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Show 608 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Area of Unappropriated and Unreserved Public Lands and Livestock Use June 30, 1932 State Acres* Cattle Sheep Arizona______________________________ 13,581,760 California____________________________ 15,712,567 Colorado_____________________________ 7,467,597 Idaho________________________________ 10,865,472 Montana________________.....________ 6,238,429 Nevada______________________________51,221,934 New Mexico__________________________ 13,615,150 Oiegon______________________________ 12,920,334 Utah________________________________ 25,197,820 Washington_______......._____________ 708,363 Wyoming_____________________________ 14,728,953 Total________________....._______172,258,379b a GLO Annual Report, 1932, p. 78; United States Department of Agriculture, Tear-book of Agriculture, 1933, pp. 590, 611. As of the time of the adoption of the Taylor Grazing Act the amount of unreserved and unappropriated land was 165,695,497 acres. Department of the Interior, Annual Report, 1936, p. 295. b In addition there were 9,771,386 acres of public lands withdrawn for stock driveways. Omitted from the table are 1,059,857 acres of scattered lands in Arkansas, Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota. 894,000 1,003,000 1,887,000 3,038,000 1,526,000 3,055,000 687,000 2,115,000 1,378,000 4,049,000 295,000 890,000 1,167,000 2,820,000 835,000 2,545,000 480,000 2,360,000 646,000 720,000 906,000 3,893,000 10,701,000 26,488,000 rangelands, and its administrators had provided the very highest type of public service.2 Experiment in Cooperative Management A modest experiment in the control of grazing on intermixed public and private lands had been undertaken on an area of 108,804 acres between two creeks (Mizpah and Pumpkin) in Montana. The Enlarged Homestead Act had drawn many settlers to this area who soon found the land of little or no use for growing grain. Most of the homesteads had been abandoned and had become open again to entry or had been taken over by banks or other credit agencies. Some were held by absentees. One writer has said there was nothing left but "dilapidated shacks, rusty windmills, patches of plowed ground, and scattered 1 In both Houses of Congress this emphasis upon the good management of the Forest Service ranges was reiterated a number of times by members who were not favorable to delegating to the Service responsibility for management of the public range-lands. quarter-sections and half-sections of fenced in property. The fences gradually fell down, probably with some help from local stockmen, and the whole area became a grazing commons." Stockmen owned 8,081 acres, part of which they had been forced to buy from the homesteaders to assure themselves sufficient forage. Overgrazing had largely reduced what grass survived after the homesteaders' "improvements," and the land once covered with a heavy growth of palatable wheat grass capable of feeding 6,000 cattle bore only patches of the less palatable grasses that could provide for no more than 2,300 head of stock.3 Local livestock interests had worked out a proposal to provide management and range improvement for the Mizpah-Pump-kin Creek area. It included 22,432 acres that had been homesteaded, 27,534 acres of government land so poor in agricultural or grazing possibilities as never to have been 8 Phillip O. Foss, Politics and Grass. The Administration of Grazing on the Public Domain (Seattle, 1960), pp. 48^9. |