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Show 724 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Part 2 The Fuel Minerals Legislation The fact that Congress was unable to deal effectively with the fuel-mineral lands in the public domain will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the history of the mining legislation discussed in Part 1 of this chapter. For a period of 56 years the fuel minerals were handled by piecemeal legislation which, for the most part, failed to consider the whole range of policy problems involved in the disposal of fuel resources. The coal-land acts and the Executive withdrawals of coal lands during the Theodore Roosevelt administration will be considered first. This will be followed by a discussion of the oil placer law and the withdrawals of petroleum land which led to the enactment of the Pickett or Withdrawal Act of 1910. Finally, there will be an account of the legislative history of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, the first significant deviation from the "free-mining" and "sale" policy of the mining acts of the 19th century. Sale of the Coal Lands The first coal act of 1864180 opened with a recital that the coal beds or coal fields as "mines"181 had been expressly excluded from the operation of the Preemption Act of 1841.182 The act then empowered the President to sell these lands at public auction to the highest bidder at a minimum price of $20 per acre in "suitable legal subdivisions." Any lands not thus disposed of were subject to private entry at the mini- 18013 Stat. 343 (1864). For general discussions of the coal legislation, see Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Poucies 518-25 (1924) (1965 reprint) ; Robbins, Our Landed Heritage 223, 346, 370-71 (1960). 181 According to 1 Lindley, Mines § 140 (3d ed. 1914), the land department did not treat coal lands as mineral lands prior to the 1864 Act. 18*5 Stat. 453 (1841). mum price under the general public land statutes. In the following year,183 a new statute restricted sale of unreserved land to bona fide coal miners who were engaged in actual mining on the public lands in tracts not exceeding 160 acres (according to the legal subdivisions of the government survey) at a minimum price of $20 per acre. Eight years later, in 1873,184 the Congress provided that a citizen (or one who indicated an intention to become a citizen) might enter any quantity of vacant and unreserved coal lands of not more than 160 acres, described according to the government survey. An association of individuals was permitted to enter a 320-acre tract. The minimum price was $10 per acre for land located more than 15 miles from a completed railroad and $20 per acre for land located within 15 miles. Persons in actual possession of coal mines were given preferential rights. An association of not less than four persons could obtain as much as 640 acres if they had expended not less than $5,000 in work and improvements. Section 6 of the act provided that it should not be construed to "authorize sale of lands valuable for mines of gold, silver or copper." The 1873 Act continued to be the basic legislation for the disposal of coal lands until 1920. Section 6 established what was to become the fixed policy to regard the coal lands as sui generis. This should be contrasted with the free-mining policy which Congress had applied since 1866 to the western mines valuable for the precious metals.185 The reason for distinguishing 18813 Stat. 529 (1865). 18417 Stat. 607 (1873), superseded by the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, 30 U.S.C. § § 181 et seq. (1964 ed.). 188 See Part 1, "A Closer Look at the Mining Act of 1866." |