Posted on 05/19/2014 6:10:41 AM PDT by rktman
I suspect it may come as a surprise to many people that the federal government owns just over a quarter of the nation’s landmass and, other than land set aside for military bases and naval ports that may seem excessive. It is.
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
The thing that has prevented the vast, vast majority of land in the west from moving into private hands isn’t the nefarious schemes of the government. It’s a simple lack of water. It underlies everything else. If you want to read a good book about the history and politics of water in the west, check out “Cadillac Desert.”
Policies in western states and elsewhere were identical for all the 19th century and about half the 20th. The goal was to sell off the land, but after a peak in 1910, homesteading dried up for the simple reason that all the good agricultural land had already been acquired.
Essentially all the public land in eastern and midwestern states was bought or homesteaded during this period.
The same did not apply in the western states where federal ownership remains high not because eeevil federal owners refused to sell the land, but simply because nobody wanted to buy it.
I sometimes wonder if those making this argument have actually spent any time on BLM lands. I’ve spent many months backpacking and camping on them (CO, UT, NV, WY, NM), and I can tell you straight out that there’s a damn good reason nobody bought those lands.
A very good chunk of them look, more than anything else, like an abandoned construction site. Piles of dirt with an occasional weed.
Other areas are spectacularly beautiful, where I spent most of my time for obvious reasons, but you can’t eat (or drink) beauty. People generally move to a location because they can make a living there, and it’s very difficult indeed to make a living on most BLM land.
Much of it is still for all practical purposes inaccessible, and completely dry, except for the occasional flash flood.
A lot of it requires 300 acres or more to raise a single cow/calf. So to have a herd of 500, you’d need something like 150,000 acres, 235 square miles.
How much would it cost to buy that much land, then fence and maintain it? How much would the property taxes on 150,000 acres be? Would a herd of 500 cattle pay for the labor, taxes and other expenses of owning the land?
I very much doubt it.
Things may have changed to some extent in recent years. A lot of this land may have frackable gas or oil below it. But then most of it probably doesn’t.
The geology of the West is much more complex than that of the Midwest. The West has few areas of huge, horizontal shale beds like those in TX and ND. Exploring for and getting oil/gas out of most of the West is going to be a LOT more expensive and risky than in the conveniently flat and well-roaded TX and ND.
The US sold off land in one section of OH through 1876.
They continued selling land through most of the 20th century, though at a much slower rate after WWII, through about 1975.
The primary, though not exclusive, reason land sales slowed down was because the desirable land had been bought.
But how does lack of water translate into federal vs. state control?
Isn't the state just as able to administer dry barren land as the federal government? Wouldn't the state be more motivated to manage its own barren land than asking an east-coast state to contribute taxpayer money for it?
-PJ
p.s. I still don't rule out "nefarious schemes" with today's liberals. Just see the secret VA waiting lists, secret arms deals with Central and South American druglords, secret arms deals with al Quada, secret shutdowns of opposition political speech, etc. for examples of nefarious schemes.
Buy it or lease/use it?
According to the Bundy's, many cattle ranchers wanted to use it, but were driven off by the federal government under the pretense of "saving" an animal that was already coexisting with the other animals on the land. Bundy himself was the last man standing.
And on the west coast, fisheries were being shut down for the same reason - the federal government claiming ownership of coastland. See the Drakes Bay Oyster Company.
What is the water excuse there?
-PJ
Don’t claim to approve of every land management made by the BLM and other agencies.
Merely pointing out the historical fact that the reason these lands didn’t sell is because there were no buyers. Not through the 1950s or so, anyway.
I agree many cattle ranchers have left the land in the West, but I’m not sure the number is tremendously greater than the percentage of farmers leaving the land in the Midwest or South.
In 1850 64% of the work force were farmers or ranchers. In 1900 38%. In 1950 12%. In 1980 4%. In 2010 <2%. The vast majority of these operating on privately owned land. Why did they leave?
All eight of my great-grandparents grew up on farms. Only two of my grandparents. Neither of my parents. Most Americans can tell a similar story. The history of America is a story of people leaving the land.
Yet the only reason ranchers left land in the West is because they were driven off by the feds. /s
Again, this is not to say I agree with all federal land management policies, only that when a decent sized herd of cattle requires 100 square miles to raise, you’re just not going to have a very dense population of ranchers.
I don’t see any reason why states can’t manage the public land in their borders.
But I also don’t see any particular reason to assume it would make an enormous difference for the ranchers and other rural people. The big issues in the West have arisen because environmentalists have gotten more and more power, most of them urban.
Nevada is 87% urban, Utah 88%, Arizona 88%, Colorado 82%, New Mexico 73%, Wyoming 65% and Montana 53%.
Rural people in those states don’t exactly dominate the electorate. So why should we expect the states to be tremendously more sensitive to the needs of rural people that the federal government?
It translates because it explains why no one ever wanted this land. It was all available to be homesteaded for 100 years. No one took it because it has no water.
Wouldn't the state be more motivated to manage its own barren land than asking an east-coast state to contribute taxpayer money for it?
You're asking if a state would rather add a huge expense to its budget or let someone else pay for it.
I still don't rule out "nefarious schemes" with today's liberals
I'm sure you don't, but you're laying out a conspiracy that goes back to the Civil War to keep the western states down.
Please don't take my questions as intention to interrogate YOU on the matter. I'm merely leveraging your posts to ask larger questions.
And it is true that I am framing these questions from the assumption that the federal government is up to no good in the matter, and not from the expectation that they are honest brokers in being good stewards of the land in the absence of others stepping up.
-PJ
“Better yet sell the land to the states and let them take the chance on whether it’s worthless or not.”
Aye, there’s the rub. Who determines the selling price?
Correction, no one wanted small homestead parcels, no way to make that work in the desert. If sold in large blocks ranchers would buy it, they are using it now for grazing when possible. I think the land should go to the states, and be sold to ranchers. Instead of paying to use their grazing rights ranchers could be making payments on the land.
As far as I know the only way it was ever offered was under the homestead act. Homestead size parcels are worthless in most of the West, no way to make a living and the land that is close enough to any town was homesteaded. If offered in large blocks to ranchers that now pay to use their grazing rights I would imagine it would sell.
The feds didn't offer a lease renewal for a commercial operation on National Seashore land. Is every commercial operation in the National Park system grandfathered in forever now?
See the Desert Lands Act of 1877. 640 acres for .25/acre.
Still a very small piece of land to make a living on in the West. But 4x the size of a homestead.
Many claimed their 640 acres in long narrow strips along streams, thus tying up a much larger area of land.
-PJ
I wasn’t aware the sizes were larger than normal homestead size, still not enough for grazing enough cattle to make a living. Ranchers are about the only people that would have need for that land, but some could likely be sold for other things too I guess. It is not worthless land now, it would depend on the price.
Clause 2 doesn’t indicate the origin of the title of the land, so that’s a meaningless argument to say that the fed gov can do whatever it wants to land which resides in a State that it thinks it owns when it doesn’t have proper title to it.
However, Section 8 requires that the State or a private individual has to own the land before the fed gov can purchase it. It clearly states how the fed gov can acquire land from a State or private individual.
Yeah, so the clause I quoted indicates that the fed gov must acquire the land from a State or individual first before using this power.
‘I fail to see how you can claim a practice that has been apparently been ongoing since the Founding is now suddenly a violation of the Constitution.’
We have many examples of that.
A few months ago, the BLM held an auction for land outside of Vegas. Most of it sold, but the largest parcel, 250 acres, didn't have a single bidder at the minimum. link
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