152 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



land still owned by the railroads. This is the remainder of the 

 land given to them by the federal government and state gov 

 ernments to help pay for the costs of construction. The states 

 themselves also own range land. They have acquired this land 

 either from the federal government or from private owners 

 who have been unable to pay the taxes on land taken as a home' 

 stead or purchased. 



The Department of Interior land is usually low land. This 

 means that in summer the land is not serviceable for gracing. 

 Western grass in the warm range country goes through a rest 

 period during the hot months. As range, this land is best during 

 winter and spring and is called winter range. The Forest 

 Service land, on the other hand, is high, in or near the forests 

 which grow on the mountain slopes. This range is best in late 

 spring, summer, and early fall. This is the summer range. 



The stockmen drive their animals from winter to summer 

 ranges as the seasons progress and use land of their own to 

 grow feed for winter feeding or fill in the gaps between periods 

 when the grass is unfit on government areas. 



The important thing is that the stockmen cannot exist with 

 out the range land provided by the government. The homestead 

 laws did not give enough free land in the first place. The 

 impoverished range land of today will support so few cattle 

 that if a rancher were to own enough land to grase all of the 

 cattle he needs to make a living, he would have to own perhaps 

 several thousand acres of land, and have besides land capable of 

 growing hay and similar winter feed. Just how poor some of this 

 land is can be seen from the fact that in some areas it takes 200 

 acres to grow enough feed for one cow for one year. On the 

 average, the virgin range could support between two and three 

 times as many cattle as the range in its present depleted state. 



PROBLEMS OF RANGE OWNERSHIP 



In order to solve the problem of grass, the problem of con' 

 trolling the use of range land must first be solved. In theory the 



