THE STORY OF OUR PUBLIC DOMAIN 39 



oming, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, 

 Kansas, and Florida ; reported upon thirty-one light- 

 house reservations, seventeen isolated homesteads, 

 and one cemetery site in Alaska. There was a lake 

 segregation in Nebraska to be surveyed, twenty- 

 three mineral segregations, twenty-one isolated 

 tracts spotted over the far west, four military res- 

 ervations, three Spanish grant boundaries, a hold- 

 ing claim in New Mexico, and an Indian village. 

 Regular programmes were also carried out includ- 

 ing road, mineral, and other withdrawals, and oil and 

 oil shale land examinations on a large scale in Utah 

 along the Colorado, San Juan, and Green Rivers. 



Besides all of which, extensive surveys were 

 made for other governmental agencies covering Na- 

 tional Forests, National Parks, mining lands for the 

 Bureau of Mines and Indian reservations. There 

 was also much connecting work with the Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey and Geological Survey, a bird res- 

 ervation in Florida for the Biological Survey, and 

 one hundred and forty-nine applications for island 

 and water front summer homes along the coast. 



A man of to-day desiring to acquire a given 

 piece of wild country whose application to county 

 and state records fails to locate ownership is ad- 

 vised to try the nearest federal land office. Perhaps 

 the tract belongs to the nation. Unless it is evidently 

 a part of the great unappropriated and unreserved 

 domain or of some conspicuous reserve like the Na- 

 tional Forest, the chances are that his inquiry will 



