# History of Public School Education in Arizona/Chapter 9

Chapter IX.
THE SCHOOL LANDS.
The Arizona State land commission, created by an act of the legislature approved May 20, 1912, had its duties outlined by the act as follows:
To ascertain the character and value of the various bodies of land constituting the public land within the State and to recommend to the governor such as might be desirable for selection in satisfaction of the Federal grants to the State.
To personally examine and classify the school and other lands of the State with a view to aiding the legislature in the determination of a State land policy.
To determine the character and value of improvements on school and university lands held under lease prior to the admission of the State.
To grant permits for the continued occupancy of school and university lands held under lease before statehood.
The amendments to this law, passed April 11 and May 16 and 17, 1913, authorized the commission to care for, sell, or otherwise administer the timber and timber products upon the public lands of the State; to lease any lands not already leased; to take charge of all lands owned by the State except such as are under the specific use and control of State institutions; to prosecute and defend actions, prevent trespass, grant rights of way, and relinquish school lands within national forests settled upon prior to statehood; and to adjust the rights of lessees owning improvements on school or university lands and sell or lease the lands secured under the million-acre grant for the payment of certain county bonds and to select, manage, and dispose of desert lands to be reclaimed under the act of Congress of August 18, 1894, and the acts supplementary thereto known as the Carey land acts.
It follows, therefore, that the administration of the public lands intended for educational purposes was a part of but by no means all of the duties devolving on the commission. This study deals only with the lands devoted to education.
​These lands may be divided into two clearly defined groups:
I. The public-school lands of which sections 16 and 36 were reserved for the use of schools when the Territory was organized (Feb. 24, 1863) and to which sections 2 and 32 were added at the admission of the Territory as a State. The total area of the four sections in each township thus granted for the use of schools is 8,103,680 acres, of which 3,134,555.20 acres were still unsurveyed December 1, 1914, and 1,397,357.59 acres were included in the national forests.
II. The institutional lands granted by Congress at the admission of the State into the Union, amounting to 2,350,000 acres.
I. THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL LANDS.
While sections 16 and 36 were reserved in the act of February 24, 1863, for the use of the public schools, no authority to lease, sell, or administer these lands was given the Territorial authorities until the act of April 7, 1896. The correspondence of the governors with the Secretary of the Interior is full of arguments showing the importance and the necessity of granting such authority. Gov. Safford pointed out that squatters were trespassing on and taking up school lands and asked authority to sell or at any rate to lease. His example and requests were followed in turn by practically every succeeding governor with substantially the same reasons, and all were backed up from time to time by the legislature in passing memorials which showed the utmost anxiety to get their hands on this endowment provided for the coming children of the State. In 1883 and 1884, Gov. Tritle urged that the rights of control conceded to the States might well be granted to the Territories and argued truthfully that being deprived of this source of income meant that the citizens must support their schools by direct taxation, and that this was burdensome. He also urged that provision should be made for the selection of other lands to take the place of the worthless desert that covered many parts of the Territory. He renewed these recommendations in 1884 and 1885. Under the administration of Gov. Zulick permission to sell the school lands was again asked. Gov. Wolfley urged that settlers were then farming the school lands and paying no revenue and that the needs of the Territory would never be greater. Gov. Hughes estimated in 1895 that the funds from the school lands, if leased, would be from $75,000 to $100,000 annually, and so the story goes on to the end of the chapter. The Territory very much wished to get control of its school lands, but in this matter the Congress was fortunately adamant. A deaf ear was turned to all their proposals, and ​not until the act of April 7, 1896, was the authority given the Territory to even lease the lands.
(a) THE SALT RIVER SCHOOL LANDS.
These lands demand particular consideration because they are the oldest and best known of the school lands and because since the building of the Roosevelt dam—
it is evident that the inclusion of these lands in the Salt River Valley project, their admission to contractual rights in the stored waters of the Roosevelt Dam, while they remain in State ownership, is viewed with disfavor by the United States Government.
In the Salt River Valley reclamation project there are 13,003.59 acres of school land which at the date of statehood were held under lease by 202 lessees. This is the most valuable body of land, of similar area, in the State, and its careful and businesslike administration is of immense importance to the common-school fund. Its appraised value was $1,257,426.70, with appraised improvements amounting to $379,343.23. To these figures must be added a body of 1,496 acres of school lands under the Tempe Canal and independent of the Salt River project. This land is worth $146,975 and the improvements $42,363.65, making for the two tracts, together with the improvements, a total of $1,826,108.58, without considering water appropriations and privileges appurtenant to the land.
