Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1895-09-12
The State Lieu Land Scandal.


place. The land department of the
state of Oregon is confronted with
a scandal that it cannot avoid and
which will require great finesse to
prevent being made public in allits
outrageous details.
For many years there has existed
at Salem what has been known as
the 'state school land ring" 1t
consists of a set of politicians and
their strikers and its operations
was in the lieu land business. Its
operations has covered many years
and has made several ofits members
wealthy.
To understand the matter little
more fully we will describe their
methods of operation and what
they worked on. In all the public
reservations withdrawn from settle
ment in Oregon, and in many of
the railroad and wagon road land
grants, the state of Oregon was
entitled to the 10Th and goth sec
tions as school land. OF course in
lieu thereof any of the citizens of
the state prior to January of this
year, were allowed to enter any
government land within the state.
Thus originated the title of "lieu
land" In order to make a selec-
ton OF such lieu land, however, the
party seeking to make such entry
had first to discover the base, or
the particular piece of school land
that the state had been deprived of,
and file it with his application to
make an entry and purchase of
lieu land. Naturally the only
place where he could fiud such
base, was in the Office Of the clerk
of the state school land board.
Here is where the ring got in its
work. 1t controlled the clerk of
the above board, and a person
seeking to find base for lieu land
was invariably denied such know.
ledge by the clerk and sent to some
member of the ring on the outside,
who for cash consideration would
consent to find such base. This
figure was usually set at about
Sc so per acre, and the would-be
entryman soon found that he would
be compelled to pay this blood
money or not get his land, and in
this way the ring reaped thousands
of dollars for its members.
Another big field Of operations,
and the one in which the ring per-
haps coined the most money, was
in the selection of lieu land in the
timber land regions, and selling it
out to timber syndicates. By this
method they could operate almost
wholly within their own ranks,
and as a result thousands of acres
of the best tim Der lands in Oregon,
and some of them right in Lincoln
county, has passed into the hands
of Eastern syndicates, and the
pockets of the ring has been lined
with ill-gotten wealth. This line
Of business became so profitable
that the ring soon used up all the
available bases. This did not
deter them in their operations,
however. They begun to use the
same bases over again. For in
stance a selection that had been
made in 1892 for school land that
had been lost in the Oregon City
land district would be taken in
1893 into the Roseburg district, OF
over to the Burns district, and
again used. This fraud would moi
be discovered for long lapse Of
time and would give the conspira-
tors an ample opportunity to dis
pose of the land, so that when the
selection was Cancelled by the
government, as it is bound to be,
the ring had disposed Of it and had
the money safely in their own
pockets. This last phase Of the
steal is the one coming TO light
now. Selections that were made
in 1892 and 1893, are now being
checked up by the U. S. land de-