Great Northern Ry Co v. Steinke

• Decision Date: 19 February 1923
• Docket Number: No. 152,152
• Citation: 261 U.S. 119,67 L.Ed. 564,43 S.Ct. 316
• Parties: GREAT NORTHERN RY. CO. v. STEINKE et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

261 U.S. 119

43 S.Ct. 316

67 L.Ed. 564

GREAT NORTHERN RY. CO.

v STEINKE et al.

No. 152.

Argued Dec. 15, 1922.

Decided Feb. 19, 1923.

Messrs. C. J. Murphy, of Grand Forks, N. D., M. L. Countryman, of St. Paul, Minn., and Fred L. Fishback, of Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Mr. Justice VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a suit by the Great Northern Railway Company to determine conflicting claims to a small tract of land adjoining its right of way at Springbrook, N. D. That company claims the tract under a grant of station grounds made by the United States to the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company, and the defendants claim the same under a patent from the United States to Philander Pollock. The defendants prevailed in the trial court and in the Supreme Court of the state. 183 N. W. 1013. A writ of certiorari brings the case here. 257 U. S. 629, 42 Sup. Ct. 92, 66 L. Ed. 405.

At a time when the lands in that vicinity were public lands, the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company, being duly qualified so to do, sought and secured a right of way through the same under the Act of March 3, 1875, c. 152, 18 Stat. 482 (Comp. St. §§ 4921-4926), and constructed its road within and along such right of way. At the same time and in the same way it sought and secured certain lands two miles east of the present site of Springbrook for station grounds. Afterwards it changed its station to a point adjacent to such site, and proceeded to give up the original station grounds and to select others, including the tract in controversy, in their stead. It made the requisite survey of the new grounds, prepared a map thereof and on January 12, 1900, filed the map in the local land office, whence it was to be transmitted to the General Land Office and laid before the Secretary of the Interior. The map was returned to the company for amendment in particulars not shown in the record, was amended accordingly, and on July 18, 1900, was refiled in the local land office. The local officers then transmitted it to the General Land Office, and on October 18, 1900, the Secretary of the Interior approved it, 'subject to all valid existing rights.' On being advised of the Secretary's approval, the local officers should have noted the disposal on the townshi plat and tract book in their office, but this was not done. The approved map and all papers relating thereto were preserved in the General Land Office in the usual way, and a certified copy of the map and of some of the papers was produced in evidence at the trial.

On January 12, 1900, when the map was first filed in the local land office, the tract in question was public land and free from any claim; but before July 18, 1900, when the map was refiled, the tract was included, with other land, in a preliminary homestead entry made by John Welo. That entry remained intact until May 13, 1901, and was then relinquished by Welo and canceled. On August 19, 1902, the tract was included, with other land, in a preliminary homestead entry made by Philander Pollock, and on June 1, 1903, he released the 40-acre subdivision containing this tract from that entry, and made another and unrelated entry of the same subdivision. Under the latter entry a patent for the full subdivision was issued to him on February 28, 1906.

Pollock and others, whom he interested in the project, platted the greater part of the 40-acre subdivision, including the tract in question, as a town site. The defendants purchased from them some of the lots, which, as platted, cover part of this tract.

The station grounds shown on the map approved by the Secretary of the Interior consist of a long strip of land 100 feet wide extending along one side of the right of way at Springbrook. The tract in question is part of that strip and is in close proximity to the tracks and depot.

The rights of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company in the road, right of way, station grounds, etc., passed to the plaintiff, the Great Northern Railway Company, in 1907.

The Supreme Court of the state, in rejecting the plaintiff's claim under the grant of station grounds and sustaining the defendants' claim under the patent to Pollock, put its decision on two independent grounds. One was that, when the map was refiled in the local land office, and when it was approved by the Secretary of the Interior, the tract in question was included in Welo's preliminary homestead entry, and therefore was not subject to disposal under the act of 1875, and that the Secretary excluded it from his approval by making the latter 'subject to all valid existing rights.' The other was that thereafter the land officers permitted Pollock to make an entry of the 40-acre subdivision containing this tract, issued to him a certificate of final entry making no reference to the railroad company's claim, and gave him a patent purporting to cover the entire subdivision, and that the defendants purchased from Pollock in good faith, relying on the final certificate and patent so issued to him.

