The West 11 
there is no water on any given area, the only person who 
can use it is the man who has water on his own land near 
enough to supply his stock. There is still in the West 
290,000,000 acres of this “free” range, but it is not as 
much of a gift as it looks. Owing to the lack of rains, 
the grass grows only a short time; however, since the 
mature grass cures down into a good feed, satisfactory 
grazing may be obtained at any time of the year that 
the ground is not covered with snow, providing the 
grass was not all eaten off as fast as it came through. 
With free range, no one has control and consequently 
the man who tries to save a little grass for the dry season 
or winter may be only saving it for the other fellow. 
Consequently, everyone gets what he can while it is grow- 
ing and during the dry season may have to do without. 
This necessitates feeding an undue amount of hay, makes 
poor stock, and eventually ruins the grass. 
Most of the deeded lands outside of Texas were ob- 
tained from the government by the Homestead Act. 
Smaller amounts have been obtained under the Swamp 
Act, Timber and Stone Act, Desert Act, Script, Lieu 
Lands Act, and various other acts or laws providing for 
the taking up of government land. At the present time 
the Homestead Act is the only one applicable to any 
large areas. 
Winter and summer ranges. 
Summer ranges are those on which the grazing is best 
in midsummer. Such ranges are found almost entirely 
in the mountains where the winter snows are deep, and 
since these higher elevations are mostly in the Forest 
Reserves, a map of the National Forests is a crude map of 
the summer ranges. The grass is very dry in the lower 
