USA > California > Land in California, the story of mission land, ranches, squatters, mining claims, railroad grants, land scrip, homesteads > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19
8 W. W. Robinson, The Forest and The People: The Story of the Angeles National Forest (Los Angeles, 1946).
174
Land in California
reservation and the limits thereof." Accordingly, the De- partment of the Interior appointed B. F. Allen special agent to investigate timbered lands and watersheds on the Pacific Coast, with a view to their reservation.
Today California has eighteen national forests and within their boundaries is one-fifth of the state's area. They are administered by the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture.
As we have already seen, prospecting, under established regulations, and later, restricted homesteading, were per- mitted in these forest areas. Other legislation provided for "forest lieu selections." That is to say, if a tract covered by an unperfected bona fide claim or by a patent were in- cluded within the limits of a public forest reservation, the settler or owner could, if he wished, relinquish his tract to the government and "select in lieu thereof" a tract of vacant land open to settlement and not greater in area.
Part of the public domain or of later federally acquired areas is also in national parks-like Yosemite-and na- tional monuments created to preserve scenery, natural and historic objects, and wild life.
The settlement of California, since it became a part of the United States, was begun by pioneers even before the Land Commission could begin the job of segregating pri- vately held land from land that was public domain. It was speeded by the final settlement of land titles and by grants out of the public domain to railroads, to the state itself, and directly to the men and women who laid out the towns and developed the land. It was featured by heroic pio- neering effort, as well as by exploitation on the part of railroad, timbering, and cattle interests and by the wide- spread waste of public resources. The "free land" days ended in 1935, with a conservation program now govern-
175
Land for Settlers
ing what is left of the public domain and providing that public lands may be disposed of only after appropriate classification. Instead of a General Land Office we now have, fittingly, the Bureau of Land Management. This program developed out of the passage by Congress of the Taylor Grazing Act of June 28, 1934, and the subsequent issuance of executive orders by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on November 26, 1934, and February 5, 1935, withdrawing from private entry the entire 165,695,000 acres remaining in the nation's public domain." The act had provided for the segregation of 80,000,000 acres-this figure was later increased to 142,000,000 acres-of the public grasslands to be organized into districts under the control of the Secretary of the Interior, with broad powers being given for the issuance of grazing permits, for soil- erosion control, and for the distribution of unneeded land. Though an era has ended, with only 16,062,192 acres of vacant public land remaining in California on June 30, 1945, the settlement of the state, town and country, still goes on, with the onrush of people to the Pacific Coast unabated. Today most of the early-day ran- chos or other large land holdings have become fifty-foot lots, one-acre "estates," or small ranches-or they are in the process of becoming so. Some parts of the state, it is true, are remote from population centers and have been less affected by the pressure of population. In still other parts development of large-scale, "industrialized" farm- ing has caused small holdings to become large. In recent years, then, California has had the smallest and some of the largest individually owned land areas in its history, but the over-all tendency seems in the direction of con- stant reduction and subdivision.
4 Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage (Princeton, 1942).
-
CHAPTER XIII
Land Scrip
WHEN THOMAS B. VALENTINE, founder of a pioneer San Francisco printing establishment, arrived in the Golden State from New York in 1851, he did not head for the mines. Instead, he turned his hand to the real estate busi- ness, did very well, and among other purchases acquired title to the unconfirmed Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio in Sonoma County.
This purchase led ultimately to the issuance to him, by the General Land Office, of certain certificates of loca- tion-or "scrip"-which became known as Valentine scrip. Each certificate was assignable and entitled its owner, without homesteading obligations, to select forty acres in the public lands of the United States, provided the selec- tion was made in an unoccupied, unappropriated, non- mineral area.
Since various kinds of land scrip have been issued by the United States-scrip being a piece of paper entitling the person to whom it is issued to a select amount of land
[ 17 ]
178
Land in California
in the public domain-and since several have played a part in the settlement of California, the Valentine inci- dent is told here.
The three-square-league rancho bought by Thomas B. Valentine was situated on or near the site of present- day Petaluma. Originally it had been granted October 8, 1844, by Mexican governor Manuel Micheltorena to Juan Miranda, who took possession and made it his home.
When the United States Land Commission, set up in the 'fifties, passed upon the validity of private land claims originating in the Mexican and Spanish periods, the claim to Rancho Arroyo de San Antonio was among the claims rejected. Juan Miranda had a son-in-law named Ortega. Ortega's successors in interest had put in a claim before the commission that was adverse to Valentine's. Valentine withdrew, intending later to intervene in the district court, but a Supreme Court decision precluded him from asserting title by intervention. When the Ortega claim was rejected, the rancho automatically became a part of the public lands, to be disposed of as such, with the pro- ceeds going into the Treasury.
