328 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



ownership of 7,370,000 acres of land grants showed that only 15 per 

 cent is now distributed in small holdings, while 85 per cent is owned 

 by the grantees or their successors or by large timber companies. 



The Southern Pacific Railroad is no longer the largest timber 

 owner in the United States, since the forfeiture of 2,000,000 acres of 

 its grant in Oregon ; but in an immense area of northeastern Califor- 

 nia it has retained most of its lands, while several large tracts that 

 once were a part of its grant in Oregon and California have been taken 

 up by large lumber companies — 68,000 acres by the Booth-Kelly 

 Lumber Company, 42,000 acres by the A. B. Hammond Companies, 

 70,000 acres by the Diamond Match Company, 52,000 acres by the 

 McCloud River Lumber Company, and smaller amounts by various 

 other companies. 



The Northern Pacific Railroad Company owns only about one third 

 as much timber as the Southern Pacific formerly did, but by its policy 

 of sale to large timber companies, it has done much to make possible 

 the assembling of other large holdings. In southwestern Washington, 

 the Northern Pacific grant, including timbered and non-timbered land, 

 amounted to 2,415,000 acres. Of this, the Weyerhaeuser Timbei- Com- 

 pany held 1,230,000 acres at the time the Bureau of Corporations 

 reported, the Northern Pacific itself retained about 355,000 acres, 

 and other large timber holders had no less than 340,000 acres, in 

 amounts ranging from 50,000 acres down. Of the entire grant in this 

 great timber region, 80 per cent was held by large timber owners, 

 leaving only 20 per cent in small holdings and non-timbered land. 



The Northern Pacific grant covered a large part of the timber 

 lands of northern Idaho, and the railroad is still an important holder, 

 after selling 150,000 acres to one lumber company, 100,000 acres to 

 another, and smaller amounts to still other companies. In Montana, 

 the Amalgamated Copper Company interests have over 1,000,000 

 acres which were purchased from the Northern Pacific, and the 

 Northern Pacific is itself a very important holder. These two cor- 

 porations owned 79 per cent of all the unreserved timber in the state, 

 according to the report of the Bureau of Corporations. 



Several large holdings in the Pacific Northwest owe their origin to 

 wagon road grants. In western Oregon, almost all of the grant to the 

 Coos Bay Wagon Road Company, aggregating some 100,000 acres, 



