Two Arizona Forest Lieu Land Exchanges

Abstract

DURING the administrations of Cleveland, Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt, the national government made many reforms in its land policies. For the first time, it devoted much attention to the conservation of forest resources. Congress took the initial step in 1891 by authorizing the President to set aside permanent forest reservations. Fifteen reserves in western states, totaling about thirteen million acres, were established within tlhree years. Cleveland, in the fall of 1893, refused to proclaim any more because there were no laws then existent to give any protection to those already founded. The matter drifted for three years, until the Secretary of the Interior called upon the National Academy of Sciences to recommend changes in the nation's forest policy. The academy appointed a commission of six, whose tour of the West resulted in the establishment of thirteen additional reserves containing over twenty-one million acres.' The proclamations were issued so abruptly as to be unfair to those in the region. Westerners, either actually injured by the hasty action or else hampered in their plans to exploit the public domain, presented strong opposition. Congress, debating the matter during two sessions held in 1897, finally changed the effective date of the proclamations to March 1, 1898. An important section of the act making this alteration concerned lieu lands and read as follows: