I was reading some railroad history, that touched briefly on land grants. I knew that Illinois Central and the transcontinentals had received them. I was surprised to see a map that showed land grants also in MN,Iowa,WS,MI,MO,MS,LA,AL,KS, and FL. What railroads got them? Thanks
It is more like which railroads did not get land grants from some level of government. Vitually all railroads that operated trains got financial assistance from national, state and/or local governments. Land worked because governments had a lot of land to give away. If the did not give lands the gave cash, loaned money, supplied construction labor at below market rates, etc.
Murphy:
Have you read the book on BNSF entitled “Leaders Count”? The author discussed the land grant situation with Northern Pacific. The book is only $14 and is very informative.
Thru out the book there is probably the equivilant of about 10 pages of discussion on Federal Land Grants, primarily how it affected the Northern Pacific and to a lessor extent the ATSF. I got the impression the Great Northern and Burlington either did not receive LG’s or were smaller. Here are a few facts and opinions discussed in the book:
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The author references a book by Frank N. Wilner entitled Railroad Land Granst: Paid for in Full. I have not read this book.
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8 percent of the railroad system was built using LGs.
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In return the LG railroads agreed to reduce rates by 50% for troop travel and for US Government freight. Mail rates were 20% discounted.
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A US Congressional study in 1940 found the value of the land grants had been paid for 10x in reduced rates.
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The Transportation Act of 1940 recinded the reduced rates, however the recinded rates did NOT go into affect until 1946, after WW2 ended. Thus, the reduced rates applied during the concentration of heaviest traffic, both passenger and freight the railroads handled, during WW2.
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Other railroads, which did not receive LGs, usually reduced their troop and freight rates by the 50% and 20% amounts in order to meet competition. So, the government received far more bang for its buck that the original 8% funding.
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Northern Pacific received LGs of 50 million acres across Mn, ND, Mt, Id, & Wa. “The land grant was proven to be the company’s most valuable asset.”
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Despite the 50 million acres, the company filed bankrupcty in 1883.
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It was critical that NP use the LG’s to populate the area. Basically, there were no “white” people in the area at that time. (Author’s comment of “white”, not mine).
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No Ed, I haven’t, but will be looking for it shortly. Thanks[:)]
After the BN merger, much of the land in the pacific northwest was still owned by Burlington Northern, who later spun off all the “non railroad” assets under the company “Burlington Resources” which was just aquired Friday, March 31, 2006 by ConocoPhillips. There are some articles about the aquisition here: http://www.conocophillips.com/index.htm
In many cases (Especially in Canada) railways were given along with land grants, the mineral rights also, try Canadian Pacific Oil & Gas, then Pan Canadian Petroleum and then on to something else.
I believe the GN made hay for many years that it neither used land grants nor ever filed for bankruptcy. Did the Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Coast Extension qualify for any land grants that late in the game?
To expand on the “staggered” nature of the grants… the alternate sections made a checkerboard pattern as you mapped them along the right of way. While it worked OK for settling farms and ranches, in order to assemble larger parcels for mining, there have been “land swaps” where the RR’s and the gov’t traded the sections (again, 1 square mile or 640 acres) to build larger blocks.
A side note: Before paved roads & automobiles, an accepted speed for overland travel (assuming good roads & weather) would be about 2-3 miles per hour (say 2 1/2). Putting stations about every 10 miles still made “going to town” as long as a 2 hour trip (one way) for some people. Imagine if the nearest store, grocery, doctor-anything-was 2 hours away from where you lived (a situation that isn’t entirely gone, I realize, but now more by choice than it was in the 1880’s).
Here’s an interesting page on the land grants, although these guys hate the railroad.
Please remember that most land grants do not involve the Checkerboard/200 mile limit grants that UP & CP got under the 1862 Act…Most are more like the Act of 1875 where a 200 ft. wide coridor was granted by GLO through otherwise vacant land with larger exceptions for station grounds and major earthwork.
Kevin: Milwaukee did get grant land through vacant land in aliquot portions of public lands under the Acts of 1875-1906 in their various incarnations. BLM has a very good publication out on how those lands were distributed/granted and it’s a shame that history texts take such a blanket approach to the subject, skewing the actual facts.
