Reverse the question: why is *any* land out west in state or private hands?

[Recursion]

I see a lot of people asking why the Federal government owns so much land out west (and it is a lot).

But then again, this came from three sources:

1. The Federal Government bought most of the land from Napoleon in 1803
2. They then threatened the UK enough to get some of the rest in 1846
3. They conquered the remaining third or so from Mexico in 1848, and bought a bit more in 1853 (most of us don't believe in the right of conquest anymore, but it was definitely how things worked at the time, legally)

Maybe a more interesting question is: why is there any land in private hands out west?

(Hint: government handouts)

[Downwinder]

1. Land Grants.

[tabasco]

12. Especially to railroads -- millions of acres.

Which they used to enrich stockholders.

[icymist]

2. A better question is why do people think that they can change the entire country

at gun point?

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. +1000000

[Munificence]

13. Maybe because

it's in our History and the gun was used to forge the U.S as we know it today.

Funny how quickly some want to forget history.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. And why should the west be different, it is not like the east part of the nation was not also taken

purchased and coerced from various rightful and not so rightful owners. Why can anyone own a home in such a place as Louisiana, purchased as it was by the Federal Government?
It's all of it stolen, purchased or spoils of war. The whole place.

[Recursion]

4. And that's their point, and there's something to that (nt)

[Downwinder]

5. In the East, Land Grants by England were recognized.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Oddly I was speaking to you about the point you were making.

You made an OP, I asked you for your thinking because you are not really saying what you mean. Very East Coaster of you.

[Recursion]

7. Must be. We're known to be duplicitous

The Federal Government didn't exist in the 1640s when the East Coast was stolen. It did exist in the 1840s when the high plains were stolen.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. Ah, so your cliam is based on a Royal Land Grant and that's better? And what of the later purchases

and acquired lands?

[Recursion]

10. The difference is Massachusetts was given in fee simple to white people

And Oregon and Colorado weren't.

The privatization that Bostonians consider ancient history is still being worked out in the west

[jwirr]

14. The idea of a governments right over conquered land came

from the European development. So the east coast was not so different than the way land in the west was stolen. Manifest destiny = a conquerors rights.

[hfojvt]

19. ah yeah

there were a whole bunch of payments made for South Dakota too.

"stolen" he says.

Well, that IS how the Sioux and Cheyennes got it from the Crows and Kiowa - by conquest.

[csziggy]

11. Most of the area that the Bundyites are trying to claim was in the State Of Deseret

Which was never recognized by the US Government. Instead the LDS and Brigham Young negotiated with the government after Mexico ceded the territory in the Mexican Cession of 1848 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Cession). Eventually the LDS agreed to the formation of the Utah Territory but:

In September 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, the Utah Territory was created by Act of Congress, encompassing a portion of the northern section of Deseret.

On February 3, 1851, Brigham Young was inaugurated as the first governor of the Utah Territory. On April 4, 1851, the General Assembly of Deseret passed a resolution to dissolve the state. On October 4, 1851, the Utah territorial legislature voted to re-enact the laws and ordinances of the state of Deseret.

After the establishment of the Utah Territory, the Latter-day Saints did not relinquish the idea of a "State of Deseret". From 1862 to 1870, a group of Mormon elders under Young's leadership met as a shadow government after each session of the territorial legislature to ratify the new laws under the name of the "state of Deseret". Attempts were made in 1856, 1862, and 1872 to write a new state constitution under that name based on the new boundaries of the Utah Territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret#Establishment_of_Utah_Territory

In my opinion many of the Mormons have been delusional since the founding of the cult and remain so to this day. They stay for the most part in their little enclaves, are taught their version of reality in their schools and churches, and seldom have to admit that there is any version of truth other than their own warped one. Unless their incestuous version of reality is challenged they will never truly enter the twenty first century and they will remain in their bizarro version of the nineteenth century.

[jwirr]

15. Good point.

[kiva]

20. The Mormons began to settle in Deseret

two years before the end of the war, so were illegal immigrants in Mexican-owned land.

