United States v. Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company
| Decision Date | 01 October 1878 |
| Citation | 98 U.S. 334,25 L.Ed. 198 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES v. BURLINGTON AND MISSOURI RIVER RAILROAD COMPANY |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
APPEAL from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. Assistant Attorney-General Smith for the appellant.
Mr. J. M. Woolworth for the appellee.
This is a suit in equity, brought by the United States to annul certain patents issued by them to the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company, for lands situated in Nebraska, amounting in the aggregate to one million two hundred thousand acres. It is founded upon alleged errors made by the Land Department in the construction of the statute under which the patents were issued, and presents several interesting questions for determination. These questions, however, are so fully considered by the presiding justice of the Circuit Court, and the views we entertain are so clearly stated in his opinion, that we can add but little to what he has said.
By the eighteenth section of the act of Congress of July 2, 1864, amending the act of 1862, '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,' the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company, an existing corporation under the laws of Iowa, was authorized to extend its road through the then Territory of Nebraska from the point where it strikes the Missouri River, south of the mouth of the Platte River, to some point not further west than the one hundredth meridian of west longitude, so as to connect by the most practicable route with the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad, or with that part of it which runs from Omaha to the said meridian. By the nineteenth section of the act, there was granted to the company, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of this road, every alternate section of public land (excepting mineral land) designated by odd numbers, to the amount of ten alternate sections per mile on each side of the road, on the line thereof, which were not sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of by the United States, or to which a preemption or homestead claim had not attached at the time the line of the road was definitely fixed.
In April, 1869, this railroad company was authorized to assign and convey to a company to be organized under the laws of Nebraska, all the rights, powers, and privileges granted to it by the act of 1864, subject to the same conditions and requirements. The defendant company was thereafter organized and incorporated under the laws of Nebraska, with power to build the railroad mentioned; and to it the Iowa company made the assignment authorized. The new company thereupon proceeded to construct the road from Plattsmouth, on the Missouri River, to Fort Kearney, where it connected with the road of the Union Pacific, a distance of two hundred miles. The work was commenced on the 4th of July, 1869, and was completed on the 2d of September, 1872.
By the twentieth section of the act of 1864, whenever twenty consecutive miles of the road should be completed in the manner prescribed, the President of the United States was to appoint three commissioners to examine and report to him in relation to it; and if it should appear that the twenty miles were completed as required, then, upon the certificate of the commissioners to that effect, patents were to be issued to the company for land on each side of the road to the amount designated. Such examination, report, and conveyance were to be made from time to time, until the entire road should be completed.
In compliance with this provision, as each section of twenty miles of the road was completed, commissioners were appointed by the President to examine and report upon it; and upon their reports patents were issued for land within twenty miles from the road. But within that distance, on the north and south side, portions of the land, amounting to one million two hundred thousand acres, had been sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of by the United States, or homestead or pre-emption claims had attached to it at the time the line of the road was definitely fixed. Thereupon the company made application to the Land Department for land outside of the limit of twenty miles in lieu of the land thus disposed of; and accordingly, in 1872, five patents for such land were issued. It is to annul these patents that the present bill was filed, their validity being called in question on the ground that the act of Congress limited its grant to land within twenty miles of the road.
The line of the road was definitely located in June, 1865, and land embracing the odd sections, within the limit of twenty miles, was withdrawn from sale in July following; but land outside of this limit, which was subsequently patented to the company, was not withdrawn until May, 1872. Between the definite location of the road in 1865 and the withdrawal of the land outside of the twenty-mile limit in 1872, the greater part of the land opposite the eastern sections of the road was disposed of by the government; and therefore most of the land covered by the patents lies opposite the western sections. This constitutes another ground of the alleged invalidity of the patents, it being contended that the grant was to aid in the construction of each section of the twenty miles, taken separately, and that it must be of land directly opposite to such section.
By the act of 1862, the Union Pacific Railroad Company was authorized to construct a railroad from a point on the one hundredth meridian of longitude west of Greenwich to the western boundary of Nevada Territory, the initial point of which was to be fixed by the President. To aid in the construction of this road, a grant was made to the company of five alternate sections of land, designated by odd numbers on each side of the road, along its line within the limit of ten miles. By the same act, the company was also authorized to construct a road from a point on the western boundary of the State of Iowa, to be fixed by the President, to the one hundredth meridian of longitude, upon the same terms and conditions prescribed for the construction of the Union Pacific line. By the act of 1864, the grant of five sections was increased to ten sections, and the limit within which they were to be taken was...
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