. 343-46; Peffer, op. cit., pp. 140 ff. application of a more liberal homestead unit to other parts of the West, a pressure that was supported by practically all economic interests except many livestock men. But they were no longer the all-powerful group they once had been. The West was changing. Greater concern was being expressed for the immigrant farmer who used the land more intensively, came to own it and to pay taxes, provided business for the grain elevators, the local merchants, the railroads, the real estate people. In 1905 there still remained in government hands a notable fragment of the once huge 1,446,436,160 acres of public domain (exclusive of Alaska). In this fragment were 258,151,044 acres of surveyed and 191,347,263 acres of unsurveyed land which was both unappropriated and unreserved, or a total of 449,498,307 acres. Less than 1 |