Bucking the White Elephant

Bucking the White Elephant: Utah’s Fight for Federal Management of the Public Domain, 1923–1934

BY BENJAMIN KISER

On February 13, 1932, Utah governor George H. Dern appeared in Washington, D.C. before the House Committee on the Public Lands in an effort to stave off an attempt to divest the federal government of the unreserved public domain in western states. Dern’s opposition to the proposal, which would transfer the public domain’s surface rights to the states, was clear. The governor testified that Utah could not adequately manage these lands and that, indeed, the state was not interested in accepting them. “Comes now the Government of the United States, tentatively offering us what looks at a distance like a fine, large horse,” said Dern in his opening remarks. “As we get closer we have some difficulty in discerning whether it is actually a fine, large horse, or a fine, large white elephant.” 1 For Dern, it was the absence of mineral rights, the federal government’s ability to finance and oversee interstate range rehabilitation, and his ultimate goal of long-term conservation that turned a statutory gift horse into a legislative white elephant. 2

Dern also dismissed notions that rampant overgrazing on the unreserved federal domain could best be mitigated through private control and laid out a case aimed at derailing the proposed transfer. Citing environmental disasters caused by mismanagement of private land in his state, he contended that “private ownership is not the answer to this problem of overgrazing.” 3 Furthermore, the governor pointed to the potentially detrimental impact the bill might have on interstate watersheds, the antagonism of Utah stockmen toward the plan, and the possibility that a land transfer would also shift the cost of federal reclamation projects onto the states. 4

Unlike some western politicians and ranchers of the time, Dern’s understanding of property favored constitutional federal authority over the definition of property usage that many ranchers held over the unreserved public domain. 5 Dern’s interpretation of property allowed him to stake out a position where states could get the benefits of federal subsidization without management costs associated with actually holding title to the land. 6 Furthermore, if states acquired the public domain, federal aid in the form of reclamation and highway funding would be jeopardized. As he asserted in the 1932 congressional hearings, “it is not necessary to own a piece of land in order to get the benefit of it. . . . Since the states already get the benefits derived from the public lands, it is pertinent to inquire how much better off they will be if the title and the responsibility and the management are turned over to them.” 7

Yet despite defining property differently than many western cattle interests, Dern’s viewpoints were not anomalous. Other western politicians and even the president of the Utah Cattle and Horse Growers’ Association also raised their voices in opposition to the bill before Congress. Concerned that neither private nor state management could protect their economic interests, some of Utah’s most prominent cattlemen and agriculturalists argued for an increased federal role in range management. 8

It may seem surprising that a governor from a state in which the federal government owns 66.5 percent of the land protested a federal effort to divest lands to the states. After all, nearly a half century later, many Utahns supported the Sagebrush Rebellion, a western effort to pressure the federal government into handing certain public lands to the states or at least to make federal land management more friendly to commercial or industrial interests. 9 More recently, the Utah State Legislature passed the Transfer of Public Lands Act in 2012, which threatened legal action against the federal government if it did not acquiesce to the state’s demand for the cession of a large portion of the vast federal estate in Utah. Though the legislature never formally opened a lawsuit, it did hire an outside consulting group in 2014 to explore litigation. 10

What may be even more surprising is that Dern was an avowed states’ rightist who had spoken up for western states multiple times in the six years preceding his 1932 testimony. The governor, in a 1926 address titled “School Land Titles in Public Land States,” given at the Governors’ Conference in Cheyenne, Wyoming, took the federal government to task about its failure to support education through its refusal to grant mineral rights on school trust lands. 11 He further contrasted the exorbitant amount of federally owned land in the West with the scant public acreage of eastern states. Importantly, however, he clarified: “I trust I have made it clear that this fight is not to get all the public lands turned over to the states. . . . We simply want our title quieted and confirmed to the lands that were granted to us for the support of our schools and state institutions.” 12 Three years later, in a speech denouncing the proposition to transfer the federal domain’s surface rights to the states, Dern once again echoed his states’ rights stance while lambasting the proposal to only transfer unwanted surface title. “I have been somewhat a contender for the rights of the states. However, that has not been a fetish with me. . . . I am therefore inclined to say we want the ‘whole hog or none.’” 13 Dern later based his 1932 testimony off of this 1929 speech.

