CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLIC LANDS* 



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



THE necessity for classifying the eral bureau was subordinated to the 



public land is not a recent dis- more general though hardly less im- 



covery. The earliest land legisla- portant task of determining the natural 



tion in this country both contemplated resources of the public domain and the 



differences in the quality and character opportunity for a scientific classifica- 



of the public land and planned that the tion of the land before the larger part 



officers charged with 'their sale should of the more valuable areas had passed 



be furnished with descriptions based on into private ownership was lost. In the 



field examination. From 1796 down to present period of aroused public opinion 



the present day, whatever the policy that the land classification which leads to 



has prompted legislation with reference better use, and the field knowledge on 



to public land, whether the purpose was which intelligent administration must 



to procure revenue, or to promote home be based, have come to be regarded as 



building, or to benefit influential citi- vital factors in the public-land policy, 



zens, most of these laws recognize The Secretary of the Interior may 



classes of land and presuppose classifi- be considered to be a trustee charged 



cation. Yet even the honest administra- with the disposition of the public land, 



tion of the land laws has ever been sub- and within his department the functions 



ject to criticism arising from the fact of administration are divided among 



that no adequate provision was made three bureaus : to the General Land 



for land classification. Office belong the subdivisional surveys, 



A period of national awakening to the sales and the issuance of patents : 



the worth of the public domain appears to the Geological Survey has been en- 



to have followed the close of the civil trusted the investigation of the resources 



war, and in the late seventies Congress of the public domain, with the determi- 



gave serious consideration to the prob- nation of the character of the public 



lem of making better provision for lands, and the valuation of those whose 



effective administration of this great price is not specifically fixed by law ; 



estate with its latent possibilities for and upon the Reclamation Service has 



national growth. We have just entered been laid the vitally important task of 



upon another epoch of realization by the insuring the full utilization of arid lands 



Nation of the true source of its wealth by the construction of engineering 



and prosperity, and both the legislative works. 



and the executive branches of the Fed- The duty of classifying the unentered 

 eral Government are awake to the fact public lands is now definitely accepted 

 that exact knowledge is essential to the by the Geological Survey, and the op- 

 proper utilization of our country's great portunity neglected in 1879 has for sev- 

 resource of land. The earlier -propa- eral years been vigorously improved, 

 ganda bore fruit in the creation of a The Department of the Interior fully 

 scientific bureau, first among whose recognizes that the land laws have not 

 functions was the classification of the been and never can be efficiently admin- 

 public land. But, unfortunately, this istered in the absence of a detailed and 

 specific duty laid upon the new Fed- authoritative classification of the land. 



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



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