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I have an easy to answer question, IMO?

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Nobody?

Not even the Judge, from Montana?

OT, what was the definition of "public lands", before the citizens of the US owned that land?

Kind of confusing, for a legal beagal, such as yourself.

How could "public lands" be appropriated, before they became "public lands"

:???:

Could you settle/own "public" land, before it became under US "public ownership". Could the state give it away, as "unappropriated" land? Did the states only promise such, so they could gain statehood, under the promise that ownership of such were transferred back to them, and the rightful owners, once statehood was gained? Was it Constitutional to appropriate, privately owned land?

Did the United States reneg?

Now, read what you posted again...slowly, OT. What could it mean, looking at it through 1800's eye's, without 2000's interpretation?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
The federal government has "owned" land for at least 200 years- going back at least to 1803 when Jefferson and Congress bought the Louisiana Purchase..

Not sure how far back it goes (may go back further) - but the first major grants of land to corporations by the Federal government that I'm aware of were to the railroads as payment for their building the tracks... This began in 1862... This is also the year Congress passed the Homestead Act which opened federal land to homesteading - and both were signed by Lincoln.. Besides homesteaders, the railroads also sold off land to many settlers... Often the lands closest to the tracks were the most valuable...

In Montana - prior to the coming of the railroads in the 1880's we did not have much activity or history besides that of western miners, and in my part of the country steamboat wood cutters, wolfers, buffalo hunters, and Indians... The cattle herds didn't start showing up in any number til the 1880's (remember Custer was still getting scalped in 1876- Sitting Bull went to Canada using the Pass which is only a few miles from Granddads homestead a few months later - and lived just a few miles north of the border at Wood Mountain until 1881)... The first Stockmans Assn. was formed in 1881... Many of those early herds were owned by English and European millionaires and just turned loose on the free government land... And its because of much of the overgrazing that came about because of not having ownership and the arrival of many more homesteaders with livestock that brought about the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934..
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
While we do not undertake to say that Congress has the unlimited power to legislate against nuisances within a State, which it would have within a Territory, we do not think the admission of a Territory as a State deprives it of the power of legislating for the protection of the public lands, though it may thereby involve the exercise of what is ordinarily known as the police power, so long as such power is directed solely to its own protection. A different rule would place the public domain of the United States completely at the mercy of state legislation.
 
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