Dern and his fellow Utahns’ opposition to the transfer of the federal domain during the 1920s and 1930s reveals a public lands heritage that is far more complex than a cursory study of the past forty years would suggest. At times it could be characterized more accurately as one of “sagebrush conservation”—a willingness to acquiesce to the federal government in the best interest of rangeland sustainability—rather than “sagebrush rebellion.” Utahns were active players in public lands debates, and while Dern and many of his contemporaries articulated an argument in favor of western states ownership of all public lands—subsurface lands included— they first advocated for increased regulation and management to avoid deteriorating rangeland conditions then plaguing both private and public lands in the state. In an era when the future of the public domain was uncertain, a combination of environmental, economic, and political factors motivated these sagebrush conservatives to buck the white elephant of political dogma and embrace a partnership with the federal government aimed at rehabilitating the West’s dilapidated unreserved lands. These included devastating floods caused in part by mismanagement of private range, the federal government’s refusal to turn surface rights over to the states, and the pressing need to conserve the federal range for future sustainable use. In the end, Governor Dern and his allies successfully defeated the land transfer bill, thus allowing other western leaders to guide the public domain’s trajectory during the advent of the New Deal.

Dern’s appearance before the House Committee on the Public Lands was not a solitary stand against a policy personally abhorrent to the governor, but one emblematic of the larger public disposition toward the future of public land management in the American West. 14 He gleaned his argument from eyewitness accounts of disastrous floods, environmental studies ascertaining flood causes, academic positions on range management, and the political will of agriculturalists and ranchers. His testimony, although only one of many given before the committee throughout the hearing period, reflected some Utahns’ acceptance of a greater federal footprint on the public domain through the institution of a regulatory range conservation program.

Dern and John M. Macfarlane, president of the Utah Cattle and Horse Growers’ Association, another Utahn who testified before the committee, had primarily environmental reasons for testifying, based in particular on two catastrophic floods that highlighted a private and local failure to properly manage the range.

The first, and perhaps the deadliest to ever hit the Wasatch Front, occurred in 1923. On the night of August 13, a cloudburst storm struck the northern Wasatch Mountains from Davis County to Box Elder County. Cloudbursts, a term used in the early 1900s to describe “a torrential downpour of rain which by its spottiness and relatively high intensity suggests the bursting and discharge of a whole cloud at once,” were fairly common in Utah throughout the 1920s with five occurring along the Wasatch Front in 1923 alone. 15 Hydrologists associated cloudbursts with late summer thunderstorms that developed over the mountains throughout Utah. Data from the early twentieth century in Utah also correlates the numerous cloudbursts with years of higher average temperatures. 16 Though often causing substantial property damage, cloudbursts rarely resulted in deadly floods. Unfortunately for the small agricultural communities of Centerville, Farmington, and Willard, the storm of August 13 proved to be an exception to the norm. The rain began around 7:30 p.m., and within a half hour floodwaters began wreaking havoc on their way down the canyons. The flood reached a group of nine Boy Scouts camping at North Fork near Liberty in Ogden valley, inundating them with “a stream of water from three to five feet high and 500 feet wide.” Luckily for the Scouts and their leader, the force of the water knocked their tents open, allowing them to struggle through the water toward safety. 17

A house in Centerville, Utah, damaged by the August 1923 floods. Utah State Historical Society, George M. Ottinger Photograph Collection, box 2, no. 288.

In other locales the waters were not so forgiving. Floodwater and debris, including mud, boulders, uprooted trees, and brush, slammed into communities, especially Farmington and Willard. Farmington Canyon became a death trap as a wall of water with a crest reported “to be 75 to 100 feet high . . . with width of 200 feet” barreled toward town. 18 In its path lay a honeymooning couple and another group of Boy Scouts who were immediately killed by the violent waters. After leaving the canyon, the torrent engulfed homes, livestock, roads, the Bamberger Interurban Railway, and a power plant, all the while sending patrons at Lagoon amusement park desperately running for shelter. Perhaps the most grisly headline of the night simply stated, “Woman’s Legs Discovered.” In Farmington, seven died, while a similar flood in Willard killed two. In less than an hour, rains produced enough water to shatter communities and take nine human lives. 19

