By Rick WagnerIn analyzing recent remarks in The Dailey Sentinel I find it gratifying to see that the good old “Sagebrush Rebellion” is still active. Comment has been spurred by the actions of some in the Legislature to figure out ways to force the federal government to relinquish control over lands in Colorado.
This is a re-emergence of an old argument, the central question being: If, when territories entered into the United States as states, did they agree to forever relinquish control over vast amounts of land to the federal government?
This question has clear geographic boundaries with the dividing line between states mostly managed by the federal government existing west of the border of Colorado and Kansas.
This is a bigger question than most are aware. Of the 10 states that have the least amount of property managed by the federal government, all lie east of Kansas and average about 1.3 percent of their acreage under this type of control.
To the west of Kansas, the top 10 states for federal land ownership, including Alaska and of which Colorado is 10th, average 58 percent under explicit federal control.
...Was there something special about the way Eastern states were brought into the Union versus those on the other side of Kansas? The answer is: not really.
The American Land Council compares the language of the enabling legislation that brought North Dakota into the union in 1889 with the same congressional action that brought Utah into the United States in 1864. There is practically no substantive difference in the language used to bring each into statehood but there is a difference in the result.
When North Dakota was brought into the union around 49 percent of its land was under federal control, that amount is now around 3 percent.
When Utah was subjected to the same process, federal authorities had control of about 86 percent of the state’s lands and still control around 67 percent.
Utah had clarified that it was the state’s position that the federal government agreed to maintain control over this property lands only until they could be reasonably disposed of through private transfer or conveyed to the new state through a resolution to Congress in 1915 — so, not exactly a new position.
Western states continued to be restive over the idea that they were not being allowed to acquire lands controlled by the federal government in their states at anything like the rate done in the Midwest and eastern part of the country.
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