Land Should Be Settled, Developed and Disbursed to General Public

Land Should Be Settled, Developed and Disbursed to General Public

Please allow a response to Mr. McKean’s column on “The Local Value of Wilderness” in your March 21 issue. As a low-level party functionary and campaign contributor as well as a student of 20th century history and political science, I have written editorial page pieces on this subject. I have presented my concerns to candidates and elected officials in letters as well as face-to-face meetings when the opportunity has presented itself, for at least 30 years.

As a first step, I endorse the efforts of Senator Daines and Congressman Gianforte to “release” the WSA acreage to the various agencies for settlement, development and other means of disbursement to the general public.

With that said, a studied perspective on Federal land ownership is hereby preferred with emphasis on those areas annexed by the Omnibus Statehood Act of 1889. At the time, the Industrial Revolution was just beginning and the Manifest Destiny Era was near its peak. At that time, only 60,000 free white males (about the present population of Great Falls or Butte) were required to ratify statehood. Politicians of that era were, to say the least, whimsical and creative in delineating state lines, disregarding natural geopolitical boundaries in order to place their flag on large swaths of the empire. Montana, with the Continental Divide running through it and encompassing portions of the Oregon Compromise and Louisiana Purchase, is a case in point.

The Enabling Acts, attached to the Omnibus State Act regarding unclaimed land within state boundaries, allowed the federal government to admit the areas to the Union with a limited and unstable population. It also provided a means to contain newly arrived immigrants in Eastern population centers to provide industrialization, rather than scattering over an unmanageable expanse in search of land.

Today, the contiguous areas defined on current maps as the State of Montana contains a population nearing a million people, has a lone congressional token representative. where immigrants as well as refugees continue to enter the American controlled space, where industrial production has been curtailed or relocated overseas, where resource exploitation and development is prevented in favor of environmental as well as tourism interests, where available housing or real estate pricing is so inflated as to be unaffordable, and homeless tent cities extend for miles in some metropolitan areas, not to mention lower-income individuals more widely scattered here in the Intermountain West. How long before immigrant/refugee/lower-income class indigenous populations organize well enough to occupy and hold land and homes by fair means or foul? The Americans need to settle, exploit and develop their empire or risk losing it.

In order to maintain civil discourse and “color within the lines” politically speaking, I’ll leave it right there for now.