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Show 98 REPORT OF THE COXMIS810NE& OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. To a request for a reconsideration of this secand decision theDepart-ment replied March 23, 1900, as follows: If the company obtained any vested right to these gmunds under the act of 1866, it was of course not divested or injuriously affected by midsubsequent scta; butsiice the company, undpr ~e act of 1866, on January 30, 1872, secured departmental approval of a plat showing the grounds then desired by it for station and other pur-poses at Mwkogee, wch grounds being 400 feet in width and 2,980 feet in length, and since the company, although asserting a use and occupation of mid reservoir for a period of over twenty-five years, and of said stock yards for a. period of over eight years, did not present any plat thereof to the Department for approval, or present any proof of the necessity for the use of such reservoir and stock yards, for the purposes named, until during the last year (1899), and wince, if the company acquired, under the act of 1866, a vested right to the grounds covered by such reservoir and atock yards, the approval of said plat, now tardily presented, is not necessaryto the furthgr enjoyment of that right, and since, if the company acquired novested right to said grounds under the act of 1866, a right thereto, for purposes named, can now only be acquired under the acts of 1896 and 1899, and since the present application and plat do not conform to the requirements of the act of 1896, or to those of the act of 1899, it is believed that the present application and plat are not entitled to favorable eon-sideration. The company's said request is therefore denied. The company served notice.on the inspector for the Indian Terri-tory that it claimed every alternate section of land or parts thereof, designated by odd numbers, to the extent of ten sections per mile on each side of its line of railroad through the Indian Territory, within 20 miles from the line of the road. The claim was made under section 9 of the act of July 25,1866, which provides as follows: And be itfiLr1lr.w enacted, That the same grante of lands through said Indian Teni-tory are hereby made as provided in the first section of this act, whenever the Indian title shall he extinguished by treaty or otherwise, not to exceed the ratio per mile granted in the first seetion of this act: PIovided, That said lands become a part of the public lands of the United Ststes. The office reported September 2, 1901, that it is not likely that any of the lands in the Indian Territory will ever become public lands of the Zinited States, and that it was not thought that any part of the act quoted from has any applicability to the Indian Territory. This claim of the company to a land grant through the Indian Territory was also the subject of office report dated Febrnary 12,1894. Hnskogee and Western Railroad Company.-After the approval July 25, 1901, of the maps of the first three sections of this road, extending 35.46 miles from Fort Gibson through Muskogee to a point on the Arkansas River, in township 16 north, range 16 east, there were filed under the act of March 2, 1899, by the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad Company maps of definite location showing a line paralleling the line of the Muskogee and Western westerly from Muskogee. The latter company protested against the approval of thesemaps, andDecem-ber 24,1901, the St. Louis and San Francisco bilroad Company was allowed twenty, and afterwards thirty, days to answer such protest, but no answer was made. |
