A land patent is a form of letters patent assigning official ownership of a particular tract of land that has gone through various legally-prescribed processes like surveying and documentation, followed by the letter's signing, sealing, and publishing in public records, made by a sovereign entity. While land patents are still issued by governments to indicate property is privately held,[1] they are also often used by sovereign citizens and similar groups in illegitimate attempts to gain unlawful possession of property, or avoid taxes and foreclosure.[2][3]
Land patents are the right, title, and interest to a defined area. It is usually granted by a central, federal, or state government to an individual, partnership, trust, or private company. The land patent is not to be confused with a land grant. Patented lands may be lands that had been granted by a sovereign authority in return for services rendered or accompanying a title or otherwise bestowed gratis, or they may be lands privately purchased by a government, individual, or legal entity from their prior owners. "Patent" is both a process and a term. As a process, it is somewhat parallel to gaining a patent for intellectual property, including the steps of uniquely defining the property at issue, filing, processing, and granting. Unlike intellectual property patents, which have time limits, a land patent is permanent.
A land patent, known in law as "letters patent," typically issues to the original grantee and their heirs and assigns in perpetuity. The patent serves as the supreme title to the land, as it confirms that all evidence of title existing before its issuance date has been reviewed by the sovereign authority under which it was sealed and is therefore irrefutable. Consequently, the land patent legally becomes the title to the land described within its boundaries. While the irrefutability of counter-claims is relative in practice, the granting of a patent establishes the permanence of title.
As England began to colonize America, the Crown made large grants of territory to individuals and companies. In turn, the companies and colonial governors later made smaller grants of land based on actual surveys of the land. Therefore, in colonial America along Atlantic seaboard, a link was established between surveying a land tract and its "patenting" as private property. Numerous other land patents were granted by the Crown for lands purchased by private individuals from Native American tribes.
Many original colonies' land patents came from the respective controlling country, such as England. Most of these patents were granted permanently and remain in effect to this day. The US government upholds these patents through treaty law, and like all land patents, they are immutable and cannot be altered.
Many early land patents granted by Native peoples were disputed, sometimes leading to legal challenges, due to differing interpretations of "private property" and "ownership" between these groups. Indigenous Americans typically viewed land and its resources as communal property, supported by oral traditions. In contrast, individuals from Western Europe held more defined and limited perspectives on property, its transfer, and its resolution within a system governed by written laws, Crown authority, officials, courts, and permanent documentation.
In accordance with specific Acts of Congress and authorized by the US President, the General Land Office issued over 2 million land grants known as land patents. These patents transferred the title of particular parcels of public land from the nation to private entities, such as individuals or private companies. Some of the granted land had associated survey or other expenses. Patentees could pay these fees in cash, homestead a claim, or acquire ownership through various donation acts passed by Congress to transfer public lands to private hands. Regardless of the method, the General Land Office adhered to a two-step process when granting a patent.
Initially, the private claimant visited the land office in the land district where the public land was situated. The claimant completed entry papers to designate the public land, and the land office register verified the availability of the claimed land by checking the local registrar records. The receiver collected the claimant's payment, as even homesteaders were required to pay administrative fees.
Subsequently, the district land office register and receiver forwarded the documentation to the General Land Office in Washington. This office conducted a thorough review to ensure the accuracy of the claim, the land's availability, and the payment method. Ultimately, the General Land Office issued a land patent for the public land in question and forwarded it to the President for his signature.
The first US land patent was issued on March 4, 1788, to John Martin.[4] That patent reserves to the United States one third of all gold, silver, lead and copper within the claimed land.
A land patent for a 39.44-acre (15.96ha) land parcel in present-day Monroe County, Ohio, and within the Seven Ranges land tract. The parcel was sold by the Marietta Land Office in Marietta, Ohio, in 1834.
The land patent specifies any usage restrictions, such as oil and mineral rights, roadways, ditches, and canals, that apply to the land. These restrictions are separate from state and local statutory regulations concerning property associated with the land, including zoning laws, building codes, and property taxes that pertain to both the land and any structures on it.
