CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLIC LANDS" 



By GEORGE OTIS SMITH, Director U, S. Geological Survey 



THE necessity for classifying the 

 public land is not a recent dis- 

 covery. The earliest land legisla- 

 tion in this country both contemplated 

 differences in the quality and character 

 of the public land and planned that the 

 officers charged with their sale should 

 be furnished with descriptions based on 

 field examination. From 1796 down to 

 the present day, whatever the policy that 

 has prompted legislation with reference 

 to public land, whether the purpose was 

 to procure revenue, or to promote home 

 building, or to benefit influential citi- 

 zens, most of these laws recognize 

 classes of land and presuppose classifi- 

 cation. Yet even the honest administra- 

 tion of the land laws has ever been sub- 

 ject to criticism arising from the fact 

 that no adequate provision was made 

 for land classification. 



A period of national awakening to 

 the worth of the public domain appears 

 to have followed the close of the civil 

 war, and in the late seventies Congress 

 gave serious consideration to the prob- 

 lem of making better provision for 

 effective administrj^tion of this great 

 estate with its latent possibilities for 

 national growth. We have just entered 

 upon another epoch of realization by the 

 Nation of the true source of its wealth 

 and prosperity, and both the legislative 

 and the executive branches of the Fed- 

 eral Government are awake to the fact 

 that exact knowledge is essential to the 

 proper utilization of our country's great 

 resource of land. The earlier propa- 

 ganda bore fruit in the creation of a 

 scientific bureau, first among whose 

 functions was the classification of the 

 public land. But, unfortunately, this 

 specific duty laid upon the new Fed- 



eral bureau was subordinated to the 

 more general though hardly less im- 

 portant task of determining the natural 

 resources of the public domain and the 

 opportunity for a scientific classifica- 

 tion of the land before the larger part 

 of the more valuable areas had passed 

 into private ownership was lost. In the 

 present period of aroused public opinion 

 the land classification which leads to 

 better use, and the field knowledge on 

 which intelligent administration must 

 be based, have come to be regarded as 

 vital factors in the public-land policy. 



The Secretary of the Interior may 

 be considered to be a trustee charged 

 with the disposition of the public land, 

 and within his department the functions 

 of administration are divided among 

 three bureaus : to the General Land 

 Office belong the subdivisional surveys, 

 the sales and the issuance of patents ; 

 to the Geological Survey has been en- 

 trusted the investigation of the resources 

 of the public domain, with the determi- 

 nation of the character of the public 

 lands, and the valuation of those whose 

 price is not specifically fixed by law ; 

 and upon the Reclamation Service has 

 been laid the vitally important task of 

 insuring the full utilization of arid lands 

 by the construction of engineering 

 works. 



The duty of classifying the unentered 

 public lands is now definitely accepted 

 by the Geological Survey, and the op- 

 portunity neglected in 1879 has for sev- 

 eral years been vigorously improved. 

 The Department of the Interior fully 

 recognizes that the land laws have not 

 been and never can be efficiently admin- 

 istered in the absence of a detailed and 

 authoritative classification of the land. 



*Delivered before the National Irrigation Congress, Spokane, Wash., on August 10, 1909. 

 4 619 



