32 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



this informal fashion usually without survey and 

 often without exploration, railroads frequently ac- 

 quired properties which developed enormous values 

 later on. Great areas of timber, and in the earlier 

 days valuable mining properties passed in this man- 

 ner into railroad ownership. Some of these have 

 been re-acquired by the nation since; in other in- 

 stances suits for restoration to national ownership 

 are still pending. A typical instance is related by 

 FranklynW. Reed: 



"About 1860," he writes, "a grant of 2,386,000 

 acres was made to the Oregon and California Rail- 

 road Company for the construction of a line from 

 the Columbia River southward through the Wil- 

 lamette and Rogue River Valleys to the California 

 line. In accordance with standard practice, the 

 grant was composed of alternate sections for an 

 even width on each side the right of way. 



"The law required the railroad company to re- 

 sell the lands in small units of 160 acres to bona fide 

 settlers at not more than $2.50 an acre. In the be- 

 ginning some few thousand acres were sold at this 

 price; but the Company soon discovered that their 

 lands, being heavily timbered, were worth far more 

 than $2.50 an acre; and that a large proportion of 

 them were nonagricultural in character even after 

 the removal of the timber. They then took the re- 

 maining lands off the market to hold for a rise in 

 value. After the Oregon and California Railroad 

 had become a part of the Southern Pacific System, 