The occupation of this land by squatters and others dates back in some cases to 1870. As early as 1867 work was begun on some of the ditches, or canals, used in its irrigation. This work was continued and finally came to embrace the Salt, Maricopa, Grand, and Arizona Canals on the north, and the Tempe, Mesa, Utah, High Land, and Consolidated Canals on the south of the river, all of which are now included in the Salt River Valley project. It is estimated that when Congress gave the power of leasing school lands to the Territory in 1896, not less than 4,440 acres on the north side of the Gila and 2,820 acres on the south side were “under cultivation by squatters, who for varying periods had occupied the lands without warrant whatsoever and had enjoyed the fruits thereof without the payment of either rental or taxes.”
It thus became necessary that the Territory pass some enactment by which the interests and rights of the schools and of the squatters might be preserved.
The act of April 7, 1896, which finally gave the control of leases to the Territory, provided that the governor, the secretary of state, and the superintendent of public instruction, should, pending the ​enactment of laws and regulations, act as a board to lease the lands under rules and regulations proposed by the Secretary of the Interior, but there is no indication that they exercised their prerogative in this matter. The Territorial legislature, however, passed an act on March 18, 1897, which provided for the leasing of the school lands. The squatters who had previously occupied them were given a preferred right. In case they failed or refused to lease, and others wished to do so, their improvements were to be appraised in a manner provided by law and paid for by the new lessee. Improvements were described as being—
anything permanent in character, the result of labor or capital expended on such land in its reclamation or development, and the appropriation of water thereon, which has enhanced the value of the same beyond what said land would be worth had it been permitted to remain in its original state.
An addendum to this law enacted since provides that—
anyone making permanent improvements after leasing shall be allowed compensation therefor at the expiration of their lease, or anyone having to surrender their land before the expiration of their lease shall be entitled to all the benefits of this section.
These statutes remained the law until statehood, when the first legislature, recognizing the necessity of an “equitable adjustment of the reciprocal rights of the lessee residing on any of said land, and of the State” authorized and directed the issuing of permits for the further occupancy of the school lands held under Territorial lease pending final adjustment. After objection and opposition on the part of some lessees, and up to December 1, 1914, the date of the first report of the State land commission, 133 lessees had complied with the law, while 75 had not.
the order of priority in which each tract of land in Salt River Valley that had been regularly cultivated down to 1905, or to within five years of that time, was entitled to receive the waters of the Salt River, was determined and established.
This decree is of great significance, for it follows—
that lands which could claim the beneficial use of water upon them at a date not later than 1880, and were and are entitled to their proportionate share of the normal flow of the river up to the amount deemed by the Kent decree to be necessary for their proper irrigation, may be considered as having valuable water rights—rights under which they are reasonably assured of ample water during the entire season for the growing of practically any crop. But the lands upon which the application of water appears to have been of a later date must be content with water at such times or during such periods only as the records show the river to have furnished more than was necessary for the user of prior appropriations. They can only hope to be cultivated intermittently, during the season of high normal flow, and their cultivation likely must be confined to crops requiring the least amount of water. Such a right, it is plain, is of comparatively small value.
In the meantime the effort to cultivate more land and the constant demand for the development of more water had brought the United States into the work of permanent reclamation; for washouts came, droughts followed, fields went to waste, and highly improved farms reverted to their desert state until finally the United States Government was petitioned to intervene and save the valley through the national reclamation law enacted in 1903. The United States took over the larger part of the system of canals; old rights were then swept away or surrendered, and all that remained was the priority of right, later legally established by the “Kent decree,” accruing and attaching to the land itself and not to any individual, either owner or lessee, to the normal flow of Salt River. These rights, to the extent only that they were dependent upon the river’s normal flow, were and are recognized by the United States Reclamation Service, which controls not only the normal flow of the river, but the stored waters of the Roosevelt reservoir. Thus the old monetary values ceased to exist after the advent of the Reclamation Service. This service has indeed proposed that the school lands be denied the right to contract for the stored waters of the Roosevelt reservoir, while individuals have thought that the clause in the reclamation act which provides that “no right to the use of water for land in private ownership shall be sold for a tract exceeding 160 acres to any one landowner,” would exclude the school lands altogether, but this view was rejected in the interpretation of the Secretary of the Interior, and the final recommendation in the matter, as reported in 1909 by the Reclamation Commission, was that school lands, both cultivated and uncultivated, were not then to be considered a part of the project at that time, but might be considered as a new unit dependent upon the ​development of additional water supply for such lands. As the prospect was for an abundant supply of water from Roosevelt reservoir, it was thought that there would be at least temporarily enough water, but if this was to be permanent it would depend on the development of an additional water supply. But this situation in no case affected the rights which the lands might possess under the Kent decree. The opinion of the commission was that authority should be given for the sale of the lands and that the proceeds should be placed in an inviolable permanent fund, for in their present status the lands are being sadly neglected.