Years went by, but energetic Valentine did not admit he was beaten. Able to prove his point, he took the matter to Congress which, on April 5, 1872, passed the Act for the Relief of Thomas B. Valentine.
The Ninth Circuit Court was authorized and required to hear the story and pass upon its merits. On January 6, 1873, this court upheld the Valentine contentions and a year later its decree was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Under the provisions of the act of Congress, Valentine deeded to the United States all his rights to the particular rancho (his deed being recorded January 22, 1874, in
179
Land Scrip
Sonoma County) and in return received from the General Land Office certificates of location, or scrip, entitling him to select other acreage from surveyed or unsurveyed pub- lic land equal in area to that of the rejected rancho- 13,316 acres.
These certificates-Valentine scrip-made Thomas B. Valentine famous. What he did not use himself, he sold. Speculators got some, hiking the price, to peddle along with other types of scrip. In time Valentine scrip became too high-priced to be used on admittedly public lands, and scrip owners had to look for forgotten islands- "sleepers"-areas overlooked by government surveyors and with questionably held titles. During Florida's land boom scrip brought as much as $1,000 an acre and was used to acquire islands and keys along the coast.
An interesting and successful use of Valentine scrip in southern California in recent years took place when Frew Morton in 1929 acquired White Rock Island, off Catalina. This island is 50,000 square feet of rocky, marine plateau that early-day government surveyors overlooked when they surveyed the island of Catalina, itself a Mexican rancho. Morton, the holder of a piece of Valentine scrip represented by Certificate of Location E No. 173, sur- rendered it to a reluctant registrar at the Land Office in Los Angeles. In time he received a patent from the United States for 1.30 acres of land described as "Lot 1 of Section 30, Township 8 South, Range 15 West," which being freely interpreted means the guano-covered island that seagulls laid undisputed claim to long before any man, red or white, appeared on the near-by Isthmus of Catalina. Morton, or those he represented, is said to have paid $138, plus expenses, for White Rock Island.
Other types of land scrip-some assignable like the
180
Land in California
Valentine, some not assignable-have been used or at- tempts have been made to use them in California.
Gerard scrip, for example, was issued under act of Congress, approved February 10, 1855, to the three child- ren of Joseph Gerard, "a messenger of the United States to the Indians," who was killed in 1792. This scrip was in payment for his patriotic services and "in accordance with the spirit of the inducements authorized by President Washington to be held out to such persons as would con- sent to carry a message from Fort Washington, now Cin- cinnati, in seventeen hundred and ninety two to the hostile Indians of the then North West Territory."
The scrip entitled each of the three recipients-Reese A. P. Gerard, William Gerard, and Rachel Blue (formerly Rachel Gerard)-to enter one section of the public lands without payment. This privilege extended also to their heirs. William Gerard's original certificate was canceled and, in lieu thereof, the General Land Office issued him sixteen certificates on October 18, 1880, each good for one-sixteenth of a section or forty acres. Gerard scrip has made its appearance in California as late as 1947, with attempted use of it in connection with areas below tide- water, following the Supreme Court's ruling of June 23, 1947, and the possible implication that they were part of the public domain.
Sioux half-breed scrip is not unknown in California, its issuance having been authorized by Congress July 17, 1854. The relinquishment to the United States by the "halfbreeds or mixed bloods" of the Sioux Indians of their interest in a certain tract in Minnesota that had been set apart for their use in 1830 entitled these individuals to scrip for the same amount of land-not more than 640 acres, and not less than 40 acres each-to which they, indi-
181
Land Scrip
vidually, would be entitled in the event of a division of the reservation prorata among claimants. The certificates could not be assigned but could be used on unoccupied lands within the reservation or "upon any other unoccu- pied lands subject to preëmption or private sale, or upon any other unsurveyed lands, not reserved by the Govern- ment, upon which they have respectively made improve- ments."
Porterfield scrip, authorized April 11, 1860, has had California use or attempted use. Acting under a Con- gressional "relief" act, the Secretary of the Interior issued to William Kinney and Thomas J. Michie, executors of the last will and testament of Robert Porterfield, de- ceased, a number of warrants, equal to 6,133 acres of land, in quantities not less than forty acres. These could be located by them on unappropriated public lands where the minimum price did not exceed $1.25 per acre, and in accordance with directions in the will of the deceased.
The various types of scrip named so far have been more spectacular than important. They are typical of the scrip Congress had been issuing since 1806 to indemnify indi- viduals whose land claims had been unsatisfied by reason of conflict with other claims, nonlocation, or reduction by deficient surveys. More important in the settlement of California lands that were part of the public domain were military bounty warrants-which were really in the nature of scrip-and agricultural college land scrip.
