ANTI-CONSERVATION ACTIVITY 179 



sitated greater care in the establishment of reserves, to avoid the 

 inclusion of worthless or denuded lands; and in the proclamation 

 creating the San Francisco Mountains Forest Reserve in Arizona, 

 the scheme adopted was to include only the vacant unappropriated 

 timber lands. Most of the land in the reserve was worthless for its 

 timber — some entirely barren, some covered with scrub timber and a 

 small amount denuded, and every alternate section of this land be- 

 longed to the Santa Fe railroad, which ran through the district pro- 

 posed for reservation. Some of this worthless land would have made 

 excellent basis for lieu selections, but the proclamation reserved only 

 even numbered sections, thus establishing a sort of checkerboard 

 reservation.^^ 



The opportunity which the Forest Lieu Act gave for profitable 

 disposal of worthless lands no doubt furnished the motive behind many 

 of the petitions praying for the establishment of forest reserves in 

 the West. In 1901, the Commissioner of the Land Office had on file 

 petitions and recommendations from various sources, seeking the crea- 

 tion of over 50,000,000 acres of reserves,^^ a considerable proportion 

 of this area consisting of railroad and private lands. In one proposed 

 reserve alone, there were 250,000 acres of an old land grant, secured 

 long before through a Mexican title of questionable validity. At one 

 time, three United States congressmen were indicted for alleged illegal 

 practices in trying to secure the establishment of a forest reserve to 

 cover some of their holdings.^^ W^ithout doubt many of the petitions 

 were made by persons sincerely interested in timber conservation, but 

 many were made by persons who only sought means of turning worth- 

 less lands into valuable holdings. 



The evils arising under the Forest Lieu Act were very quickly seen 

 by government officials. In 1898, the Secretary of the Interior re- 

 ported that the lieu selection provision needed modification ;^* and the 



35 Report, Land Office, 1901, 113: Stat. 30, 1780. 



36 Report, Land Office, 1901, 114, 117, 



3" Report, Sec. of Int., 1906, 30. Puter says it was a gang of timber thieves that 

 worked hardest for the creation of this reserve — the Blue Mountains Forest Re- 

 serve in Oregon — and that one man was hired to make false signatures to the 

 petition for the creation of the reserve. (Puter and Stevens, "Looters of the 

 Public Domain," 347-350.) 



38 Report, Sec. of Int., p. XVI. 



