“Well, that and the fact that those Western states didn’t want the land when they became states.”
And just how do you know that to be the case? And moving ahead 100 years or more, if that were to have ever been the case, it isn’t now. My wife is from Nevada, and I can tell you that Nevadans are pissed off to no end about the Federal Government’s “ownership” of nearly 90% of their state.
I'll rephrase it a little.
No one wanted to settle most of these lands because they weren't productive. The US was actively encouraging people to homestead or otherwise claim the land.
No one did.
More importantly, for the most part the states didn't have the resources to administer such vast, uninhabited territory and were happy to have the Federal government do so.
Even now, the states would be hard pressed to come up with the revenue to administer much of this land.