The giving of land bounties as compensation for mili- tary services dates from the colonial period, when Vir- ginia gave one hundred acres in 1646 to the commander at Middle Plantation. Soon afterward came a plan to promote frontier settlements by land gifts to soldiers. During the Revolutionary War the gift of unoccupied
182
Land in California
land was first an inducement to desertion from the Brit- ish army and later of enlistment in the Continental army. It was a way of building an army and of paying soldiers. Land bounties were offered in the War of 1812, in the Black Hawk Indian War-Abraham Lincoln was one soldier who was issued a bounty land warrant for his serv- ices-and again in the Mexican War. Liberalization, be- ginning in 1850, made bounty lands available to men of every rank and branch and for service in wars from 1790 to and including the Mexican War. They were given as a reward for services long past.
On March 22, 1852, all warrants for military bounty lands were made assignable-in recognition of the fact that most soldiers had no desire to be frontiersmen-and their principal use in California began from that date. These warrants empowered the holder to "locate" 160 acres upon any lands of the United States open to private entry and provided the means of purchase, for they were receivable by the government in lieu of cash at $1.25 an acre. If the minimum was greater than $1.25 per acre, the locator could pay the United States the difference.
The assignable warrant brought the speculator to the fore. In 1852 Mexican War land warrants, according to Benjamin Horace Hibbard, were selling at $110 to $115, whereas, on the basis of $1.25 an acre, they would have been worth $200. In 1857 New York City brokers were quoting them as low as 60 cents per acre. The broker's handling fee was 10 cents per acre. The Commissioner of the General Land Office reported that not one in five hundred land warrants was located by a soldier. They were used, instead, by nonsoldiers for speculation in the public lands of California and elsewhere. Scrip practically passed as currency in California and is said to have been
183
Land Scrip
widely bought by Henry Miller of Miller and Lux fame to extend his land empire in the San Joaquin Valley. Mili- tary bounty warrants helped put public land in private hands, helped settle California, helped put a little money in discharged soldiers' pockets and more money in those of claim agents, brokers, and speculators. After 1862, how- ever, when the Homestead Act became law, these war- rants had to compete with free land and were no longer issued.
To enable states and territories to establish colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts, Con- gress on July 2, 1862, enlarged its earlier land grants and at the same time provided that states without public land should receive an equivalent amount of land scrip to be sold and the money used for the purposes of the act. Scrip so sold could be used by its assignees for unappropriated public lands in other states.
Under this procedure California, of course, received no agricultural college land scrip, but its holders acquired title (by 1903) to 1,397,760 acres of California public lands.
Both military bounty warrants and agricultural college land scrip could be used, and were used, like cash in the payment of preëmption claims.
CHAPTER XIV
The State as Owner
CALIFORNIANS went to the polls on November 13, 1849, to ratify the constitution that had just been drafted by the convention at Monterey. Though they had to plod through the rain, nearly everyone went out to vote. They gave the constitution almost unanimous approval.
The delegates to this first convention had been think- ing of the schools and universities that the new state would be needing and of how these needs could be met. Article IX, of the ratified constitution, which dealt with education, showed they were not overlooking the public- land gifts that might come from the United States for the support of schools, and that they were well aware of the 500,000 acres to which each new state automatically was entitled. The proceeds of such lands, the article provided- and still provides-were to be used for the support of common schools throughout the state. And, should there be a reservation or grant of other land by the United States for a university, then the funds from the rental or
[185]
186
Land in California
sale of such land-the 1849 constitution said-should re- main a fund for the support of a university and its branches.
The delegates had wisdom and foresight. The United States did make several large grants of land out of the public domain to the State of California in the cause of education.
In addition, the state became the owner, by federal grant, of the "swamp and overflowed" lands in California, the proceeds of which were to be used for reclamation.
Besides these specifically granted lands, there is at least the qualified ownership which California has or had in lands under navigable streams or lakes or harbors or those between ordinary high tide and ordinary low tide, as well as the lands the state acquired and continues to acquire through purchase, condemnation, gift or other method of acquisition.
Much of the public land obtained by grant from the United States went quickly into private ownership-and probably too quickly-through sales conducted by the state. While the causes of education and reclamation were being furthered, thousands of owners of state-sold real estate were helping to settle and develop California.
In an act of Congress approved September 4, 1841, grants of 500,000 acres were made, in the interests of internal improvements, to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Ala- bama, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Michigan. This act also provided that each new state, upon admission, would be accorded the same privileges as the states specifically named in the act. State legislatures were given the right of selection of these public lands so granted by the United States, but not until the land had been surveyed. They were to be located in parcels con-
187
The State as Owner
forming to sectional divisions and subdivisions of not less than 320 acres in any one location, on any public land not reserved from sale. Thus when California was admitted to the Union it participated at once in the half million acres of public lands of which the constitution framers had been so well aware.
