Page:Looters of the Public Domain.djvu/423

Chapter XXVII

Great rush of Eastern timber speculators with a horde of dummy entrymen into the virgin forests of Northern California impels the State Mining Bureau to scud a special agent to the affected districts for the purpose of investigating numerous complaints relative to encroachments on unpatented mining claims by the greedy grabbers—His report to State Mineralogist Aubury has the effect of drawing the President's attention to the situation, with the result that an Executive proclamation is issued, making provisional suspension of a vast territory for forest reserve purposes, and calling a halt on further depredations—It also encompasses the loss of several official heads in the Land Department, and likewise reveals a cunning scheme to grab 265,000. acres of valuable timber land by process of placer mining locations, in order to blaze the zuay for the coming of the Western Pacific railroad.

WHILE to Ethan Allen Hitchcock, late Secretary of the Interior, unquestionably belongs the distinction of having inaugurated the crusade that has resulted in the complete subjugation of the plunderers of the public domain, it was Lewis E. Aubury, the State Mineralogist of California, who was among the first to call public attention to the gigantic depredations. And it is one of the ironies of fate that the overpowering avarice of these looters was responsible for their own untimely downfall. It was the fuse that ignited the chain of mines whose explosion has destroyed the strongholds of fraud.

Not content with grabbing all the vacant timber lands of Northern California that they could lay their hands on, with that reckless abandon creditable to a buccaneer of old, they overstepped the bounds of discretion, and seized upon the holdings of many poor old miners who had been in peaceful possession of their claims for a quarter of a century or more, and who felt secure in their property rights by reason of having complied with the laws in relation to assessment work upon their mineral entries, even though their claims were not patented.

It may be asked how it was legally possible for a person to be deprived of his property, or even assailed in his rights, after having worked a mining claim in good faith for upwards of 25 years, and it is this phase of the situation that I shall take the liberty of explaining. Under the present system, whenever a township is surveyed by the Government, it is supposed to be segregated in accordance with its well-known characteristics. For instance, if some portions were known to be mineral in character, they were returned as such, and title thereto could only be obtained through the mining laws of the United States, unless the mineral character of the land should be subsequently disproved in the course of an official investigation. Other parts of the township were returned as agricultural in character, title thereto being acquired under the homestead laws, while still other tracts might have been subject to overflow at the time the State was admitted into the Union, in consequence of which they were declared to be swamp and overflow lands, and subject to sale by the State by virtue of its sovereignty. In like manner the 16th and 36th sections of each township are returned as school lands, the proceeds of their sale going towards the maintenance of the public school funds of the State wherein the lands are situated. In fact, all the lands in the newly-surveyed townships are classified, and become subject to sale upon the basis of whatever return is made by the United States Surveyor-General for the district.

Practically all the public land surveys are made under contract, and by men who are generally unfamiliar with geological conditions. Thus, unless a tract isPage 417