(b) AMOUNT AND DISTRIBUTION OF SCHOOL LANDS.
According to the first report of the Arizona land commission in 1914, the 8,103,680 acres included in sections 2, 16, 32, and 36 which have been devoted to the public schools, are divided as follows:
| | Acres. |
| In national forests | 1,397,357.59 |
| In Indian reservations | 1,746,860.01 |
| In other reservations | 76,164.11 |
| Unsurveyed and unreserved | 3,134,555.20 |
| Appropriated by United States entry, subject to indemnity | 168,707.62 |
| In place, not leased | 1,184,985.52 |
| In place, under lease or permit | 395,049.95 |
| Total | 8,103,680.00 |
When the 1,580,035.46 acres in place and leased or not leased are classified from the standpoint of agricultural, woodland, or grazing usefulness, it was found that there were 303,333.62 acres susceptible of some form of agricultural development; 143,189.48 acres had woodland value; and 1,549,980.02 acres had grazing value. It was estimated that these 1,580,035.46 acres were worth $6,266,505.79 and the improvements upon them (structures, windmills, tanks, ditches, and canals, clearing and leveling, fencing, perennial crops, and water rights) were worth an additional $848,976.47, making a total of $7,115,482.26. Prior to statehood there were 264,993.34 acres of school lands leased under 806 leases, and at the rates then charged these leases brought $16,397.39 per year. With statehood the rental values were revived and standardized at prices ranging from $20 per section up for grazing lands. For the three years beginning March 16, 1912, and ending with March 15, 1915, the earnings were: 1912–13, $22,465.36; 1913–14, $32,148.48; 1914–15, $31,792.66; 1915–16, $35,852.14; 1916 (Jan. 1–July 1), $40,349.12. For the whole period between February 14, 1912, and March 15, 1915, the total earnings were $88,367.17, of which there had been paid in $43,547.51, and there was then due $44,819.66.
​Receipts derived from the lease of school lands in earlier years were:
| 1899 (6 months ending June 30) | $897.73 |
| 1899–1900 | 3,936.04 |
| 1900–1901 | 4,121.71 |
| 1901–2 | 3,576.66 |
| 1902 (6 months, July to December) | 1,726.27 |
The land commission also gives the cash receipts and the earnings not received from the school lands under the Salt River project for the year ending March 15, 1915, as $13,241.10, of which $1,422.39 had been received and $11,818.71 had not. In the same way and for the same time the lands under the Tempe canal had earned $1,999.97, of which $594 had been received and $1,405.97 was still due.
(c) NATIONAL FOREST LANDS.
As already pointed out, of the public school lands as much as 1,397,357.59 acres lie within the boundaries of the national forests. Under the enabling act the title to these lands is not vested in the State, but they are administered as a part of the national forest to which they belong, and such part of the gross income of the forest is paid the State for the common-school fund as the school land included within the forest bears to the whole of the forest. It is estimated that the part of the national forests belonging to the State makes up about one-ninth of the whole national forest area in the State and that Federal administration is more successful than it could be in State hands.
At the time of the admission of Arizona there were 1,126 leases of surveyed and unsurveyed State school lands in the national forests, covering 456,073.94 acres, at a rental of $20,048.74. Of these leases there were canceled 320, covering 191,080.60 acres, and leaving 806 leases covering 264,993.34 acres.
The leases have been paying in the last few years as follows (for schools only):
| From June 20 to June 30, 1910 | $440.50 |
| From July 1, 1910, to June 30, 1911 | 16,285.68 |
| From July 1, 1911, to June 30, 1912 | 27,737.71 |
| From July 1, 1912, to June 30, 1913 | 36,226.65 |
| 1913 (estimated) | 40,000.00 |
This is not all the income to the State from this source, for, as a matter of fact, the State and the counties receive in all about 46 per cent of the total gross receipts from the national forests within the State. The expenses of administration are paid by the Federal Government. The gross revenue is divided as follows: 25 per cent is ​paid to the counties, in proportion to the forest area in each for the joint benefit of the common schools and roads; 10 per cent is expended on the roads within the forests under direction of the Secretary of Agriculture, and about 11 per cent is paid to the State as the proportion to which the school fund is entitled under the terms of the enabling act.
