History of public land law development

page 772

772 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT protection, recreation, preservation of wildlife, mining, industry or urban proliferation, the modern multiple-purpose objective takes all these factors into consideration and upon that broad base the future use of any particular tract may be determined. Conservation had its advocates in all parts of the country but its support in the states in which there remained large amounts of public land was distinctly more tepid than elsewhere. Why, said West Coast lumbermen, were the public forests to be withheld from purchase and cutting when no such withholding had existed elsewhere? Why should the grazing lands be retained in Federal ownership and be managed by an agency quartered in Washington? Why should 86 percent of the entire acreage of Nevada, 66 percent of Utah, 64 percent of Idaho be retained in Federal ownership, kept off the local tax lists, the timber withheld from cutting, the rangelands denied to sheepmen or cattlemen who had no local property base, the power sites developed by public agencies and not subjected to local taxes? In the past the states had mismanaged and wastefully disposed of the Federal land which had been granted them, but in recent decades it can be argued that most of them were managing their landed property as well as the Federal government was. These western states came to think of the extensive Federal lands within their borders, reserved or withdrawn from entry, as retarding their development, slowing down their progress, and keeping them in thralldom to a remote government not capable of understanding their needs. Too often, they forgot that substantial portions of the returns from minerals, lumbering, grazing, and water power development on the public lands were either flowing into reclamation development or the building of access roads and other improvements in their section. Finally, in appraising the American land system the question that should be asked is not whether East and West have received their proportionate share of the public domain, or the income from it, or whether the western states have been treated in an unequal and niggardly fashion in not being granted all the land within their boundaries. The questions are: (1) whether land-hungry settlers have been able to establish themselves permanently on suitable land with secure titles to farms of efficient size; (2) whether the minerals, forests, and grazing resources have been efficiently used without undue waste; and (3) whether the long-run interests of a growing Nation have been foreseen and provided for. The public lands have come to have different levels of interest for society as it has become more mature. At one time the government was concerned only with revenue and the public mainly with surface rights to good land for farms. Later it became important first to develop, then to conserve the natural resources of the land in timber, minerals, oil, and water. Nowadays the land as living space and play space has taken on new values. Our more mobile population, in which those who are Fast today are West tomorrow, tends to e.ase sectional attitudes once important.