OCR Text |
Show CIHtri.AU ON CUTTING TIMIlKIl We hare before uh a circular relative to cutting timber, received by Ueuerul Mitxw-ll, Lund UHice Krister of thin T.:rritnry, IVoui the General Lund Office, Of-fice, Washington, D. C, which bo has courteously pi need in our hands. It i aMri'd-ed tu the liegiater and Kccciv-cr, Kccciv-cr, and bears date December 21, I S5i, but it provisions are still in force-. It ;i;m in the commencement : The Secretary of the luterior hua concluded to change the present Malum Ma-lum of timber agencies, iind to devolve the duties connected therewith upon llio ntlieeirt of the local land districts. Hy his direction, therefore, you will, upon the receipt of tlioo instructions, take charge of tho timber business within the limits uf your laud district, as a part of the general duties of your othce; mid it i accordingly hereby as-mgned as-mgned to y,u as such, with the umlcr htamling that, hereafter, it is to be considered and held us a proper incident inci-dent to, and in fact a part of. your general duties, covered and nutiatied by the salary which tho law provides for your respective olliees. Following this comes an opinion by Attorney General Wirt, given May 27ih, lb'Jl ; ono by Attorney General Taney, given August '2'Jnd, 1S33; and one by Attorney General Masoii, given July loth, IHli; iu which they hold that tho United States have full authority author-ity over all timber lands on the public domain, and cuu pursue by action of trespass by way of punishment, the same as individuals, all trespassers on public lands who jut timber. Attorney Attor-ney General Mason Bays : When the right of pre-emption ex ists, tho settler who has complied with the provisions of the act of 4th September, Sep-tember, 1841, has a right of occupancy for twelvo months, within which he may perfect his title by paying the minimum price of tho laud. Like the settlers under tho armed occupation act, his richt is inchoate only ; and he has only those rights of property which are necessary to the perfecting of his title, lie may clear the land, build on it, and enclose it with a view to cultivation. culti-vation. For these purposes he may use or destroy any trees which may be , necessary, but within these restrictions, und necessary lire-wood, he w Confined. When a trespass of this character is committed on swamp lands, or those rendered unfit for cultivation by overflow, over-flow, the llecister and Keceivcr are to notify the Governor of the State; but with timber on lands of this description Utah is not overburthoned. Settlers have a right to use or destroy de-stroy trees in clearing roads, construct ing bridges, or making improvements on homesteads. Timber cut on public lands by trespasser is to be seized and sold at auction. There are sereral other provisions in tho citou!ar, which bears the signature of Thomas A. Hendricks, who was Commissioner in 1S5; but those noted are tho most iuiportaut. This is the law; but it is an old law made for the protection of bona Jidc , sett lera as well as Government proper-1 tv. and directed acainst focculatcrs. It was enacted with more especial rofereuco to the then western prairie States, where there were largo tracts of t mber easily got at. It has never been applied west of the Missouri river, . so liir as wc have learned; Wuat would have been, and what would be, its effect if practically enforced in such a country as Utah? In the first place, settlement would have been and would be simply an impossibility. im-possibility. Can anybody find twenty acres of timber land in Utah Territory that could be cultivated ? The timber is on the mountains, difficult of access; and instead of offering great inducements induce-ments to speculators, it costs more to mako roads to it than its entire value would be ii the level wooded country of the east. Were a man to pre-empt a quarter lection in most of the timber land in this the great west, the cost of getting to it would in most cases be infinitely greater than tho entire value of the timber; and wheu it was all cut the land on which it grew would bo utterly valueless, unless it contained minerals, and then the mining laws might interfere inter-fere with his pre-emption claim. Iu most parts of the west timber is the ou'y reliance for fuel; and when a man and a team travel from fifteen to thirty miles each way for it, and occupy from two to four days in getting a load, it is dear-earned by tho labor aloue. The mountain growth of timber in the west is an ab.-olute necessity for the settlements settle-ments formed in the valleys, for without with-out them the land in the valleys would not be worth a cent an aero to the Government. No singlo man preempting pre-empting a quarter section in the mountains, moun-tains, for the timber alone, could afford to make a road up a wild, rugged cauon to it, and he would not ho willing to make it for his neighbors; and as such roads have to be kept in repair while Wing used, who would mako the repairs? re-pairs? Would Government? If so, its nominal price of a dollar and a quarter quar-ter per acre would snon be exhausted in repairing canon roads. These roads in most eases would oea-e to bo of any vnlut1 when the timber wa- exhausted, unless minerals "should be discovered in the mtuiita.us under the timber, when they might be Uicful in its tanportation. But of what value would the minerals be without agricultural agri-cultural lands cultivated within reasonable reason-able distance furnish supplies? And here again wo repeat, that the strict application of this law in the west would render the formation of wt (lenient (le-nient s an impossibility; would make the agricultural lauds valueless to Government; Gov-ernment; and, as a consequence, would render the vast mineral deposits of ihe great west equally valueless. The free use of the timber in the mountains is as nece-snry to western settlers as the free u-c of the rivers for irrigation to make tho laud cultivalablc. . Without the latter, crops to support a population popula-tion would be impossible ; without the former, buildings, fcnces,tire-wood, and tho thousand and one necessaries into . which ti nber enters would ho equally impossible. Apply the law in tho Truckee region ; enforce it in the Black Hills; bring the timbered mountains in tho region of the head waters of Bear Kiver under it, and the I'unhor settlement of the great west would be paralyzed it would be compelled to stop. Had the law been applied to ihe Great Basin, Nevada, Montana and Wyoming as well as Utah would to-day be the Great Desert it' was when the Mormons reached it twenty-three years ago. For these reasons, and others which might be advanced, we cannot think tho Land Commissioner would ontbrce such law if ho properly understood the case, as it would defeat its own purpose. pur-pose. It is evidently designed I o protect pro-tect tho settler ; its close application in the west, where the mountains alone have timber and tho valleys are bare of it, would drive the settler from the West, and compel him to seek a location loca-tion where habitable existence would bo possible. |