By Carolyn Nelson of Glenwood, NM

Congress authorizes protection of all timber on public lands. Penalty for cutting trees may be enforced. Timber can be seized, or stumpage figured; fines paid to the Treasury. Supreme Court recognizes law with penalties, 1831. The Annual report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, 1866, the Commissioner Joseph Wilson, summarized the principles which control in the protection of timber, with suggestions to further its growth. The beginning of the split estate land policy.

He begins with the earlier date, 1817. The first timber reservations were created by law not for wildlife or recreation, which simultaneously occur law or no law, but instead of live oak and red cedar for building naval ships. 1845 the Attorney General reversed the 1831 non-use of timber to the pre-emptor's, first come-first serve, privilege of using trees on the land; for clearing, fencing, cultivation, construction of a house to live.

On the Great Plains "We have now reached a period when the demand for timber is rapidly on the increase, and the supply diminishing". A law was created, In the treeless plains, through timber cultivation that required surveyors to plant seeds of trees adapted to the climate. The Commissioner reported, "the barrens” timber is becoming sufficiently abundant. Ohio, are to-day covered with a thrifty timber growth sufficient for fuel and fencing, which thirty years ago was completely destitute." This law was difficult to administer and a detriment to many settlers. This too was recognized and dropped.

In Colorado and Utah, the Surveyor General John Pierce, describes how much time had been spent in the care and preservation of the timber. In Denver he tells how, “pinon is too small to be of much value as timber but is good fuel.” He goes onto say, “timber, pine, spruce, fir, and cedar, are being culled by the portable saw-mills. I thought the best way to preserve the timber was to bring the land immediately into the market, and men will protect their own interests where they will not regard those of the government. Pine wood is now worth in Denver ten dollars per cord, and lumber is worth from forty to fifty dollars per thousand feet. In the mountains the prices are about the same.”

In 1866, the mineral lands that are today our US Forests, the need for timber on a miner’s claim and his family’s needs were being ignored. Pierce anomaly suggested, “timber can be granted as different titles. The granting of surface title, separate from the title to the mines… A split estate. A land law like no other country on the globe”. A few years later this idea would constitute the US Forest System. While the range, water, and access had already been appropriated and vested under customs and local rules of court, also part of a split estate, the government held onto the timber and minerals.

Throughout it all, the constant goal of the system was 'to protect the settler against the rapacity of the monopoly...To operate directly to the advantage of the settler in making for him a comfortable home, and indirectly to the benefit of the country’.

To the future of rural communities and a continuous supply of US timber.

To read the entire Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office
https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6633&context=indianserialset