A few years later, on March 3, 1853, California received other and more important grants of public land from the United States to further the state's educational program. These included the grant of two sections-the sixteenth and the thirty-sixth-in each township "for the purposes of public schools"; another grant of 72 sections for the use of "a seminary of learning"; together with ten sections for "public buildings." Each section was, of course, 640 acres.
Nine years later, on July 2, 1862, another grant pro- vided "colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts." Not only California but all the states were recipients of this federal generosity. Since the amount of land to be apportioned each state was 30,000 acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the state was entitled under the census of 1860, California was allowed 150,000 acres of nonmineral land.
The most important of these grants was that of the two "school sections" in each township, which was to total five and a half million acres. In this connection, California in 1866 was permitted to select other lands in the public domain of equal acreage whenever the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections "were settled upon prior to survey, reserved for public uses, covered by grants made under Spanish or Mexican authority, or by other private claims, or where such sections would be so covered if the lines of the public surveys were extended over such lands." Lands
188
Land in California
selected by the state under this provision are called "lieu lands."
These land grants by the United States had antecedents in America's colonial period and became the basis of Cali- fornia's educational development. The legislature of the state provided the machinery. It adopted uniform methods of selecting the specific lands from the public domain-where selection was required-and uniform methods of sale. It provided for the use of the funds re- sulting from sales, though limited by restrictions of the grants. On March 31, 1866, the legislature established an agricultural, mining, and mechanics arts college. On March 23, 1868, the University of California was created and organized, and the board of directors of the college was directed to transfer its property to The Regents of the University of California. The college was to retain for its benefit the funds from the sale of the "seventy-two sections" and the "ten sections" and was given power to select and dispose of the "150,000 acres" in the interests of the college. The land agent of the University, as the agent of the state, was given the duty of actual selection, under board instructions.
The donation to the University of the earlier College of California, which had been founded in Oakland, and the selection of a site of two hundred acres at Berkeley- which it took possession of on July 6, 1873-gave it a good start. Appropriations from the state and gifts from indi- viduals have added and continue to add to what was made possible by land grants from the United States. Today the University of California has eight campuses: Berkeley, Davis, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Mt. Hamilton, Riverside, San Francisco, Santa Barbara-and forty thousand stu- dents.
189
The State as Owner
As provided in the present constitution of California, which follows the lines laid down by the revised constitu- tion of 1879, the University of California is declared to constitute "a public trust, to be administered by the ex- isting corporation known as 'The Regents of the Uni- versity of California,' with full powers of organization and government, subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure compliance with the terms of the endowments of the university and the security of its funds." In this corporation is vested the legal title and the management and disposition of the property of the University. Article IX goes on to provide that "all moneys derived from the sale of public lands donated to this State by act of Congress approved July 2, 1862 (and the several acts amendatory thereof), shall be invested as provided by said acts of Congress and the income from said moneys shall be inviolably appropriated to the endowment, sup- port and maintenance of at least one college of agri- culture, where the leading objects shall be (without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and includ- ing military tactics) to teach such branches of learning as are related to scientific and practical agriculture and me- chanic arts, in accordance with the requirements and conditions of said acts of Congress."
Before California could make specific selections out of the "500,000 acre grant," the "150,000 acre grant," the "72 sections grant" and the "10 sections grant," the pub- lic lands had to be surveyed, so that particular lands could be described. Lists of selected lands were then filed with the local land office. After being checked they were sent to the Commissioner of the General Land Office for his approval and the certification to the state by the Secre- tary of the Interior. Approved lists would then be sent
190
Land in California
back to the state authorities. The certified listing acted as a transfer of title to the state-and without patents being issued-effective when the selections were made and reported to the local land office. The state was then in a position to issue its own patents to purchasers of listed lands. It was the practice of the state to make a selection after it had received an application to purchase.
California thus reduced its "500,000 acre grant"' to pri- vate ownership at so fast a rate that by June 30, 1880, the acreage selected amounted to 487,709 acres. The other grants were reduced in swift fashion, too.
As for the grant to California for public school pur- poses of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth section in each township-the largest grant-the title to the lands already surveyed passed to the state on the date of the Congres- sional Act-March 3, 1853. As for the unsurveyed lands, the title passed when the survey was approved by the United States Surveyor General. No patents were issued by the United States nor any certified listings.
In the grant of these "school sections" there was no specific exception of mineral lands, but the United States Supreme Court ruled that the intention was to convey agricultural lands and that lands then known to be min- eral did not pass to the state.1 Hence the title that the state got in a particular section was the complete title or no title at all. If the lands were not then known to contain minerals in sufficient quantity to justify the expenditure of funds for their extraction, the state got full title. Any later discovery of minerals did not affect the state's title. On January 25, 1927, however, Congress granted to the states the mineral school sections not then in controversy, with the restriction, among other restrictions, that the
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.