Land subdivision

“ If the farms in the Transvaal could be at once divided, and a moiety from each owner taken away without compensation, not only would the country itself be soon improved by such an arrangement, but the farmers also themselves from whom{110} the land had been taken. Their titles, however, are good, and they are lords of the soil beyond the power of any such, arbitrary legislation. But all the influence of government should be used to favour subdivision. Subdivisions no doubt are made from day to day. ”

“ A 'tract of land,' as that expression is used in acts of Congress in relation to public lands, means some legal subdivision, bounded by lines run in the mode prescribed for public surveys. So the word 'lands,' as used in this act of 1832, must mean some legal subdivisions known to the law. If, then, a stream of water should run through such 'tract of land' or 'lands' without constituting a 'border' or limit to the same, it would not be within the act in question. The law of Congress obviously had reference to such bodies of water as controlled the shape of the tract. ”

“ Instead of making each man survey his own land, and allowing him to survey it when, how, and where he pleased, with the certainty of producing endless litigation and trouble, Congress provided for a corps of government surveyors, who were to go about this work systematically. It provided further for a known base line, and then for division of the country into ranges of townships six miles square, and for the subdivision of these townships into lots ("sections") of one square mile—six hundred and forty acres—each. ”

“ This was a general act, and declared that every settler or occupant of the public lands prior to its passage, who was then in possession, and cultivated any part thereof in the year 1829, might enter with the register of the land-office for the district in which such lands should lie, by legal subdivisions, any number of acres not more than one hundred and sixty, or a quarter-section, to include his improvements, upon paying to the United States the minimum price ”

“ The balance of the land area, almost 10,000 acres, has been developed until recently in the conventional form of major subdivisions. The general ordinance provides for four residential zones, designated R-1, R-1D, R-2 and R-3. All permit only single-family, detached dwellings, one house per lot-the usual form of grid development. Attached townhouses, apartments (except on farms for agricultural workers) and mobile homes are not allowed anywhere in the township under the general ordinance. ”

“ The system of location of lands is very well known, and any one who 202 wishes to gain full information respecting it cannot do better than procure one of the maps which the St. Paul and Sioux City Railway will send with pleasure, and which exhibits the lots in the possession of the State, and those which the Company have disposed of, or hold over for purchase, numbered. The districts are laid out in squares of 640 acres (5200 square feet to the front) ; but arrangements can be made by which 40 acres of land can be purchased. ”

“ And that settlers upon the public lands within the new district should have a right of pre-emption in lead-mine tracts, which settlers upon other lands within the same territory, but not within the new land district, could not have? The mere fact of a new land district having been made out of a part of the territory in which the lead-mine lands had been reserved, with the authority to the President to sell all lands in the new district, can have no effect to lessen the force of the original reservation. ”

“ It might, if its proximity to the centre were rather closer than that proposed by the Board of Trade, lie outside the suburb which has exchanged its residential decadence for commercial importance and inside the district of the better class suburb. It ought not, therefore, to be very difficult to devote a good portion of this property to rural development. The land might still have a financial value, for it is more than possible that an enactment restricting the number of houses per acre might lead to the formation of a rural suburb of greater worth than the existing inferior house property. ”

“ There shall be allotted to each citizen one hundred and sixty acres of land boundaries to conform to the government survey-which may be selected by him so as to include improvements which belong to him.' While citizens were thus permitted to make their selections for the purpose of retaining improvements, it seems clear that in case any citizen failed to avail himself of this right, it was permissible for the Commission to make the allotment. ”

“ Hence the running of lines in the field and the laying out and platting of townships, sections and legal subdivisions are not alone sufficient to constitute a survey. Until all conditions as to filing in the proper land office and all requirements as to approval have been complied with, the lands are to be regarded as unsurveyed and not subject to disposal as surveyed lands. ”

“ Owing to the equal distribution of real property directed by our land laws, and the sterling integrity of our forefathers, in their observance of them, we have no districts of "sold land" as it is called, that is large tracts of land in the hands of individuals, or companies who neither sell nor improve them, as is the case in Lower Canada, and the north-western part of Pennsylvania. ”

“ The homestead laws, which are passed not by the state legislature but by the federal government, are directed rather towards encouraging the closer settlement of rural districts by means of grants of the public land made upon easy terms. ”

“ When ground is subdivided in that manner under our law, there can be no doubt that different lots and blocks may be so occupied as to constitute an actual residence in them all; but ordinarily, in case of subdivision, the construction of a house on a separate lot or block, and a residence therein, without any connection with adjoining or neighboring lots or blocks, does not constitute an actual residence as to the whole. ”

“ The subdivision of the gold and silver lands, should be into tracts of one acre each, continuing and extending the present system. This is by townships of six miles square, containing 36 sections and 23,040 acres. Each section contains 640 acres; and to separate them into acres, the following system should be adopted. The present subdivision is into quarter-quarter sections, of 40 acres each. These small tracts, by lines running through the centre, north and south, and east and west, I would subdivide into four tracts, each containing ten acres. ”

“ After the survey the land officers dispose of the lands only according to these legal subdivisions-that is, as sections, half sections, etc.-and regard the minor subdivisions, quarter quarter sections and lots, as not subject to further division, save in exceptional instances, where Congress has specially provided otherwise. Under this practice a right to purchase or enter 40 acres may be exercised by taking a full quarter quarter section, but not by taking a part only of each of two or more minor subdivisions. ”

