42 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



comparatively high potential values for summer 

 homes. Every one knows that a few of the very 

 many are federal, but no one knows precisely which. 

 Here and there speculation has found its prey and 

 taken toll. But for the last time. By executive 

 order of April, 1926, all were withdrawn unidentified 

 in a three mile coast strip, Florida fashion, from 

 homestead entry. All of these the government now 

 wants disposed of. 



Probably a quarter million acres, or five hun- 

 dred square miles, all told, now total the govern- 

 ment's unidentified or lost real estate. 



Essential to sound conservation policy naturally 

 is knowledge of what it is proposed to conserve, but 

 before 1878, no attempt was made to classify the 

 Public Domain and its resources for the reason that 

 Congress could not then be made to see the useful- 

 ness of appropriations to this end. The Geological 

 Survey now performs this important work. A sys- 

 tematic effort is being made to determine the values 

 that each tract contains and the uses to which it may 

 be put, whether mineral development, water power, 

 farming, grazing, or a combination of some of these 

 and others. 



Announcement of the discovery of a valuable 

 resource, a new coal field, for example, results in 

 immediate search of the land records to determine 

 whether any portion of it lies within the Public Do- 

 main. Or it may be that application for a particular 

 tract may precipitate search at that point. The Geo- 



