Viewing James H. Baker: "Government Lands" (1878).

James H. Baker: "Government Lands" (1878).

James Heaton Baker was United States Surveyor General for Minnesota from 1875 to 1879. In 1878, he contributed a short article on the history of the public lands in the state for the annual report of the Minnesota Commissioner of Statistics. In it, Baker describes the background of federal grants of land to the state for schools (via the 1849 Organic Act and the 1857 Enabling Act), public buildings (via the Enabling Act), the university (in 1851), agricultural colleges (via the 1862 Morrill Act), swamp-lands (in 1860), and saline lands (via the Enabling Act). He concludes with a paragraph on land grants to railroads.

The Minnesota Supreme Court's decision in St. Paul & Chicago Railway Company v. Brown, 24 Minn. 517 (1877), is posted in an Appendix. There the court held that a railroad which had complied with a law granting it swamp-lands if it constructed a line from St. Paul to Winona was entitled under that legislation and contract law to select parcels of other state-owned swamp-lands even though they had already been appropriated for other public purposes.

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