Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Montana Business Quarterly

Selections, dispositions, and acquisitions: a brief history of Montana's land grants.

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Introduction

Religion, politics, harvesting old growth timber, and selling public lands all have one thing in common--these topics all engender impassioned discussion and debate. Efforts to dispose of federal public lands under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have met with resounding opposition from individuals and interest groups who view the sale and subsequent privatization of public lands as a grave threat to the heritage of use and ownership of public lands by the American people. However, the current climate of opposition to the sale of public lands was not always so.

In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which allowed homesteaders to file for a quarter-section of free land (160 acres). The land was transferred to the settler if he lived there for five years, or the land could be purchased for $1.25 per acre after six months. More than 80 million acres of federal lands were transferred from the public domain and privatized before homesteading was officially ended in 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). FLPMA marked the official shift from disposition to retention of federal public lands. A similar story exists regarding the acquisition and disposition of state trust lands.

Nearly 100 million acres of federal public lands were granted from the federal government to the states for the purposes of supporting public education, universities, veterans, public buildings, etc. (Souder & Fairfax 1996). Many states, including Montana, set out early to dispose of land grant lands and to utilize those funds to create permanent investment funds that supported school funding by distributing interest earnings. The story of Montana's land grants, dispositions, and subsequent acquisitions has some similarities to that of the federal government, but also has resounding differences. In the late 1990s, discussions resurfaced among the Montana Board of Land Commissioners regarding the sale of state lands. An emerging interest in increasing public access and increasing trust revenue returns has re energized the state land sale program in Montana.

History of the State Trusts

While serving as governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Bill for General Diffusion of Knowledge, which stated, "... those persons whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition or circumstance." The U.S. Congress, following Thomas Jefferson's vision for a publicly-educated society, which was deemed necessary for a republican form of government, established the policy of granting land for the support of schools in new states with the General Land Ordinance of 1785 and more specifically with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The original thirteen colonies and the three subsequent states that were admitted to the Union were not given any land grants because no federal lands existed within their borders. Ohio was the first state to be admitted to the Union under the General Land Ordinance of 1785. In Ohio, section 16 in each township was granted directly to the township "... to the inhabitants of such township, for the use of schools" (Souder and Fairfax 1996:18).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The Enabling Act of 1889, under which Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana were admitted to the Union, states, "That upon admission of each of said states into the Union, sections numbered sixteen and thirty-six in ever}" township of said proposed...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!