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Show CHAPTER FIFTEEN Land Grants to States ONE OF THE GREAT ideas that marked our early public land policies was that grants of Federal lands should be made to each state as it entered the Union to provide a basis for its development. This Federal policy has been the foundation for various forms of progress throughout the country. Its most notable contribution was the furnishing of funds to establish and operate public school systems which today guarantee to each American an education to whatever level he or she can achieve. The congressional policy which has provided grants of public domain lands to states had its inception in the Ordinance of May 20, 1785, which called for a rectangular system of surveys of public lands before sale and required the reservation of "lot No. 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools, within the said township . . . ." 1 This philosophy was carried into Section 7 of the Act of April 30, 1802,2 by which Ohio entered the Union as the seventeenth state: That the section, number sixteen, in every township, and where such section has been sold, granted or disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and most contiguous to the same, shall be granted to the inhabitants of such township, for the use of schools. This practice of reserving section 16 for schools continued until the Act of August 14, 1848,2 when, in providing for the organization of the Territory of Oregon, the pattern of adding section 36 began. Later, upon admission, Utah and Arizona each received two additional sections.3 Almost 78 million acres were granted to the states for the support of the common schools. Additional grants, totalling approximately 146 million acres, were made to states other than Alaska for other schools and institutions, railroads, wagon roads, ca- 1 Paul W. Gates and Robert W. Swenson, History of Public Land Law Development, p. 65. PLLRC Study Report, 1968. 2 2 Stat. 173, 175. 8 9 Stat. 323, 330. nals and rivers, swamp reclamation, miscellaneous improvements, and other purposes, for a total of about 224 million acres, of which something less than 1 million acres have not actually been transferred and constitute unsatisfied grants. In addition, Alaska was granted selection rights to over 104.5 million acres upon statehood in 1958. Therefore, the grand total of all land grants to all states exceeds 328 million acres, or almost 18 percent of the original public domain. Land grants to the state fall into four categories. First, there are grants in place, such as the numbered sections for common schools. They are "in place" because they are designated. A second class includes the quantity grants, being of an acreage total, such as those made for various institutional purposes subject to selection by the beneficiary states from the available public domain. The third class includes lands of undetermined extent, such as the swampland grants, title to which passes immediately upon enactment of the granting statute or survey, although identification is contingent upon subsequent satisfactory proof of qualifying facts. The fourth class comprises indemnity or lieu-selection grants, those made to compensate states for in-place lands which are unavailable to them because of reservations for Federal purposes or prior appropriation of the land by third parties under applicable public land laws. Major problems that have emerged from the history of land grants to the states remain to be solved. Some states have requested additional grants to equalize their grants with those received by other states that received greater acreage. Some original grants remain unsatisfied for one reason or another. In the case of Alaska, serious impediments have developed in fulfilling the 1958 quantity grant of 104.5 million acres. No Further Land Grants Recommendation 104: No additional grants should be made to any of the 50 states. 243 |