“ Now, with the change in management, it's time to take inventory. The Federal Government owns some 730 million acres-about one-third of the total land area of the United States. The Department of Interior has jurisdiction over most of that, including our national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness lands, wetlands, and coastal barriers. Not included in those 730 million acres are our offshore coastal waters, the Outer Continental Shelf, which is also Interior's responsibility. ”

“ Besides this plow land, there was a definite area of grazing land, known as the commons. With the coming of enclosures this open field system was abolished. (By the term ‘enclosure’ is meant that all the strips of any one man scattered throughout the holdings of the village were given to him in equivalent in a single, consolidated acreage, which he had to fence, ditch, etc. Or again, the term applies to a large district, as very frequently the commons, that was fenced in for the wealthy landowner’s sheep-pens.) ”

“ Steep slopes and the presence of large water boundaries can constitute physical barriers to development, and often affect population densities, the layout of census blocks, and the location of some segments of the UA boundary. By contrast, UAs surrounded by abundant developable land may be more susceptible to urban sprawl. These are only some of the regional differences that shape UAs and present challenges to delineating them consistently on the basis of a single set of national criteria. ”

“ In general there can be no doubt that a State has power to add more land that shares the benefit of a scheme, to the lawfully constituted district that has to pay for it, and to do so against the will of the owner. ”

“ It is not possible, in remodelling an old farming district, where boundaries and roads are irregular, to apportion the division of land among the population with especial reference to its distance from the village; so, for example, that the small farmers, who have little team-force, shall not have so far to go as the larger ones who are better equipped ”

“ Inasmuch, too, as transfers of a lease can only be made with the assent of the State Land Board for the district—which assent will only be given in case the transfer is to a bona fide occupier not already a landowner—land monopoly is checked and occupancy for use assured. Meanwhile there is plenty of genuine settlement; every year sees many hundred fresh homes made and tracts reclaimed from the wilderness. ”

“ Subject to such reservations as the Government may see fit to make for public purposes, and to the sale by public auctions of town and suburban lots, any person desiring to take up land in the South-western District may purchase a maximum amount of 1,000 acres by deferred payments, either with or without residence, and either in agricultural areas specially selected and surveyed by Government, or outside of the latter on still unappropriated and unsurveyed lands-in all cases, be it remembered, under improvement conditions of varying stringency. ”

“ Under this clause half the rural districts of England have acquired urban powers which, being exercised by persons having for the most part an interest in urbanizing the district—jobbers in residential land ripe for development, tradesmen, contractors and local builders—have been used as an instrument to prevent the erection of dwellings suitable for agricultural laborers and to tie the hands of landowners willing to provide such dwellings. ”

“ Under that law every adult male citizen and his wife, immigrating to this coast before the year 1851, were entitled to six hundred and forty acres of land selected by the donees in 38 such shape as they chose, and those coming after that time, were entitled to three hundred and twenty acres taken by legal subdivisions. ”

“ But the whole district is vastly over-populated; and it is extremely difficult to see how any possible legislation could make the land yield a comfortable subsistence to the present numbers of its people. ”

“ It will require three months, I judge, for a man to select a good claim (a quarter section, being 160 acres) , and fence and plough a part of it and to erect thereon a cabin. There is never a want of land to preempt in a new country. The settler can always get an original claim, or buy out the claim of another very cheap, near some other settlers. The liberal policy of our government in regard to the disposal of public lands is peculiarly beneficial to the settler. ”

“ The restriction of grants of land to those counties which may be prepared for location, will condense the inhabitants of the Settlement within proper bounds, and they will thus be enabled to render that mutual assistance and protection to each other, which, if they were more widely scattered, would be totally out of their power. ”

“ A common field lot, as intended by said act of Congress, is a piece of land of larger or smaller dimensions, as the case may be, according to ancient cultivation, lying alongside of, and parallel to, other similar pieces of land, and claimed or cultivated under the protection of a common fence by those who inhabited said towns or villages prior to the 20th December, 1803; and said pieces of land might not have been conceded or surveyed by any French or Spanish authority, or surveyed officially by the United States as a common field lot. ”

“ What we have, then, to ask is whether the priority of enclosure in the western counties is to be attributed entirely to the fact of their being devoted more to grass and less to tillage, or whether there was some difference in the primitive village community of the west which caused cultivated land to pass more easily into the condition of exclusive ownership and separate use. ”

“ In almost a decade only about 100 acres have been developed industrially. Despite the township's strategic location for motor transportation purposes, as intimated earlier, it seems plain that the likelihood of anywhere near the whole of the zoned area being used for the intended purpose in the foreseeable future is remote indeed and that an unreasonable amount of land has thereby been removed from possible residential development, again seemingly for local fiscal reasons. ”

“ Among other things, it required them, under the direction and subject to the approval of the secretary of the interior, to designate a tract sufficiently large to include all the hot or warm springs on the land, embracing what is known as the Hot Springs Mountain, which tract was declared to be reserved from sale; and to lay out the residue of the land into convenient squares, blocks, lots, avenues, streets, and alleys, the lines of which were to correspond with existing lines of occupants of the reservation, as near as might be consistent with the interests of the United States. ”