The total undivided forest, school, and road fund in the last five years has been:
| 1911–12 | $55,385.62 |
| 1912–13 | 151,039.75 |
| 1913–14 | 74,659.49 |
| 1914–15 | 63,398.34 |
| 1915–16 | 59,807.89 |
(d) SCHOOL LANDS ON INDIAN RESERVATIONS.
Of the public-school lands included in sections 2, 16, 32, and 36, the sum of 1,746,860.01 acres is included in Indian reservations. About 24 per cent of the acreage of the whole State is bound up in Indian reservations, and of this amount almost exactly one-tenth would of right belong to the schools. The school lands thus included in the reservations make up about 21.5 per cent of the total school possessions. The largest of these tracts is the 903,837.51 acres within the Navajo Reservation, and the smallest the 560 acres within the Mojave Reservation. The San Carlos Apaches cover 177,920 acres and the White Mountain Apaches (Fort Apache) almost an identical amount. The revised statutes of the United States provide that when such school lands fall within the limits of Indian reservations the State may either select other lands of equal value or it may await the extinction of the Indian title. A preliminary survey of these lands made by the land commission of the State brought the conclusion that with certain exceptions the school lands within the reservations should be relinquished and indemnity lands taken in their place, for they are practically all desert. This was regarded as especially true of the Navajo and Moqui lands, which contain 1,177,945.09 acres, and which, after careful investigation, were considered as practically worthless. With reference to the two Apache reservations, making up a total of 355,679.25 acres, and the Kaibab and Colorado River reservations containing 41,267.65 acres, it was thought best for the State to await the extinguishment of the Indian title, for the Colorado River lands are susceptible of irrigation either by pumping or diversion, while portions of the Apache lands are well watered and susceptible of extensive development.
​Of the remaining school lands, 168,707.62 acres are appropriated by United States entry, and so subject to indemnity; 76,164.11 acres are reported as in other reservations, and 3,134,555.20 acres as unsurveyed and unreserved, but the land commission is of the opinion that these lands when available will average quite as high in value as those now in place. The total withdrawal for survey up to January 1, 1917, amounted to 4,346,145 acres.
Although the public schools possess some very valuable tracts of land, like the 25,000 acres under the Salt River and Yuma Government projects and many other tracts which fall within well-settled and well-developed districts, it will be found on comparing these lands with the institutional lands, that their average value is in general low. This is because large sections fall in the mountains and in localities that possess no advantages or possibilities except for grazing, while some tracts are occasionally totally barren.
II. THE INSTITUTIONAL LANDS.
It is now possible to turn from the public-school lands to the institutional lands. The amount of these lands, and the definite purpose to which each allotment has been assigned, has been considered already.
It remains only to review briefly the progress made in selecting these lands from the public domain. The lands granted the State for institutions by the enabling act amounted to 2,350,000 acres, and by the terms of the act they were to be selected by a commission composed of the governor, the surveyor general, or some other person acting with the authority of that officer, and the attorney general. To meet the requirements of the law the chairman of the State land commission has performed the duties of the surveyor general. Up to December 1, 1914, the date of his first report, formal selection had been made of 636,661.16 acres, of which patents for 289,358.12 acres had been issued, while an additional amount of 3,993,235 acres had been withdrawn from settlement for survey and selection, so that in all the commission has initiated the State’s claim on a total of 4,629,896.16 acres. With the selection of these institutional lands goes also the selection of indemnity public-school lands, “to reimburse the common-school grant for such portions of the place lands granted for that purpose as have been or may hereafter be alienated by settlers prior to the survey of the land or prior to the rights of the State accruing.” On December 1, 1914, there had been thus alienated 168,707.62 acres, “and this amount, as the public land surveys go forward, will increase.”
