Land Policy, Federal

Land Policy, Federal. In a country where private property is a sacred ideal, the federal government has, ironically, always been the nation's largest landowner. Following the lead of European imperialism, the United States through purchase, negotiation, treaty, and war acquired a vast territory from France, Spain, England, Mexico, Russia, and Native Americans. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase doubled the territory of the United States and opened a vast frontier for agriculture. Most of the 2.3 billion acres comprising today's nation were at one point under federal ownership, and even now some one‐third of the country—740 million acres—remains in federal possession.

A policy of disposal went hand in hand with acquisition. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established a system for creating new states out of the public domain as the population moved westward. The largest group of federal‐land recipients were the states, but railroads, war veterans, and rich entrepreneurs also received large acreages. Beginning in the 1840s, as citizens without capital agitated for free land in the form of agricultural homesteads, the federal government disposed of 288 million acres, free or at low cost, to homesteaders. Both the program's scope and its purpose, to create a West of small rural property owners, were unprecedented; even today it remains unique among developing countries. The Homestead Act of 1862 authorized any citizen or intended citizen to select 160 acres of surveyed but unclaimed lands and, after five years' residence, to gain title. But homestead grants comprised only one‐fourth of all the land disposed of by the federal government, and the government made little effort to ensure that homesteaders would be able to stay on their holdings.

Beginning with Yellowstone National Park in 1872 and the Forest Reserve Act in 1891, the government set aside public lands in perpetuity. President Theodore Roosevelt vastly accelerated that policy, creating a national forest system that by the end of the twentieth century covered nearly two hundred million acres. While all of these reservations were made in the name of conserving natural resources, the government continued its policy of disposal, giving away or selling land well beyond the “closing of the frontier” supposedly documented in the census of 1890. But withdrawals for conservation did mark a significant change in federal policy, whether saving spectacular natural scenery or safeguarding economic resources. The plunder of the Great Lakes forests by timber companies in the later nineteenth century convinced many that government must retain some of its lands in the interest of future generations. Livestock grazers on the western public domain posed another threat; they appropriated pasture without permission, paying no fees and putting up illegal fences, until checked in 1934 by the Taylor Grazing Act, again in the name of conservation. Grazers on federal land were now organized into districts, supervised by federal agents, and required to pay fees and follow rules. Homesteading officially ended. The General Land Office, long the chief agency for land disposal, disappeared in 1946, and a new Bureau of Land Management took its place alongside the Forest Service, the Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service as managers of the federal estate.

As the twentieth century wore on, federal land policy became more contested. The nation turned increasingly to the public lands for minerals, fiber, and food, as well as recreation, solitude, and ecological understanding. As private timberlands reached their maximum output, timber companies turned to the national forests to supply the market demand. After decades of relative quiet, the national forests were opened up to logging trucks, chain saws, clear‐cutting, and herbicide spraying. In the mid‐1950s, land‐management officials nearly quadrupled the “allowable cut” in several federal forests and, despite an official policy of “multiple‐use,” they retained that level until, by the 1980s, it could no longer be sustained. Similarly, the federal lands were expected to produce more beef, oil, coal, and uranium, as well as to pack more tourists into their parks and wildlife refuges, all enhancing local economies. Western states, meanwhile, where federal lands often amounted to over 50 percent of the territory, began to demand that these lands be turned over to them or sold to private developers. The “Sagebrush Rebellion” of the early 1980s, centered in Nevada and Utah, did not succeed in getting any such transfers, but the anger directed against federal agencies remained.

The environmental movement, gathering force after 1960, insisted on maintaining or even extending public ownership in some form, but it was often bitterly critical of federal stewardship. Stung by these criticisms, federal agencies proclaimed a new policy of “ecosystem management,” though how they would balance ecology and economics remained unclear. The federal lands are probably here to stay, but how and by whom they are used remains an abiding national issue.
See also Conservation Movement; Environmentalism; Expansionism; Federalism; Forests and Forestry; Livestock Industry; Lumbering; National Park System; States' Rights.

Bibliography

Paul W. Gates , History of Public Land Law Development, 1968.
Malcolm J. Rohrbough , The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837, 1968.
R. McGregor Cawley , Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics, 1993.
Paul Hirt , A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests since World War Two, 1994.
Paul W. Gates , The Jeffersonian Dream: Studies in the History of American Land Policy and Development, eds. Allan G. Bogue and Margaret B. Bogue, 1996.

Donald Worster