Also see the Louisiana Purchase and the purchase of Alaska.
This kind of brings up a question I have: How does the federal government own land? Unless the fed pays a state for real property, or it’s not owned privately, all land should belong to the state in which it is inside the borders of. You know - states right, that kind of thing.
“states rights” . . ..
The Feds own land that military bases are on.
I don’t know who the owners of all the AIRPORTS are- but that might be a multitude of owners.
But- the AIR CONTROLLERS at those airports are Fed employees, I think.
The short answer is that the land belonged to the federal government first, since they acquired the territory. When states were formed out of US Territories, ownership of empty lands remained with the federal government. The states didn’t automatically get land owned by the federal government simply by forming states.
The federal government then either sold or homesteaded out most of it, the rest was kept in federal possession. In fact much of the upper Midwest is still to my knowledge owned by the federal government to this day and is just leased to the individuals who live on it.
Here is a link to a map of all federally owned land.
http://www.esf.edu/es/felleman/Gov%20Land%20Map.jpg.jpe
According to one source I just looked up. “The Federal Government owns nearly 650 million acres of land - almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States”
Also see the Louisiana Purchase and the purchase of Alaska.
I have a problem with those of us in the lower 48 paying Oil Taxes to Alaska, The Federal Government bought the land with the Federal Taxpayers money. Any land given to the state of Alaska should have had restrictions on how we could be taxed over and over.
Its like we give someone a gift and they turn around and tax us for it!