Aid began flowing to the affected communities shortly after the floods abated. On August 17, 1923, Governor Charles R. Mabey issued an executive proclamation calling for Utah citizens to “demonstrate their sympathy and affection for their stricken fellows by coming to their aid at once with that unbounded generosity so characteristic of our people.” 20 To raise the $75,000 necessary to achieve relief, Mabey appointed a Flood Relief Committee to oversee the operation. 21 In addition to the work of the relief committee, U.S. Forest Service examiner F. S. Baker and University of Utah professor J. H. Paul determined that recent fires were the primary factor in causing the severity of the August 13 flood. The aspen- and sagebrush-covered slopes of the canyons had been laid bare, causing a heightened potentiality of disastrous flooding. At the time, nothing was said of the effects of overgrazing. 22 In time, Centerville, Farmington, and Willard eventually recovered from the flood’s destruction, but it would not be the last cloudburst to heavily impact the region.

It was another cloudburst in July 1930 that, though not fatal to human life, proved to be a watershed moment for flood control studies in Utah and a factor that shaped Dern and his allies’ opposition to the 1932 land transfer bill. The 1930 flood primarily struck Farmington and Centerville in Davis County. It deposited trucksized boulders, destroyed a house and several farm buildings, blocked the main thoroughfare for eight days, and resulted in $50,000 in farm losses. 23 Even though the flood primarily destroyed property, the Davis County Clipper likened the storm and its resultant floods to those of August 13, 1923. 24 Yet the official response after the flood diverged noticeably from that of 1923. Rather than simply proclaiming the need for citizens to donate toward the cause of relief through the efforts of a relief committee, Mabey’s gubernatorial successor, George H. Dern, appointed a Special Flood Commission “to study the origin and cause of the floods, and to ascertain whether or not any flood prevention measures are feasible.” 25 This was not the first time Dern reacted swiftly to environmental exigencies in Utah. In 1926, the governor toured the site of a catastrophic avalanche in Bingham Canyon and, in 1927, he visited Carbon County after a severe late summer flood. 26 In his address to Price’s residents he affirmed, “Something can and must be done here about control of floods.” 27 In response to the 1930 flood, Dern chose Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former Salt Lake City engineer Sylvester Q. Cannon to head the commission. 28 Other members included professors, engineers, businessmen, and ranchers, with John M. Macfarlane, a prominent Utahn involved in many corporate boards and other local institutions, representing the Utah Horse and Cattle Growers’ Association.

Dern’s special commission completed its work in a relatively quick four months and published its report in January 1931. The study identified preexisting flood control measures, assessed the causes of the destructive floods, and offered prescriptions for how to prevent flooding in the future. The commission spent two days in the field surveying the drainage basins affected by the Davis County floods and observing the condition of water catchment systems in surrounding canyons. The researchers devoted singular attention to the Davis County basins “where the situation [was] now the most critical.” 29 Although flooding had occurred in the area prior to the floods of 1923 and 1930, never before had it battered the county with such ferocity, the result of unusually high amounts of rainfall, with 1.17 inches falling in the first hour of the 1923 storm and between 0.35 to 1.72 inches during the seven major cloudbursts of summer 1930. The steep topography of the Wasatch Range in Davis County was also included as a factor. 30

Regardless of the rainfall amounts and steep topography, the depletion of plant cover from much of the canyons’ higher elevations proved to be the primary undoing for Davis County residents. In canyons where plant cover was plentiful, including grasses, trees, and shrubs, the torrential rains failed to remove the soil from the surface, ensuring that the land remained intact. At the heads of canyons where overgrazing had depleted plant cover, the rains cascaded down the steep slopes, carving up to forty feet of new depth into the canyons. The lack of absorption of water on these sparsely vegetated slopes caused flooding severity that had not been seen in previous years. 31