The pertinent provisions of the act of 1875 are as follows:

'Section 1. That the right of way through the public lands of the United States is hereby granted to any railroad company duly organized under the laws of any state or territory, except the District of Columbia, or by the Congress of the United States, which shall have filed with the Secretary of the Interior a copy of its articles of incorporation, and due proofs of its organization under the same, to the extent of one hundred feet on each side of the central line of said road; and also the right to take, from the public lands adjacent to the line of said road, material, earth, stone, and timber necessary for the construction of said railroad; also ground adjacent to such right of way for station buildings, depots, machine shops, side tracks, turnouts, and water stations, not to exceed in amount twenty acres for each station, to the extent of one station for each ten miles of its road.'

'Sec. 3. That the Legislature of the proper territory may provide for the manner in which private lands and possessory claims on the public lands of the United States may be condemned; and where such provision shall not have been made, such condemnation may be made in accordance with § ction three of the act entitled [an act to amend an act entitled] 'An act to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes, approved July first, eighteen hundred and sixty-two,' approved July second, eighteen hundred and sixty-four.

'Sec. 4. That any railroad company desiring to secure the benefits of this act, shall, within twelve months after the location of any section of twenty miles of its road, if the same be upon surveyed lands, and, if upon unsurveyed lands, within twelve months after the survey thereof by the United States, file with the register of the land office for the district where such land is located a profile of its road; and upon approval thereof by the Secretary of the Interior the same shall be noted upon the plats of said office; and thereafter all such lands over which such right of way shall pass shall be disposed of subject to such right of way: Provided, that if any section of said road shall not be completed within five years after the location of said section, the rights herein granted shall be forfeited as to any such uncompleted section of said road.

'Sec. 5. That this act shall not apply to any lands within the limits of any military, park, or Indian reservation, or other lands especially reserved from sale, unless such right of way shall be provided for by treaty-stipulation or by act of Congress heretofore passed.'

Comp. St. §§ 4921, 4923-4925.

As with other public land laws, the Secretary of the Interior was empowered to prescribe regulations for carrying the act into effect. Such regulations were prescribed. Those in force at the times to which the controversy relates were promulgated November 4, 1898. 27 L. D. 663.

In some respects the act was loosely drafted, but through a long course of administration in the land department and many adjudications in the courts its meaning and effect have come to be pretty well settled. Its purpose was to enhance the value and hasten the settlement of the public lands by inviting and encouraging the construction and operation of needed and convenient lines of railroad through them. Nothing was granted for private use or disposal, nor beyond what Congress deemed reasonably essential, presently or prospectively, for the quasi public used indicated. Because of this, the act has been regarded as requiring a more liberal construction than is accorded to private grants or to the extensive land grants formerly made to some of the railroads. United States v. Denver & Rio Grande Ry. Co., 150 U. S. 1, 8 14, 14 Sup. Ct. 11, 37 L. Ed. 975; And see Kindred v. Union Pacific R. R. Co., 225 U. S. 582, 596, 32 Sup. Ct. 780, 56 L. Ed. 1216; Nadeau v. Union Pacific R. R. Co., 253 U. S. 442, 444, 40 Sup. Ct. 570, 64 L. Ed. 1002. There is no provision in the act for the issue of a patent, but this does not detract from the efficacy of the grant. The approved map is intended to be the equivalent of a patent defining the grant conformably to the intendment of the act (Noble v. Union River Logging R. Co., 147 U. S. 165, 13 Sup. Ct. 271, 37 L. Ed. 123), and to relate back, as against intervening claims, to the date when the map was filed in the local land office for transmission through the General Land Office to the Secretary of the Interior (Stalker v. Oregon Short Line R. R. Co., 225 U. S. 142, 32 Sup. Ct. 636, 56 L. Ed. 1027).

In the state court the defendants sought to make the point that when the company secured the station grounds two miles east of the present site of Springbrook it exhausted its...