Federal Lands

Several years ago, I worked under a contract with the Park Service on the issue of treaty rights of American Indians to enter and use public lands. In the course of my research, I learned some interesting things about the history of public lands in the US and the colonies. In the first instance, there has always been a divide between the New England model where the authorities held title to land and distributed it and the Southern model in which homestead rights might be acknowledged. In any case, much of the tidewater and piedmont real estate in the Southern colonies was owned by a few wealthy families such as the Granvilles of North Carolina and Lord Fairfax and George Washington and their ilk in Virginia. Most of my ancestors were left to homestead less productive and more dangerous mountainous land, and even then they ran the risk that some tidewater aristocrat had surveyed it and already held legal title to it.

After Independence, the states ceded their claims to western lands to the United States which held title. The US wasn’t giving away land in those days, and land sales represented the second largest source of revenue for the federal government after tariffs. Land sold for $2 an acre but could only be bought in large tracts of at least a square mile. This meant that the land was picked up mainly by speculators and that settlement by folks who would occupy and work the land was significantly retarded. Homesteaders on public lands were routinely rounded up by the Army and their improvements destroyed.

The public land holdings also permitted the US to engage in massive public works projects through a Constitutional back door. It was believed in those days that the US had no authority to engage directly in public works, but the US could and did grant public lands to states and institutions and companies for educational institutions, roads, canals and the like. The railroad companies were beneficiaries of a massive giveaway of public land far beyond the rights needed for rail rights of way.

In 1863, the Homestead Act provided for settlers to obtain title to public land that they occupied and worked under certain conditions. This continued for a hundred years and permitted many families to get title to land that they worked and occupied. It is no longer permissible to homestead, and vast tracts of land are held by the US for the benefit of ranchers, loggers, mining interests and the like. These are administered by a congeries of agencies: National Park Service (Interior), Forest Service (Agriculture), Corps of Engineers (DoD), Bureau of Land Management, etc.

My home state of Georgia engaged in a land giveaway scheme to encourage white settlement in the Cherokee and Creek lands in the first half of the 19th Century. Each time the Indians were divested of a large tract, the state held a land lottery and granted parcels to fortunate drawers. Some of my ancestors acquired land by this process, and I suppose that their title was morally defective, being predicated on the theft of the land from the Indians. It is strange to think that Northwest Georgia where I grew up was the “frontier” as late as 1840.

Even now we are left with huge tracts of federal land, the use and management of which are politically determined and directed by central planning rather than market forces. Ranchers who graze stock on federal land pay less than a quarter of what is paid for private grazing rights, and the availability of subsidized public grazing distorts private pricing downward. Federal timber sales come at a loss of some $1 billion a year and distort prices for privately held timber. The patent and claim mineral extraction system is another giveaway of government assets to private interests. Of course, we can also consider much of the public land system and policy as a massive subsidy for outdoor sports enthusiasts.

Should users of public lands pay market rates for the privilege of using resources? Shouldn’t we expect the public lands subject to commercial exploitation to support themselves rather than being a drain on the Treasury? Or should users be considered homesteaders and granted appropriate titles and left with responsibility for further management and stewardship?