After compiling the evidence, the commission determined that overgrazing, followed to a lesser degree by fire and timber cutting, in that order, was the primary factor in the July 1930 floods. 32 The paucity of ground cover caused by overgrazing was particularly evident, leading the commission to identify “ample evidence on the watersheds of Davis County to show that had the plant cover been approximately equal to its original natural condition, the flooding in that section from the rains of 1930 would have been far less serious, if not prevented.” To prevent future catastrophe, the commission recommended the construction of additional flood control works, rehabilitation of plant cover in Davis County watersheds accomplished in part by a moratorium on grazing, and the institution of a more rigorous flood control policy including an extension of public ownership to unprotected watershed lands outside of the national forest. In addition, they observed that “the grazing land on the watershed which is largely under private control very apparently [had] been utilized without regard to perpetuating the range forage crop, a practice which is unsound from the standpoint of economical range livestock production.” 33 In the words of commission member C. L. Horsley, “It is one of the worst cases of deforestation that I have ever seen.” 34

A perfect storm had combined to decimate Davis County’s watersheds: torrential cloudbursts, steep topography, and, most important, the degradation of Davis watersheds through private mismanagement of grazing. Both cattle and sheep ranchers were to blame for the ill effects of overgrazing. The bovines chewed away the cover in the mountain basins and gentle slopes, while the sheep traversed the steeper vegetative zones in their quest for satiation. 35

The commission also recommended specific flood prevention measures. Most notably, as their first recommendation, was the “public control of all the land . . . for the restoration and maintenance of an adequate plant cover and other flood prevention measures.” It also concluded that the federal government would “be able most economically to administer” the then privately held lands. 36 While the matter of who controlled the lands proved to be the number one priority of the commission, it also recommended excluding grazing on the affected areas for a number of years, aiding in ground cover restoration, construction of flood control works, and establishing fire protection measures in the Davis County watersheds.

The commission did not stop there, however. They also advocated for a broader state policy that would ensure that what happened in 1923 and 1930 would not happen again anywhere in Utah. This statewide watershed protection plan echoed the commission’s commitment to implement government control over Utah’s watersheds. Once again, land ownership occupied the forefront of the commission’s recommendations: “1. The extension of public ownership and control to the little protected part of the 3,000,000 acres of important watershed lands outside the present National Forests [within state boundaries].” Some of these lands were forested while others were primarily grazing lands. Breaking their initial recommendation into two parts, the commission suggested “placing all important watershed lands in the State that are still in the open public domain under some adequate system of public control [and] acquisition by the State or Federal government of important watershed lands now in private ownership.” 37

Following publication of the commission’s report, changes began to be implemented on Davis County’s watersheds. Within the next few years, Wasatch National Forest acquired $39,000 worth of private lands in Davis County. Once the land became part of the National Forest system, flood control works began in earnest. In 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began to reseed depleted areas and build contour trenches on the high Davis slopes. The trenches, which redirected water to allow revegetation on denuded slopes, can still be seen below the Wasatch ridgeline. Multiple floods followed in ensuing years, but the management strategies proved effective as the torrential mudflows of 1923 and 1930 were never again replicated. 38

The 1930 flood and its respective causes was just one reason Dern and Macfarlane rallied in favor of federal management of Utah’s vast unreserved public estate. To fully understand the context behind their other reasons, and, in turn, the land transfer bill they were opposing, it is necessary to explore the condition of Utah’s public lands (both reserved and unreserved) in the decades preceding 1932. In the late nineteenth century, the executive and legislative branches began setting aside millions of acres of the previously unreserved public domain as forest reserves and national parks. Complicating the land withdrawal process further, the Antiquities Act of 1906 empowered the president to designate other federal lands as national monuments. Many ranchers and other rural residents of the West supported the reservation of national forests, parks, and monuments out of concern for rangeland degradation due to overgrazing and watershed protection. 39 In 1902, for instance, Albert Potter of the Department of Interior’s Division of Forestry conducted a detailed survey of the Wasatch Range and Plateau, documenting vast swaths of deforestation and denudation due to overgrazing and overcutting. Potter, as a contemporary of Gifford Pinchot, recommended the creation of forest reserves throughout the state as a means to mitigate past environmental abuses and to promote future conservation of forest resources. As a result of his coordinated efforts with Sanpete County locals, the federal government enacted regulations on the Wasatch Plateau. 40 Sheep grazing was prohibited and, in May 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the area as the Manti Forest Reserve, which ultimately became part of the national forest system in 1907. 41 With the creation of the United States Forest Service (USFS) in 1905, many western grazing lands fell under the purview of the new agency.

