46 ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATIONAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 



Road and the new Anacostia reclamation project, as more particularly described 

 in the annual report of the Commission of Fine Arts for the year ending Janu- 

 ary 1, 1918, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Librarian of Congress, and the 

 Architect of the Capitol, acting as a board, be, and they are hereby, empowered 

 and instructed to acquire, either by purchase or condemnation proceedings, as 

 hereinafter provided, the land necessary, in their opinion, for the purpose afore- 

 said, and for the purpose stated the sum of .$240,000, or so much thereof as 

 shall be necessary, is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury 

 not otherwise appropriated. 



Sec. 2. That in the event it shall be necessary, in order to carry out the pur- 

 pose of the foregoing section, for the board, as above constituted, to acquire 

 land, said board is empowered and directed to acquire the same by negotiation, 

 where any such land may and can be so acquired and title secured at a price 

 not above a fair relative value as to other lands which have been sold in the 

 immediate vicinity ; or if the said board hereby created shall be unable to pur- 

 chase said land by agreement with any one or more of the respective owners at 

 a reasonable price within ninety days after the passage of this act they are 

 authorized and directed to make application to the Supreme Court of the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia, at any general or special term thereof, by petition for the 

 condemnation of such land not so purchased, and for the ascertainment of its 

 value. Such petition shall contain a particular description of the property 

 not so purchased, and selected for the purpose aforesaid, with the name of the 

 owner or owners thereof and their residences, so far as the snme may be ascer- 

 tained, together with a plan of the land proposed to be taken ; and thereupon 

 the said court is authorized and required to cite all such owners and all other 

 persons interested to appeal - in said court at a time to be fixed by such court, 

 on reasonable notice, to answer the said petition: and if it shall appear to the 

 court that there are any owners or other persons interested who are under 

 disability the court shall uive public notice of the time at which the said court 

 will proceed with the matter of condemnation; and at such time if it shall 

 appear that there are any persons under disability either who have appeared 

 or who have not appeared, the court shall appoint guardians ad litem for each 

 such person, and the court shall thereupon proceed to appoint three capable 

 and disinterested commissioners to appraise the respective interests of all per- 

 sons concerned in such land, and under such regulations as to notice and hearing 

 as to the court shall seem meet. Such commissioners shall thereupon, after 

 being duly sworn for Hie proper performance of their duties, examine the 

 premises and hear the persons in interest who may appear before them, and 

 return their appraisement of the value of the interests of all persons re- 

 spectively, in such land: and when such report shall have been confirmed by 

 the court the President of the United States shall, if he thinks the public 

 interest requires ir. cause payment to he made to the respective persons entitled 

 according to the judgment of the court, and in case any of such persons are 

 under disability, or can not l>e found, or neglect to receive payment, the money 

 to lie paid to any of them shall he deposited in the Treasury to their credit, 

 unless there shall be some person lawfully authorized to receive the same under 

 the direction of the court, and when such payments are so made, or the amount 

 belonging to the persons to whom payments shall not lie made are so deposited, 

 the said lands shall be deemed to he condemned and taken by the United States 

 for the public use. 



Mr. Wood. That is the situation from the viewpoint of the people. 

 I would like to say further. Mr. Chairman, that by reason of the 

 barricade erected at this point 1 [indicating on map] it has been im- 

 possible to get one single street extended into this area, and here 

 you have a bill opening a road into 1,800 acres of land without a 

 single house on it. you might say. You have land there that is in 

 its native state. You have Mount Hamilton here with the original 

 trees, the age of which nobody knows. Upon this land the owners 

 have been paying taxes for dozens and dozens of years, and it has 

 never produced one single cent of revenue. 



I want to say further to this committee that I, myself, as a mem- 

 ber of the Xortheast Washington Citizens' Association and acting 



1 See map 38. end of vol. 2. 



