Source: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1130304
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 00:51:02+00:00

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LANDS UNDERLYING NONNAVIGABLE WATERS 135 lakes.167 If construed as attempting to destroy vested rights of property in the beds of such water sources, derived from grants of land by the United States without reservation and conferred by the State law, this State constitutional provision would itself be unconstitutional.168 Disposal of Upland and Riverbed In no case has the United States Supreme Court held that a State can deprive the United States of its title to lands underlying nonnavigable waters without its consent, or that a grant of uplands to private individuals, which does not in terms or by implication include the adjacent land under water, nevertheless operates to pass it to the State. On the contrary, the Court has said:169 The laws of the United States alone control the disposition of title to its lands. The States are powerless to place any limitation or restriction on that control. * * * The construction of grants by the United States is a federal not a state question, * * * and involves the consideration of state questions only insofar as it may be determined as a matter of federal law that the United States has impliedly adopted and assented to a state rule of construction as applicable to its conveyances. * * * In construing a convey- ance by the United States of land within a State, the settled and reasonable rule of construction of the State affords an obvious guide in determining what impliedly passes to the grantee as an incident to land expressly granted. * * * Where the United States owns the bed of a nonnavigable stream and the upland on one or both sides, it is free when disposing of the upland to retain all or any part of the riverbed.170 Whether in any particular instance the Government has done so is essentially a question of what the Government intended. Its intention, if not otherwise shown, will be that the conveyance be construed and given effect in this particular according to the law of the State in which the land lies. If there is no attempt or intent to dispose of a riverbed separately from the upland, the common law rule would be that conveyances of riparian tracts extend not merely to the waterline, but to the middle of the stream. The Court rejected a contention that the common law rule to this effect adopted in Oklahoma had been impliedly abrogated by the legislature. Late in 1959, the California Supreme Court made its first definite determination of what, in the settlement of a boundary line, is the center of a 161 Ozark-Mahoning Co. v. State, 76 N. Dak. 464, 472-173, 37 N. W. (2d) 488 (1949). See State v. Brace, 76 N. Dak. 314, 322-323, 36 N. W. (2d) 330 (1949). 168Bigelow v. Draper, 6 N. Dak. 152, 163, 69 N. W. 570 (1896). 169 United States v. Oregon, 295 U. S. 1, 27-28 (1935). ™ Oklahoma v. Texas, 258 U. S. 574, 591-592, 594-596 (1922). See Ozark-Mahoning Co. v. State, 76 N. Dak. 464, 469-470, 37 N. W. (2d) 488 (1949).

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