Created not only to promote the utilitarian conservation of the nation’s timberlands but also the regulation of forested rangeland, the United States Forest Service was not free of controversy in its early years. 42 Having been given the executive power of regulating grazing on the nation’s forests by 1910, the USFS focused much of its efforts on rehabilitating the range that fell under its purview. 43 As the agency continued its often successful regulation for conservation into the 1920s, tensions deepened between ranchers and the Forest Service. In 1924, the Congress proposed dramatic fee increases of up to 100 percent in some forests. Cattlemen fought against the proposals and worked with the Forest Service to propose a study of the issue. Multiple attempts to raise fees failed between 1925 and 1929, yet ranchers continued to occupy a fraught position on the national forests as conservationists and lumbermen sought to restrict grazing access. As the policies of foresters alienated an increasing number of cattle growers, herdsmen who grazed livestock on the unreserved, unregulated public domain outside of the national forests were feeling another type of squeeze. This vast, unappropriated federal frontier became the central stage in the land debates that stretched into the 1930s. 44

Terrace-trench work by young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps in Davis County, Utah. Photo by U.S. Forest Service. Utah State Historical Society, photo no. 3436.

As the contest continued between forest managers, the Congress, lumber cutters, and the livestock industry, the unreserved lands were concurrently suffering the negative consequences of overgrazing and management gaps. Though the General Land Office (GLO), an agency housed in the Interior department, had been the historic manager of the unreserved domain, their primary purpose was survey and disposal, being the primary executor of the Homestead Act of 1862. 45 Grazing management was not in the GLO’s program, as evidenced in the degraded state of large portions of the western range. For example, according to C. L. Forsling, the director of the Great Basin Experiment Station in Utah, one particular section of open range in Tooele County near the small mining outpost of Gold Hill exhibited heavy signs of overgrazing. In the space of twenty years, the erosion of overgrazed soils created a wash large enough for a vehicle to drive down it. On another portion of Utah’s unappropriated public range south of Garrison, unpalatable rabbitbrush encroached on valuable winterfat, starving out the cattle on the range. 46 It became increasingly apparent to some Utahns that the situation on the public domain was unsustainable. 47

Two concerned Utahns played instrumental roles in the public lands debates and in the ultimate fate of the 1932 transfer bill and its replacements. William Peterson, an agriculture professor at Utah State Agricultural College (UAC) in Logan and director of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station (UAES), and Don B. Colton, a Republican representative from Utah’s First Congressional District, exemplified Progressive Era conservationists. Peterson, a rancher and farmer born in Bloomington, Idaho, received a BS in Commerce in 1899 and taught geology courses at the UAC for many years, even serving as Utah’s state geologist from 1917 to 1921. In 1918, he became director of the UAES. According to a 1930 issue of The Utah State Quarterly, “in the language of the street, ‘[Peterson] knows his public domain.’” 48 Representative Colton regularly consulted Peterson throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s regarding the public domain. Born in Mona, Utah, in 1876, he and his family were among the first to take advantage of Indian land sales in eastern Utah’s Uinta Basin, ultimately settling in Vernal in 1879. Trained in law from the University of Michigan, Colton served in the Utah House in 1903 and the Utah Senate from 1915 to 1917. He was elected to represent Utah’s First Congressional District in 1920, a position he held until he was ousted by Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic wave in 1932. From 1927 to 1931, Colton served as chairman of the House Committee on the Public Lands. 49

