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Show 590 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT rounding reserves. It was pointed out that another pressure group in Oregon was seeking the addition of a solid area of adversely owned land to the Cascade Forest Reserve. It was asked why Santa Barbara did not buy the rancho which could probably be obtained for 25 to 50 cents an acre and give it to the Federal government. Despairing of winning the full privilege of exchanging their land for scrip, Wash-burn and the Water Company in 1903 offered to accept scrip subject to entry only on nontimbered land and Washburn gave one person to believe he would enter his scrip in South Dakota. Binger Hermann continued to oppose the inclusion of Los Prietos in the two reserves, and Hitchcock supported him until Hermann resigned. But when Gifford Pinchot was brought into the picture and recommended the inclusion of Los Prietos in the surrounding reserves the new Commissioner, W.A. Richards, Hitchcock, and President Roosevelt agreed to the order. On December 22, 1903, the Santa Inez and the Pine Mountain and Zaca Reserves were consolidated in the Santa Barbara Forest Reserve and included within it was the privately owned Los Prietos.75 The Los Prietos case shows in detail the danger resulting from loosely drafted legislation, and the way loopholes were taken advantage of by special interests with strong political backing. The privilege the people 7S 32 Stat., Part 2, p. 2327. By agreement with the GLO Commissioner, Washburn and Water Company scrip was subject to location on nontimbered land without restriction as to location. It was used to enter land in 15 states, the largest entries being 13,753 acres in Montana, 12,134 in Oregon, 9,299 in Washington, 3,942 in North Dakota, 3,516 in Wyoming, 1,474 in Idaho and 1,261 in Nevada. The many petitions and other documents concerning the efforts of Washburn to secure a reversal of Hermann's opposition to including Los Prietos in the Santa Barbara Forest Reserve and other details concerning the relinquishment of land for the Forest Lieu Scrip are in S. Doc, 61st Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 55, No. 612 (Serial No. 5654). of Santa Barbara wanted could have been gained by special legislation and without the special bonus individuals obtained through the Forest Lieu Act. In summing up the government's unfortunate experience with the lieu land provision in April 1904, before all the damage the government was to sustain by it had yet become clear, Commissioner W. A. Richards declared that "comparatively few actual settlers have taken advantage" of the right that, he might have said, was ostensibly adopted for them. The land grant railroads were the principal beneficiaries and next to them were speculators who acquired control of the state school lands within the forest reserves for exchange. Some 343,907 acres of school land in California and Oregon had been so bought and exchanged, a considerable part of which was carried through by fraud. Richards went on to say that the government had acquired in the exchange large areas which were neither generally timbered nor "of any considerable value for water conservation, or for any other purpose contemplated by the forest-reserve law. . . ." 76 It is impossible to find in Federal legislation a more one-sided and unfair exchange provision which dealt private interests all the high cards. The total amount of land within forest reserves and national parks permitted to be exchanged for timberland and other land outside the reserves does not appear large in comparison with the acreage conveyed to private ownership under the Timber and Stone Act. Its importance lies in the fact that the unrestricted scrip could be used for a time to acquire the best remaining unsurveyed land, whether water holes that could control the pasture on thousands of acres, richly endowed redwood lands in Humboldt County, California, or 76 "Selection of Timber Lands in Lieu of Lands in Forest Reserves," House Reports, 58th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 6, No. 2233 (Serial No. 4582), pp. 1-3. |