[or-roots] Swamp Act of 1850

[Leslie Chapman]

Glad you brought that up Glen;

I had never heard of it til the PLSO con this year at Vancouver, it came up
in one of our case studys of resurveying and how to allot property against
previous surveys with errors in them.

It seems this act was sort of a loophole for states to distribute land for
$1 an acre on a 20 cents up front and the rest on time deal that had holes
in it you could fly the moon through, it seems that all that was required to
designate "swamp" was the sworn testimony of a "local official" that the
pertinent land flooded annually, I gather from the case laws and tenor of
some of the stuff I see when I google that term that some of this sworn
testimony must have been based on condensation of heavy dew, they talk about
large tracts of the Sierra Nevada mtns going under that act and desert land
and such.

I couldn't find a clear definition of it, but the basis apparently was to
get "useless" swamp land in private hands so it could be drained and become
"productive" which given the history of massive flood damage caused by
draining this land in the last fifty years is in hind sight one of the
stupidest government programs ever.

Les C

Subject: Re: [or-roots] Donation Land Claims-land patents


Les
Do not forget the Swamp Act was also in there also.
Glen

--
Glen A. Jones