As for deepspire’s link, those activist folks think we all ought to be living in caves. Not any better than the warped minds (if they have ANY greymatter left at all) at NARPO.
My understanding is that the federal government badly wanted transcontinental railroads built but the Railroad companies complained that it was too much of a gamble to build through empty land where there were no online shippers. Since the land was in the public domain where states had not yet been established, the government granted the land as an incentive arguing that as soon as the railroad got to a given area, the value of the sections would increase drastically and population would follow establishing farms and businesses. Before 1860 railroads had always connected points that were already going communities. They had to be prodded to launch themselves into empty lands for the sake of reaching the far distant Pacific Coast. The railroads took to it so enthusiastically that originally the first two transcontinentals decided that they didn’t want to meet but would rather build right on by each other to keep collecting land sections. It took a special act of Congress to force them to come together at Promintory Point. That was only the beginning of land grant shinanigans that embroiled the western railroads for the rest of the Nineteenth Century…
Well now, If my memory serves me right, one of NPs land grant pieces, is no longer there lol It disappeared when Mt. St Helens blew her top lol Also the LGs are in the news in Oregon, as the old O& C lands used to provide a lot of money to the local counties in place of the taxes that the timber would have provided. Now it seems that Georgy Boy wants that money to pay for Iraq!!!
This was an interesting link. You’re not kidding about them hating the railroads.[}:)]
As mentioned eariler., the "land grant " is usually thought of as the Federal one, but many orads, like the GN, got extensive city and county local land grants as an incentive to not bypass an area. Hill used the bypass threat very often to get rights of way when he was building. It usually worked, since towns were morbidly afraid of being bypassed by the RR in the 1880s and 90s.
It didn’t always work. The New York Ontario and Western tried that and ended up being a railroad through noplace to get nowhere. The Rock Island also was in a bad postion for industry for the same reasons.
On Southern Pacific’s Ramon branch through central Contra Costa County (35 miles east of San Francisco), many landowners donated the right of way for the railroad.
The map showing the land grants in the landscouncil site has been shown to be wrong - it vastly over-represents the actual area. Cut most of those lines down to half their width (or less).
I’ve thought it’s interesting how these activists project the present onto the past. Can’t conceive of what people of the past thought and faced in their time. Living in the present just ruins an activist’s day.
All I can say is TG for the sheriff of Rock Ridge!
A yes! “Vacant” land to give away…
But it wasn’t exactly vacant was it? And that had a solution to: shoot the food of those living there and put them in homelands…
I’m not going to hold my breath to see some landreform Zimbabwe style though.
I have a Delorme atlas of Wyoming that shows that checkerboard pattern along the Union Pacific, one mystery solved, only umpteen to go.
As for states and towns and cities giving landgrants. Did they really give swaths of land as wide as the federal government did? Or only big enough for the railroad and maybe a yard and industrial development?
greetings,
Marc Immeker
The checker board pattern was used by IL for the Illinois Central in the 1850 and I would not be suprised if theat is where the Fed. got the idea. Lincoln was pushing the program and he had represented railroads back in IL when he was practising law. On your two questions the answer is yes in both cases.
A book entitled “Arid Domain”, Standford University Press, 1954 (and long since out of print), discusses the land grants given to the Frisco and ATSF along their lines to the West Coast.
It also addresses many of the water issues that we still face in the area today. One of the major reasons that the Santa Fe brought into the early FT dissel freight units was the lack of water and poor quality of what there was along the Arizona line to the West Coast.
Living in northeastern Arizona, the land grants and land swaps (very well explained in the above referenced text) gave rise to many famous cattle companies(Aztec Land and Cattle Co.; New Mexico Land and Cattle Co.) in our area. The Santa Fe Pacific land company still handles much of the land formerly owned by the railroad.
The checkerboard pattern was famous and can easily be seen onthe DeLorme atlases mentioned above. One of the other interesting sidelines to this entire discussion are the famous BLM Grazing Rights on the (otherwise generally) worthless sections of land that are still out in the “middle of no where”. Many of the environmental groups use the Endangered Species Act to regulate use of these lands both in the cattle and timber industries, which have all but expired in northeastern Arizona. The land was vacant and underutilized in the 1880’s until rail transportation brought population to the area. In many cases, that is still true today.
A most interesting thread.
David M. Newlin
dmnewlin@aol.com