In selecting these institutional lands and withdrawing them from survey the principle has been followed that they should have either a ​present or a prospective agricultural value. This has been done on the theory that (1) the lands susceptible of cultivation or of reclamation by any method will ultimately be the most valuable, and (2) that the reservation of lands “at present fit only for grazing, but possessing the elements of a much higher degree of economic usefulness, spells the highest type of true conservation and the insurance of steady and sane development.” In accord with these ideas, out of the 636,661.16 acres selected and patents to which have been asked, it is estimated that 618,891.89 acres “are susceptible of some form of agricultural development,” that 578,193.16 acres have a grazing value, and that 8,744.61 acres have a woodland value. The lands selected lie mostly in Cochise, Graham, Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai, and Yuma Counties, and out of the 2,350,000 acres given, there are yet to be selected 1,713,339.65 acres. None have been located in Gila, Greenlee, or Santa Cruz Counties.
Of all the institutions thus favored with public lands, the miners’ hospital and the military institutions have alone to date located practically all their lands.
Under the congressional act of February 18, 1881, 72 sections of land were given to the Territory “for the use and support of a university.” In 1882 Hon. Moses Hazeltine Sherman, then Territorial superintendent of public instruction, filed on 45,678.68 acres of land in Coconino County and now embraced in the Coconino and Tusayan National Forests. Of these lands 36,890.14 acres were approved in 1890. In 1904 a further grant of 320 acres for a desert laboratory was selected near Tucson. The university therefore has 37,210.14 acres, and there is a balance of 8,869.86 acres still to be selected. The land already patented embraces 58½ sections; some 3,596.24 acres are suitable in some measure for agricultural purposes; the entire area is most excellent for grazing but “by far the greatest value of the land lies in its magnificent stand of western yellow pine,” estimated on February 1, 1913, as amounting to 300,000,000 feet of merchantable lumber for the entire area. The university lands, as well as school and institutional lands, are administered by the land commission.
The land commission gives in its first report (p. 165) the total amount of receipts from State lands for schools, February 14, 1912, to November 30, 1915, as school lands, $131,633.85; university lands, $61,740.66.
The land commission discusses also the necessity of a flexible land policy. It advocates—
a policy of land efficiency, elimination of energy and money waste, clear understanding and hearty cooperation between Government and citizen. The ​plan includes classification, demonstration, and in necessary cases reclamation, directly by the State or by cooperation with private individuals or with the Federal Government. Classification should be scientific and thorough. * * * Demonstration would prove an invaluable chart for prospective purchasers. * * * Reclamation is essential if the highest efficiency of some hundreds of thousands of Arizona’s so-called desert acres is to be realized, and if the cry for population is to be adequately answered.
The first land commission report urges also “the necessity existing for the establishment, by law, of separate funds corresponding to the different purposes for which lands, granted or confirmed by the enabling act, are being administered by the commission.”
III. THE LAND LAW OF 1915.
The State land commission of Arizona created by act of May 20, 1912 (ch. 93), was by that act given a lease of life extending to the end of the legislative session of 1915. It therefore became necessary to reestablish the commission by a new act. This was done by chapter 5, second special session, approved on June 26, 1915. This act provided for a State land department and created the office of commissioner of State lands to carry out the provision of the act. The State land department is composed of a body of five, made up of the governor, secretary of state, attorney general, State treasurer, and State auditor. They were to appoint the State land commissioner and were to sell or lease lands. The commissioner was in charge of all State lands except such as are under the specific use and control of State institutions. He and his assistants were required to give bond and make a semiannual report. The governor, the land commissioner, and the attorney general were constituted a board to make selections of lands and perform other duties pertaining to securing titles. This board reproduces the old board created by the act of 1912 and to whom the executive work of the State land commission was then intrusted. Lands were to be classified as agricultural, grazing, timber, etc. They were to be appraised, and owners were entitled to reimbursement for improvements. Lands might be leased for not more than five years; not more than 160 acres of agricultural land or 640 acres grazing land to one person, association, or corporation. Grazing lands were to be leased for not less than 3 cents per acre and agricultural lands for not less than 2½ per cent of their estimated value. Leases reserved to the State oil, gas, coal, ​ore, minerals, fertilizers, and fossils. Lessees who did not renew leases might remove their improvements or sell them to the new lessee or purchaser.
State lands in general are subject to appraisement and sale. Those containing minerals or oil or adjacent to such lands in private lands are withheld from sale. The commissioner might sell without application, but total yearly sales were limited to 200,000 acres, and this amount was not to include more than 320 acres of lands susceptible of immediate cultivation, except irrigable lands. The minimum price of such lands was $3 per acre and of lands in irrigation projects not less than $25 per acre. The terms of sale were 1 per cent of purchase price when the successful bidder was announced; 4 per cent on delivery of certificate of sale; the remainder in 38 annual payments with interest at 5 per cent. The purchaser might discharge the whole debt at any time by paying interest in advance for six months. If the purchaser failed to pay principal and interest when due, the certificate of purchase was to be forfeited.
