L A N D POLICIES OF T H E U N I T E D STATES A S APPLIED T O U T A H T O 1910 BY GEORGE W . ROLLINS*
.HE TH
public land policies of the United States government have devdoped slowly and often inadequatdy to meet the needs of an expanding people. In the main, the policy has been one of expediency, trying to make an outworn system work under changed conditions. W h e n changes have been made they have often come about tardily and have been palliatives instead of cures for the real ills of the system. This has been especially true of the unrealistic attitude of the land laws when applied to the states and territories west of the one hundredth meridian. It will be the purpose of this article to discuss and evaluate the land polides of the United States as applied specifically to one of these territories, Utah. This territory has been selected because it represents a rather distinct type of development. In order to arrive at an understanding of the land policies as applied to Utah it will first be necessary to devote some attention to these policies in general as they have developed from the time of the formation of the Union.
In the early years of the republic, the emphasis seemed to be placed on the acquisition of revenue. T h e Land Act of 1796 provided for the sale of land at a minimum price of two dollars per acre in plots up to 640 acres. 1 This act failed because the price was too high and large plots led to speculation. The law of 1800 and subsequent amendments reduced the size of the tracts to eighty acres but maintained the minimum price and offered liberal credit terms. 2 T h e credit features of the 1800 act led to a breakdown of the law and in 1820 it was superseded by a new act which abolished the deferred payments feature and reduced the price of land to $1.25 per acre in eighty-acre tracts. It was now * George W . Rollins received his Ph.D. in Western history from the University of Utah in 1951, and is now an instructor in history at that institution. Study leading to this article was conducted under a research fellowship grant from the University of Utah Research Committee. 'Benjamin Horace Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Policies (New York, 1939), 59-68. 'U. S. Statutes at Large, II, 74.