12 FOREST RESERVES IN IDAHO. 



Senator Heyburn to the President. 



Washington, Bfay 7, lOOJf, 

 The President : 



Pursuant to my agreement to submit some facts and suggestions in 

 regard to the forest reserves in Idaho, and especially as to their 

 relation to mineral lands, I beg to submit the following : 



The map hereto attached shows the reservations existing, those for 

 which withdrawals have already been made, and those proposed but 

 not yet withdrawn. The black areas represent the lands the title 

 to which has passed out of the United States to settlers and to the 

 State. The small black squares are sections numbered 16 and 36 

 and constitute the lands set apart for school purposes. 



I have marked upon this map in red ink the recognized and deter- 

 mined mineral lands where prospectors and miners are actually 

 engaged in mining. 



The act making appropriations for sundry ciAdl expenses of the 

 Government of June 4, 1897 (30 Stat. L., 34-36), provides, among 

 other things : 



No public forest reservation shall be established except to improve and pro- 

 tect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favorable 

 conditions of water flows and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the 

 use and necessities of citizens of the United States ; but it is not the purpose 

 or intent of these provisions, or of the act providing for such reservations, to 

 authorize the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein 

 or for agricultural purposes than for forest purposes. 



The Supreme Court of the United States has designated those lands 

 as mineral upon which the prospector is willing to spend his time and 

 labor with the expectation of finding pay ore. The area embraced 

 within the proposed reservation covering the Coeiir d'Alene mining 

 country is all mineral lands. There are hundreds of mining claims 

 actually operating and one-half of the lead of the United States is 

 produced within this proposed reservation. The mines have been in 

 active operation for twenty years. New claims are being located and 

 new mines opened every day. The product of the territory included 

 wdthin this proposed reserve for the past year amounted to ujjward 

 of $9,000,000, and during this year will reach twelve millions if the 

 country is not paralyzed by being made a reservation. 



The w^est half of the Bitter Koot Reservation is all mineral land; 

 in fact within its boundaries are the oldest mining camps in the State 

 of Idaho, and there has been produced from the mining camps in the 

 west half of this reservation more than $50,000,000 in gold. 



The proposed addition withdrawn in the Coeur d'Alene country 

 comprising 6 townships, or about 138,240 acres, is entirely w^ithin a 

 mineral country in active operation. The Seven Devils country 

 lying along the Snake River, where those words occur on the Oregon 

 line, is a mineral country of great present importance and of the very 

 greatest future promise, and contains some of the finest bodies of 

 copper ore known to exist in the country, besides both gold and silver 

 mines. The proposed reserve lying farther south, near the city of 

 Boise, covers the Boise Basin mining country, which is now and has 

 been continuously mined since 1863. This country has produced 

 upward of $150,000,000 in gold and is still an active producer. 



The mining sections of Idaho as a rule are Tvell timbered, and it is 



