United States v. Holt State Bank

• Decision Date: 05 December 1923
• Docket Number: 6223.
• Citation: 294 F. 161
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. HOLT STATE BANK et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

294 F. 161

UNITED STATES v. HOLT STATE BANK et al.

No. 6223.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

December 5, 1923

S. W Williams, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., for the United States.

A. N Eckstrom, of Warren, Minn., and Ole J. Value, of Crookston Minn. (W. E. Rowe, of Crookston, Minn., on the brief), for appellees.

Before SANBORN and LEWIS, Circuit Judges, and McGEE, District Judge.

SANBORN Circuit Judge.

This is a suit in equity by the United States against the homesteaders and their successors in interest, the riparian owners of the lands on the shores of Mud Lake in Minnesota to quiet its title to the bed of that lake and to perpetually enjoin the defendants from making any farther claim thereto.

There was in the western part of Minnesota in 1889 in townships 156, north of range 42, and 156, north of range 41, west of the Fifth Principal Meridian, a body of water called Mud Lake, which covered an area of about 4,929 acres. The Chippewa Indians were occupying that part of Minnesota which included this lake and the land surrounding and in the vicinity of it. By the Act of January 14, 1889 (chapter 24, 25 Stat.p. 642), Congress authorized the acquisition of a relinquishment to the United States by those Indians of all their title and interest in and possession of this lake, the land bordering upon it and the lands in its vicinity, and provided that the lands so relinquished should be surveyed by the United States and sold to settlers in accordance with the provisions of its homestead laws for $1.25 per acre, and that the net proceeds of the sales should be placed in the treasury of the United States to the credit of the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota. Pursuant to this act, the Chippewa Indians ceded and relinquished to the United States all their rights and interests in and their possession of this lake, the lands bordering upon it and in the vicinity of it. Those lands were thereupon in 1892 surveyed under the direction of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and the report, field notes, and plats of the survey were filed in the General Land Office and approved by its Commissioner and the Secretary of the Interior. By this survey this lake was meandered and was designated on the plats as Mud Lake.

On May 15, 1906, the lands so surveyed were by the United States opened for entry under the provisions of the homestead laws and of the act of January 14, 1889. The defendants below in this suit are the purchasers, or the successors in interest of the purchasers, from the United States under this legislation of the lands bordering upon this lake and upon its meander line, and they claim as riparian owners their respective proportionate shares of the land in the bed of this lake, which has in later years become dry. A few of the patents issued by the United States to the lands upon the shores of this lake, that were issued since the year 1915 contain a restriction to this effect:

'It being expressly understood that the conveyance hereby made is limited to the land lying outside of the established meander line of Mud Lake.'

After the survey and meander line had been approved and filed in 1892, after the lands bordering on the lake had been opened for entry thereunder by the plaintiff on May 15, 1906, and after many homesteaders had entered lands bordering upon the lake under this legislation, and in the year 1916, the United States caused a survey of the land in the bed of Mud Lake to be made, declared this land opened for entry under its homestead laws, and after the year 1915 permitted homesteaders to the number of about 38 to enter upon it; but it has not yet issued patents therefor.

Between May 15, 1906, when the lands on the shores of Mud Lake were first opened for entry, and 1916, when the lands in the bed of the lake were declared open for entry, and in the years 1910 and 1911, under and in accordance with the laws of the state of Minnesota and pursuant to the orders and decree of the district court of Marshall county in that state, in a case of which that court had jurisdiction, a judicial ditch had been constructed across the land that was the bed of Mud Lake and most of the water upon this bed had been drained off.

In February, 1914, in a suit brought in that court in 1911 by one Albert Johnson, a riparian owner, against the other riparian owners on Mud Lake to determine their respective rights in the land that was in the bed of that lake, that court adjudged that the riparian owners were the owners of those portions of the bed of the lake which extended to the center thereof between the side lines of their respective tracts extended from the meander line to the center of the lake and established and fixed those lines by its decree.

Upon this state of facts and a large volume of evidence relative to the navigability of Mud Lake, counsel for the United States claimed that that lake never was navigable, that the title to the land in its bed was still in the United States, and that it was entitled to a decree to that effect and to the effect that the riparian owners be enjoined from making any further claims thereto. But the court below upon the final hearing found that Mud Lake was a navigable body of water when the plaintiff sold the lands on its shores to the defendants, or their predecessors in interest, although most of its waters subsequently were drained from it by the judicial ditch and its bed became comparatively dry in 1910 and 1911, that the United States had no title or interest in or to the lands in its bed, and it dismissed the plaintiff's bill. Counsel for the plaintiff has assigned this finding and this decree as error and earnestly contended that Mud Lake never was a navigable body of water, that, consequently, the title to its bed remained the property of the United States, and it was entitled to a decree in its favor.

Reduced to its lowest term, the case presents the single question: Is the United States the owner or are the homesteaders to whom it sold the lands bordering on Mud Lake in 1906 and subsequent years, and their successors in interest, the owners of the land in its bed. The answer to that question however, is not determined by the answer to the question whether Mud Lake was navigable or unnavigable in 1906,...