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Historians may not treat the Ronald Reagan presidency well for one simple reason: it didn't settle anything. Recall the hot issues of 1980 -- abortion, federal deficit, defense spending, public morality, crime, welfare -- and note that they're still issues today.
Among these failures was the Sagebrush Rebellion.
About 20 years ago, some ranchers, miners and county
commissioners in the West got angered by federal land
policies. They agitated for state control of public
lands.
After calling himself a fellow Sagebrush Rebel, Reagan appointed James Watt as secretary of the interior. Watt was supposed to make the rebellion go away. He failed. It's back with a vengeance, as evidenced by bombings, attacks and a dispute within our own congressional delegation.
Rep. Wayne Allard has co-sponsored a law which would turn federal land now administered by the Bureau of Land Management over to the states. That's about 7.2 million acres in Colorado, or 11 percent of the state.
This is opposed by Rep. David Skaggs, who could point out that the states had their chance years ago. When Herbert Hoover was president, the administration proposed giving this land to the states. They turned it down.
Environmentalists seem opposed to any transfer from federal control, but there are some good reasons for environmentalists to support a transfer.
State governments are too poor to support things like below-cost timber sales, royalty-free mining and below-market grazing fees. The Colorado State Land Board, for instance, is constitutionally required to get the highest return from state lands.
Every time the land board tried to do a favor for a logger, miner or rancher, and some other party -- the Nature Conservancy, for example -- made a higher bid, the land board would be forced to go for the money. It might be cheaper to buy land than legislators, and at the least, the process of determining land use would be out in the open at a public auction, rather than the result of campaign contributions and lobbying.
Another environmental benefit is that states lack the resources for the large-scale degradation that the federal government performs in the West. No state produces or tests nuclear bombs, missiles or nerve gas. No state could produce the damage that the federal government has caused.
Granted, there are some good arguments against transfer. Some Wall Street treasury-note holder might point out that the public lands are part of his collateral, and the courts frown on disposing of property when there's a potential lien against it.
Nor can we neglect the just claims of history. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was just one of hundreds of Michiganders who gave their lives to conquer the West on behalf of all Americans -- not just Coloradans, Wyomingites, Utahns, Nevadans, etc. Is it fair to expect all Americans to make the supreme sacrifice in seizing land from the Indians, and then turn the spoils over to a select few?
Another fear is that, if the states get control, then the land will be sold to private parties, which means wealth individuals and big corporations. The places where we plebeians enjoy hiking, hunting and fishing would become private preserves for the wealthy.
Not that this would bother the current Congress, but it does suggest a solution: A new Homestead Act.
The idea is not original with me; I first read of it from one Slim Wolfe, a stone mason and dulcimer player in Villa Grove. He thought it might reduce urban crime and crowding.
That is open to argument. By all accounts at hand, the Homestead Act of 1862 did not empty the tenements of New York or make life more precious in the Bowery. But let's look at the potential benefits in rural areas.
Homesteading would ease housing pressures in exclusive resort areas. Because so much land is public around an Aspen or Jackson Hole, the small fraction of private land commands premium prices. The price is even higher for parcels abutting public land because the buyers feel confident that they will never run the risk of neighbors, let alone neighbors of an inferior economic or social class.
And then the modern homesteaders arrive. Immediately more private land is open to housing, and so prices drop as the supply increases. This should discourage the wealthy second-home types who erect palaces as investments.
The new homesteaders would be required to get a living from their properties, which means they'd live simple rural lives with clotheslines, privies, wood piles, junk heaps, dung hills -- further depressing property values on all trophy estates within view.
So a new homestead act could solve economic and social problems in mountain towns, if it worked in the same way that the original homestead act was envisioned.
And if it worked the way that homesteading generally worked in actual practice -- frauds, chicanery, hustles, swindles -- then it would enrich speculators, land barons and attorneys. Since they thrive now, we'd be no worse off.
So what have we got to lose? Forget turning the land over to the states, and open it to homesteading.
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