Court Opinion

ID: 8846055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 16:57:50.599091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:20.811411
License: Public Domain

ROSS, District Judge,
(concurring.) The bill in this case shows upou its face that the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad was not deiinitely located and a plat thereof filed in the office of the commissioner of the general land office until July 6, 1882. Until that time the grant to that company did not attach to any particular tract or tracts of land. Long before that date, according to the averments of the bill, the particular tract of land here in controversy was located by the defendants as mining ground, and under an application made by them on the 28th of August, 1872, to the proper local land office, they were, on the 28th of August, 1878, permitted to enter and pay for it under the laws of the United States relating to mineral lands, and subsequently, to wit, August 17, 1879, received from the government a patent purporting to convey to. them the premises as such mineral land. The grant to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company in express terms excepted from its operation all mineral lands. 13 St. p. 365. It is true that the sixth section of the act made it the duty of the president to cause the lands to be surveyed for 40 miles in width on both sides of the entire line of the road “after the general route shall he fixed, and as fast as may be required bv the construction of said railroad,” and it was declared that the odd sections of land granted should “not be liable to sale or entry or pre-emption before or after they are surveyed, except by said company, as provided in this act.” But there is in this provision no prohibition against the discovery by the officers of the land department of the government, or by anybody else, of the true character of the land embraced within the surveyed limits of 40 miles in width on both sides of the general route of the road. If, in making such surveys or otherwise, prior to the attaching, of the grant to any particular lands, it be ascertained that any lands that would otherwise fall within the grant are mineral in character, it is obvious that they would not he embraced by the grant, for the reason that by its very terms mineral lands are excepted from it. *262The bill in this case shows that many years prior to the attaching of the grant to any particular lands the tract in controversy was located as mining ground, was ascertained by the land department to be mineral in character, and was patented as such to the defendants under the laws of the United State relating to the disposal of mineral lands. True, the bill alleges that the evidence upon .which those proceedings were had was false and fraudulent, and that the officers of the land department were thereby deceived as to the true character of the land. If so, the patent can be annulled at the suit of the government; but as long as the government is content to let its patent stand, by which it, in effect, solemnly declares that, after due investigation of the facts by the officers to whom under the law such investigation is committed, the land was, at and prior to the time when the grant to the railroad company became effective, mineral land, and subject to ’ disposal under the laws relating to mineral lands, the company, which claims only under a grant which in terms excepts from its operation mineral lands, is not in a position to call in question the facts upon which the mineral patent is based. Those facts, including the question of the character of the land, which lay at the foundation of the proceedings, were open to contest in the land department on the part of any and. every person claiming an adverse interest therein, and an opportunity to make such contest was afforded by the published notice required by the statute referred to in the principal opinion. For these reasons J agree that the judgment of the circuit court be affirmed.