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, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River.
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. The act allowed tribes the option to sell the lands that remained after allotment to the federal government. 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."
The Weyerhaeuser Company is an American timberland company which owns nearly 12,400,000 acres of timberlands in the U.S., and manages an additional 14,000,000 acres of timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada. The company has manufactured wood products for over a century. It operates as a real estate investment trust (REIT).
The Dominion Lands Act was an 1872 Canadian law that aimed to encourage the settlement of the Canadian Prairies and to help prevent the area being claimed by the United States. The Act was closely based on the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, setting conditions in which the western lands could be settled and their natural resources developed.
The Desert Land Act is a United States federal law which was passed by the United States Congress on March 3, 1877, to encourage and promote the economic development of the arid and semiarid public lands within certain states of the Western states. Through the Act, United States citizens, or those declaring an intent to become a citizen, over the age of 21 may apply for a desert-land entry to irrigate and reclaim the land. This act amended the Homestead Act of 1862. Originally the act offered 640 acres (2.6 km2), although currently only 320 acres may be claimed.
Plum Creek Timber Company, Inc. was a timberland owner and manager, as well as a forest products, mineral extraction, and property development company, until it merged with Weyerhaeuser Company. It was headquartered in Suite 3100 at 601 Union Street in Seattle.
The Oregon and California Railroad was formed from the Oregon Central Railroad when it was the first to operate a 20-mile (32 km) stretch south of Portland in 1869. This qualified the railroad for land grants in California, whereupon the name of the railroad soon changed to Oregon & California Rail Road Company. In 1887, the line was completed over Siskiyou Summit, and the Southern Pacific Railroad assumed control of the railroad, although it was not officially sold to Southern Pacific until January 3, 1927. This route was eventually spun off from the Southern Pacific as the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad.
Rayonier Inc, headquartered in Wildlight, Florida, is a timberland real estate investment trust ("REIT") with assets located in some of the most productive softwood timber growing regions in the United States and New Zealand. Its core business segments are timber and real estate.
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 General Revision Act of 1891, also known as the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, was a federal law signed in 1891 by President Benjamin Harrison. The Act reversed previous policy initiatives, such as the Timber Culture Act of 1873, which did not preclude land fraud by wealthy individuals and corporations. The acquisition of vast mineral and timber resources in the Western United States was often cited as a governing motive for such individuals and corporations to claim land rights for future settlement and resource depletion activities. The legacy of the General Revision Act of 1891 is frequently credited as its serving as a catalyst to a series of federal land reform initiatives, notably under President Theodore Roosevelt. From the Reclamation Act of 1902 to the formation of the United States Forest Service in 1905, the General Revision Act of 1891 acted as a critical first piece of federal legislation granting increased plots of publicly allotted land and decreased extraction rights to privately held western land owners in the early 20th century.
Checkerboarding refers to a situation where land ownership is intermingled between two or more owners, resulting in a checkerboard pattern. Checkerboarding is prevalent in the Western United States and Western Canada because of extensive use in railroad grants for western expansion, although it had its beginnings in the canal land grant era.
The Oregon land fraud scandal of the early 20th century involved U.S. government land grants in the U.S. state of Oregon being illegally obtained with the assistance of public officials. Most of Oregon's U.S. congressional delegation received indictments in the case: U.S. Senator John H. Mitchell and U.S. Representatives John N. Williamson and Binger Hermann, with Senator Charles William Fulton singularly uninvolved.
The Great Southern Lumber Company was chartered in 1902 to harvest and market the virgin longleaf pine forests in southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi. Bogalusa, Louisiana was developed from the ground up as a company town and was the location for Great Southern Lumber Company's sawmill, which began operation in 1908. Other company interests included a railroad and paper mill. The company ceased operation in 1938, when the supply of virgin pines was depleted. Bogalusa became the site of a paper mill and chemical operations, followed by other industry.
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."
Mauldin or Mauldin Logging Camp is a ghost town in Montgomery County, Arkansas, United States. Established in 1918 by Billy Mauldin in cooperation with Thomas Rosborough, it became heavily populated by 1922 by workers drawn to industries cutting and processing virgin timber in the area. It was located between Mount Ida and Pencil Bluff.
The Finkbine-Guild Lumber Company was established to harvest and market the virgin longleaf pine stands of southern Mississippi during the early 20th century. The main sawmills were located in Wiggins and D'Lo, Mississippi. When the local timber supply dwindled, the company tried to utilize redwood trees from California, but that operation failed because of high transportation costs. Other attempts were made at promoting a more diversified use of the cutover timberlands; some ventures were successful while others were not.
Gilchrist State Forest is the sixth and newest state forest in the U.S. state of Oregon. The forest is located in northern Klamath County near the community of Gilchrist and was officially dedicated on June 11, 2010. The forest sits along U.S. Route 97 and is 70,000 acres (28,000 ha) in size.
L.N. Dantzler Lumber Company began as a small sawmill owned by William Griffin in Moss Point, Mississippi. L.N. Danzler bought it in the 1870s and, with two sons, incorporated the business in 1888. Originally, the main business was the manufacture of lumber from southern yellow pine, but in 1949, the company switched to tree farming of southern pines and sold timber by selective cutting to yield a variety of wood products. The family-owned business prospered for 75 years but was sold to International Paper Company in 1966.
The Hume-Bennett Lumber Company was a logging operation in the Sequoia National Forest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company and its predecessors were known for building the world's longest log flume and the first multiple-arch hydroelectric dam. However, the company also engaged in destructive clearcutting logging practices, cutting down 8,000 giant sequoias in Converse Basin in a decade-long event that has been described as "the greatest orgy of destructive lumbering in the history of the world."
The Missouri Lumber and Mining Company (MLM) was a large timber corporation with headquarters and primary operations in southeast Missouri. The company was formed by Pennsylvania lumbermen who were eager to exploit the untapped timber resources of the Missouri Ozarks to supply lumber, primarily used in construction, to meet the demand of U.S. westward expansion. Its primary operations were centered in Grandin, a company town it built starting c. 1888. The lumber mill there grew to be the largest in the country at the turn of the century and Grandin's population peaked around 2,500 to 3,000. As the timber resources were exhausted, the company had to abandon Grandin around 1910. It continued timber harvesting in other parts of Missouri for another decade. While some of the buildings in Grandin were relocated, many of the remaining buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as part of the state's historic preservation plan which considered the MLM a significant technological and economic contributor to Missouri.