Private property rights associated with land patents can be further negotiated based on the terms of private contracts. These rights, inherent in patented land, pass from one heir to another, from an heir to an assignee, or from an assignee to another assignee, and are immutable except through private agreements like a warranty deed or quitclaim deed. The legal framework governing a specific parcel of patented land is typically dictated by the Congressional Act or treaty through which it was obtained, or by the terms outlined in the patent itself. For instance, US laws governing the land may be influenced by acts like the Homestead Act or reservations specified in the patent. Similarly, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Hidalgo dictates jurisdictional provisions concerning extensive land areas in California and neighboring regions.
Entities other than natural persons, such as trusts and corporations, are not eligible to acquire land patents unless specifically authorized by an act of the US Congress.[citation needed] One instance of Congress granting land through patents to corporate entities is exemplified by the railroad grants issued under the Pacific Railroad Acts. These grants were provided to compensate railroad companies for constructing a transcontinental railroad spanning across America.[citation needed]
Former US territories
When a territory agreed to enter the United States, an Enabling Act was agreed to as a condition precedent of statehood. The Enabling Act requires that all unappropriated lands, which are not yet privately owned, to be forever disclaimed by the territory and the people of the territory and the title to ceded to the United States for its disposition.[5] For example, the enabling act of the Washington Territory declares in part:
...that the people inhabiting said proposed States do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof, and to all lands lying within said limits owned or held by any Indian or Indian tribes; and that until the title thereto shall have been extinguished by the United States, the same shall be and remain subject to the disposition of the United States. ..
Once the people of the territory disclaimed their right and title to the land, the United States held it in trust until an individual established a claim, often by enhancing the homestead parcel over a specific period. Upon the submission of a valid claim, the United States General Land Office (now the Bureau of Land Management) verifies that the claimant has covered the survey expenses and made an additional deposit. Lastly, pursuant to the various land acts of Congress, the land is granted to the private owner by letters patent under the signature and seal of the US President.
Related Research Articles
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than 160 million acres of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, were given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River. These acts were the first sovereign decisions of post-war North–South capitalist cooperation in the United States.
The Dawes Act of 1887 regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. Named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, it authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal communal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals. This would convert traditional systems of land tenure into a government-imposed system of private property by forcing Native Americans to "assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property" that did not previously exist in their cultures. Before private property could be dispensed, the government had to determine which Indians were eligible for allotments, which propelled an official search for a federal definition of "Indian-ness".
In the United States, a territory is any extent of region under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, including all waters. The United States asserts sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving, and managing its territory. This extent of territory is all the area belonging to, and under the dominion of, the United States federal government for administrative and other purposes. The United States total territory includes a subset of political divisions.
The Virginia Military District was an approximately 4.2 million acre (17,000 km2) area of land in what is now the state of Ohio that was reserved by Virginia to use as payment in lieu of cash for its veterans of the American Revolutionary War.
The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, sometimes known as the Donation Land Act, was a statute enacted by the United States Congress in late 1850, intended to promote homestead settlements in the Oregon Territory. It followed the Distribution-Preemption Act 1841. The law, a forerunner of the later Homestead Act, brought thousands of settlers into the new territory, swelling their ranks along the Oregon Trail. 7,437 land patents were issued under the law, which expired in late 1855. The Donation Land Claim Act allowed white men or partial Native Americans who had arrived in Oregon before 1850 to work on a piece of land for four years and legally claim the land for themselves.
A land claim is "the pursuit of recognized territorial ownership by a group or individual". The phrase is usually only used with respect to disputed or unresolved land claims. Some types of land claims include aboriginal land claims, Antarctic land claims, and post-colonial land claims.
A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants of land are also awarded to individuals and companies as incentives to develop unused land in relatively unpopulated countries; the process of awarding land grants are not limited to the countries named below. The United States historically gave out numerous land grants as homesteads to individuals desiring to make a farm. The American Industrial Revolution was guided by many supportive acts of legislatures promoting commerce or transportation infrastructure development by private companies, such as the Cumberland Road turnpike, the Lehigh Canal, the Schuylkill Canal and the many railroads that tied the young United States together.