In accord with the directions of the constitution the act of 1915 created 15 special funds to receive the moneys accruing from the sale of the public lands. These funds are as follows: (a) Permanent school fund; (b) university land fund; (c) legislative, executive, and judicial buildings fund; (d) penitentiary land fund; (e) asylum for the insane land fund; (f) schools and asylums for the deaf, dumb, and blind land fund; (g) miners’ hospital for disabled miners’ land fund; (h) normal school land fund; (i) State charitable, penal, and reformatory institutions land fund; (j) agricultural and mechanical college land fund; (k) school of mines land fund; (l) military institutes land fund; (m) county bonds land fund; (n) State land administrative land fund; (o) State land classification and appraisement fund. Of these funds perhaps all except those numbered c, d, e, and g bore either directly or indirectly on the subject of public education.
The State treasurer was directed to invest the money belonging to any of these permanent funds in United States bonds, Arizona bonds, or in bonds of the counties, municipalities, and school districts of the State, or in first mortgages on farm lands.
It will be noted that the new law increases the power of the land department. It is now authorized to lease mineral lands; to conduct investigations and experiments to determine which lands are suitable for agriculture, which may be made so by the development of water, and which are suitable for grazing purposes only. It also has power to make and file water locations and appropriations, reservoir, dam, and power sites; to control and dispose of stone and gravel and ​other land products. The receipts of the land commission are now assigned to the proper fund to which they belong, and which were created by the act of 1915. The permanent school fund received:
| July 1 to Dec. 31, 1915 | $36,805.73 |
| Jan. 1 to June 30, 1916 | 53,542.39 |
| July 1 to Dec. 31, 1916 | 137,741.67 |
The institutions land funds were:
| Jan, 1 to June 30, 1916 | $6,124.65 |
| July 1 to Dec. 31, 1916 | 18,961.35 |
After the selection and patenting of the school and institutional lands, the most important duties of the land department are those connected with the appraising, leasing, and selling of these lands to settlers. The demand is steadily increasing. In the first half year of administration under the present law, the period from July 1 to December 31, 1915, the total applications for all counties were 604, covering 249,350.01 acres. The total number of applications for these lands from the date of statehood, February 14, 1912, to December 31, 1916, was 15,939, of which 8,592 applications or more than half were received in the six months between July 1 and December 31, 1916. During this same six months’ period a total of 648,500 acres were selected by the State, and there were still to be selected by the terms of the enabling act a balance of 200,000 acres of institutional lands.
* ↑ Revised Statutes, 1913, ch. 1, title 43.
* ↑ Ibid., ch. 3, title 43; ch. 4, title 43; chs. 1 and 2, title 43.
* ↑ Report of Governor of Arizona to the Secretary of the Interior for 1883, p. 13; 1884, p. 11; and 1885, p. 17.
* ↑ See Report of Governor of Arizona to Secretary of the Interior for 1887, p. 8.
* ↑ See U. S. Stat. L., vol. 29, p. 90.
* ↑ The last section of this supplementary act was apparently never invoked.
* ↑ Figures from Report of Land Commission, 1912–1914, p. 63.
* ↑ See Reports State Treasurer for 1911–12 to 1915–16.
* ↑ See Report of Land Commission, 1912–1914, p. 63.
* ↑ Ch. 8, p. 88.
* ↑ The total number of acres granted on this account up to Jan. 1, 1917, was 707,357.16. The amount “awaiting approval” by the Land Office was 1,308,505.20 acres, and there then remained to be selected a total of 334,137.64 acres.
* ↑ This discussion of the public lands in Arizona granted by the Federal Government for the use of schools is based on the report of the State land commission of Arizona for the period between June 6, 1912 (the date of its organization under the law of May 20, 1912), and Dec. 1, 1914. This report contains a detailed discussion and review of the whole subject as relating to Arizona and presents both an interesting and valuable study of the subject. The first three biennial reports for July 1, 1915, to Dec. 31, 1916, have been consulted also.
* ↑ See acts, second special session, 1915, pp. 13–57.
* ↑ See State treasurer’s reports.