Storm Over Rangelands / Private Rights in Federal Lands / A Project of the National Federal Lands Conference (SIGNED)

Hage, Wayne

ISBN 10: 0939571064 / ISBN 13: 9780939571062

Published by Free Enterprise Press / Distributed by Merrill Press, Bellevue, Washington, 1989

About this Item

"First Edition" stated. No mention of second edition. "Good-plus" dust jacket shows a closed inch-and-half tear to bottom of jacket rear panel, and a half-inch hole (sticker pull?) To jacket spine, impinging no type. Author Hage has inscribed to "Harold Steen / Thanks for your help in making this book possible" and signed to the front pastedown, where his signature is largely hidden under the jacket front flap, as was his habit. Harold K. "Pete" Steen (born 1935) was a forest historian, executive director of the Forest History Society, and author of "The U.S. Forest Service: A History" (Seattle: University of Washington Press.) He and his book merit four citations in the Index, here. Wayne Hage demonstrates and documents that private owners -- ranchers, miners, and others -- have established private property rights through possession and proper filings administered under state law to much of the Western land which those far away in the East identify as "public lands," and which the federal government does not own because it has never purchased them with the permission of the appropriate state legislature, as required under the federal Constitution. What is widely misunderstood in other locales is the way "split title" or "split estate" works in the arid West, where one party can own the water and grazing rights to a sizable acreage, while another party may file on and thus own the mining rights to the same land, which land will often still remain "public" in the sense that these owners of limited rights must still allow free access to hunters, etc. Hage was a rancher and historian of these topics, who fought the taking of his grazing rights by arrogant federal bureaucrats near Tonopah, Nevada, through the courts. After his death, his daughters won those lawsuits, vindicating his arguments & analysis, though of course the arrogant, intransigent, and lawless federal government never runs out of funds, or of other courts to which it can and will appeal any adverse ruling, world without end. 267 pp. including index. Reduced from $550.

Seller Inventory # 008740

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Storm Over Rangelands / Private Rights in Federal Lands / A Project of the National Federal Lands Conference (SIGNED)
• Publisher: Free Enterprise Press / Distributed by Merrill Press, Bellevue, Washington
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0939571064
• ISBN 13: 9780939571062
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Conspiracies
  • The Real West
  • Nevada