The act of cession is the assignment of property to another entity. In international law it commonly refers to land transferred by treaty. Ballentine's Law Dictionary defines cession as "a surrender; a giving up; a relinquishment of jurisdiction by a board in favor of another agency." In contrast with annexation, where property is forcibly seized, cession is voluntary or at least apparently so.
In the United States Code, the term color of law describes and defines an action that has either a "mere semblance of legal right", or the "pretense of right", or the "appearance of right", which adjusts and colors the law to the circumstance, whilst the apparently legal action is itself illegal. In U.S. and U.K. jurisprudence, an action realized under color of law is an act realized by an official as if he or she were authorized to take the apparently legal action not authorized by statute or common law.
The Kinkaid Act of 1904 is a U.S. statute that amended the 1862 Homestead Act so that one section of public domain land could be acquired free of charge, apart from a modest filing fee. It applied specifically to 37 counties in northwest Nebraska, in the general area of the Nebraska Sandhills. The act was introduced by Moses Kinkaid, Nebraska's 6th congressional district representative, was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt on April 28, 1904 and went into effect on June 28 of that year.
The United States Court of Private Land Claims (1891–1904) was an ad-hoc court created to decide land claims guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in the territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and in the states of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming.
The Constitution of the State of Nevada is the organic law of the state of Nevada, and the basis for Nevada's statehood as one of the United States.
The Timber Culture Act was a follow-up act to the Homestead Act. The Timber Culture Act was passed by Congress in 1873. The act allowed homesteaders to get another 160 acres (65 ha) of land if they planted trees on one-fourth of the land, because the land was "almost one entire plain of grass, which is and ever must be useless to cultivating man."
The Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 provided settlers 640 acres (260 ha) of public land—a full section or its equivalent—for ranching purposes. Unlike the Homestead Act of 1862 or the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, land homesteaded under the 1916 act separated surface rights from subsurface rights, resulting in what later became known as split estates. The subsurface rights, also known as mineral rights, are the foundation of recent oil and gas law in the United States.
Green v. Biddle, 21 U.S. 1 (1823), is a 6-to-1 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the state of Virginia had properly entered into a compact with the United States federal government under Clause One of Article Four of the United States Constitution. This compact surrendered Virginia's claim to the area that eventually became the state of Kentucky, but imposed restrictions on Kentucky's ability to upset title to land sold or otherwise granted by the state of Virginia at the time of the compact. The Supreme Court held that legislation enacted by Kentucky that restricted these rights unconstitutionally infringed on Virginia's right to surrender the land in accordance with Article Four, Clause One.
The Marshall Court (1801–1835) issued some of the earliest and most influential opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, several of them written by Chief Justice John Marshall himself. However, without exception, the remarks of the Court on aboriginal title during this period are dicta. Only one indigenous litigant ever appeared before the Marshall Court, and there, Marshall dismissed the case for lack of original jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1836–1864), issued several important decisions on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, building on the opinions of aboriginal title in the Marshall Court.
An Organic Act is a generic name for a statute used by the United States Congress to describe a territory, in anticipation of being admitted to the Union as a state. Because of Oklahoma's unique history an explanation of the Oklahoma Organic Act needs a historic perspective. In general, the Oklahoma Organic Act may be viewed as one of a series of legislative acts, from the time of Reconstruction, enacted by Congress in preparation for the creation of a united State of Oklahoma. The Organic Act created Oklahoma Territory, and Indian Territory that were Organized incorporated territories of the United States out of the old "unorganized" Indian Territory. The Oklahoma Organic Act was one of several acts whose intent was the assimilation of the tribes in Oklahoma and Indian Territories through the elimination of tribes' communal ownership of property.
Highland Park, also known as Highland Pines, is a populated place situated near Prescott and within the Prescott National Forest, in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States. Highland Pines is the promotional name associated with the Highland Park areas several subdivisions. In the Arizona Territorial era up to 1912, and Statehood until around the late 1920s, this particular area of land acted as a cattle ranch with a mining history, lies within the Thumb Butte Mining District, which appears to be initially platted by the Arizona Corporation Highland Pine Properties Inc. beginning in the late 1950s.
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