[csziggy]

22. The Mormons were just in the American tradition of religious fanatics

Who refused to bend to the laws of where ever they started and moved into lands already owned by someone else to steal and destroy it.

Only slightly kidding there but given the history of just my own family this had been happening for a couple of centuries before the Mormons picked up the practice.

[hunter]

16. Homestead Act of 1862.

https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Homestead.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#Homestead_Act_of_1862

[hfojvt]

17. this is just way too inaccurate

1. the federal government also bought the land AGAIN from the Indian tribes

2. the question about Oregon was about where the boundary was going to be. In other words, SOME of that was going to be American territory and some of it Canadian. To suggest that America got all of it by threats seems simplistic to me.

3. First, Texas won its independence from Mexican dictatorship. True, those were American settlers, but to some degree that had had Mexican (or Spanish) permission to settle there too.

Second, America did NOT just "conquer" that territory. America paid for it, many millions of dollars (in 1848 money).

There was $18 million for the original land
$10 million for the Gadsden purchase
$10 million in Texas debts assumed by the US
in 1853 Mexico also claimed $15 million in damages from Apache raids (which the US presumably paid, as the treaty said the US was responsible for containing the Apaches).

Then the US spent another $40 million trying to eradicate the Apaches (and failing).

[haele]

18. Cattle wars. Railroad land. The shear destruction unlimited free range grazing does on the land.

If the federal government didn't hold large tracts of grazing and forest land in trust and management, most of the Western US would be flats of dirt that become seas of mud by now.
Ranchers in the 1850's - 1900's had to keep expanding their landholdings because it takes five to seven years for unmanaged land to recover once all the grass and low vegetation is gone. They would use their "scale of economy" revenue and political influence buying out smaller farmers, ranchers, or homesteaders - or through outright fraud or intimidation, including the practice of encroachment and subsequent claims of reservation land - as they destroyed the ecology of their own "property".

What the current "Bundy Militia" wants to do is to return to the days of the cattle barons/landowners where they can dictate and set the prices they want to allow grazing on their lands, to be able to claim any natural resource they need to make profits of their own.
This is their philosophy in a nutshell:

"What's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable, unless I can just take it from you because you're wrong..."
Screw ecology, the public or the next generation of ranchers. It's all about making a quick buck and being able to be considered more important than the neighbors while doing it.

Their world and outlook is very, very small, fearful and isolated. Like Milton's Lucifer, the "devil" they supposedly fear and "oppose with their hearts and soul", they would far rather avoid reality to reign in their little corner of Hell then acknowledge serve in the greater Heaven of the whole wide universe that they are a part of.

On edit: If the Bundy clowns and like minded wanna-be supremacists really are concerned about the viability of small, independent ranchers, why would they prefer to have those small, independent ranchers buying critical resources at $20+ a head fee from a private landowner than at $2 a head from the State or Federal manager? Is it because they feel that they would be the large landowners that would be able to make tons of money renting out their land as well as grazing their own herds on that same land?

That was the mistake the cattle barons of the Western/Mid-west made in the late 19th century, the mistake that caused a lot of needless suffering and death, and helped to launch the BLM and other federal organizations to protect the general public from the needless violence of the range wars.

Haele

[bhikkhu]

21. Traditional "Rights of Conquest" first, then giving it away for settlement

The vision of the 1800's was to build a grat European-style nation out of the wilderness (a misconception itself) by granting lands to anyone who would "improve", or utilize its resources. Improvements were wells, cleared land, fences, cabins, etc, more or less anything that made it look like Europe. One problem with utilization was that stripping a land of resources also fit the bill, and suited settlers in need of income just fine. The second problem was that the 160 acre size they settled on was a huge undertaking for one family. The third problem was that 160 acres was hardly adequate in many areas of the midwest and the high desert.

The whole thing worked variously poorly from one place to another, and collapsed badly in the great depression, into dustbowls of starving poverty. Malheur basin was an earlier poster-child of failure, taking only a generation of settlers to nearly destroy the landscape and the wildlife that depended on it.