Colton was an ardent conservationist, combining Progressive politics with his ranching experience. From increasing protections at Uintah County’s Dinosaur National Monument to introducing rangeland management bills, Colton used his congressional position to promote Utah’s public land interests. In 1927, while chairman of the Public Lands Committee and after consultation with Peterson, he introduced the first of many bills attempting to regulate the unreserved federal domain. The congressman’s aim was to institute grazing districts and supervisory boards that would issue leases for livestock grazing on the unappropriated public domain. Furthermore, a second bill would give the president authority to create grazing districts through executive proclamation. Although the bills faced local opposition at first, influential Utahns such as Macfarlane and Peterson supported them. Even Macfarlane’s Utah Cattle and Horse Growers’ Association rallied behind the bills. Other organizations, including the Utah State Woolgrowers and various homesteaders, continued to oppose the measures. After vigorous debate, Colton amended the language of his first bill to apply only to the state of Utah due to Wyoming’s intense antagonism toward the proposal. However, the amendment was all for naught as both bills failed to gain enough traction to make it out of the House. 50

Colton continued to hold out hope for a legislative solution to the rangeland’s environmental woes despite his failure to find enough political traction to successfully organize grazing districts on the unreserved federal lands of the West. The election of Herbert Hoover provided an unconventional way for Colton to promote his ideas about public land management. In the August following his inauguration in 1929, Hoover sent a letter to be read at the Conference of Public Land States’ Governors in Salt Lake City. The letter’s message significantly diverged from the prevailing Progressive Era preference of federal land management: “It may be stated at once that our Western States have long since passed from their swaddling clothes and are today more competent to manage much of these affairs [public lands and reclamation] than is the Federal Government. Moreover, we must seek every opportunity to retard the expansion of Federal bureaucracy and to place our communities in control of their own destiny.” 51 Hoover called for a new public lands committee to be formed to study how the government should move forward in divesting some of its federal estate to the public lands states.

Although Hoover articulated a public lands position incongruent to Colton’s plan of increased federal control, the congressman welcomed the creation of the president’s proposed committee. 52 He reasoned: “The control of these lands becomes vital from two or three angles: Many of our irrigation reservoirs are being filled with silt. There is an ever-growing problem which affects the livestock industry. The ranges surrounding the headwaters of our streams are being overgrazed. The vegetation is being destroyed. Our grazing lands are being ruined.” 53 Colton understood the environmental exigencies on the range and saw the committee as an opportunity to investigate ways to mitigate these negative impacts. Hoover, on the other hand, saw this as an opportunity to promote states’ rights. Though both members of the “Grand Old Party,” their diverging rationales behind the formation of the committee highlight the variety of public lands positions existent among Republicans in 1929.

Unlike in his previous legislative endeavors, Colton proved successful in securing appropriations for the new committee. On April 10, 1930, Congress approved “An Act Authorizing the President to appoint a commission to study and report on the conservation and administration of the public domain.” 54 Officially dubbed the Committee on the Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain, it became known as the Garfield Committee after the appointment as chair of James R. Garfield, the son of the late president and the former Interior secretary under Theodore Roosevelt. Sitting secretaries Ray Lyman Wilbur of the Interior and Arthur M. Hyde of Agriculture were designated ex officio members; former USFS chief W. B. Greeley, Saturday Evening Post editor George H. Lorimer, and Reclamation commissioner Elwood Mead also sat on the commission. Included were a representative from each of the public lands states, Utah’s being none other than Professor William Peterson, Colton’s ardent ally in the public lands debate. 55

The committee quickly went to work, requesting information on each state’s position in regards to public lands. They also received reports from the Office of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Public Roads, USFS, Bureau of Reclamation, GLO, United States Geological Survey, Department of Agriculture, Department of Interior, and even library and school associations. 56 Peterson, though already familiar with many Utahns’ favorable position toward federal management from his work with Representative Colton, engaged many stakeholders to determine what his position should be on Hoover’s land proposal. One of Peterson’s chief contacts was John Macfarlane. Macfarlane provided Peterson with a copy of resolutions passed at the Twelfth Annual Convention of the Utah Cattle and Horse Growers’ Association held in Salt Lake City, April 4–5, 1930. The convention passed multiple resolutions regarding the public domain including one that supported the creation of the Garfield Committee. The herdsmen also opposed “vast areas of our public grazing land being converted into public parks, monuments, or Indian reserves, or pleasure resorts where the same is not necessary.” Yet the resolution that shaped Peterson’s final proposal to the committee was concurrent to Colton’s previous efforts: “RESOLVED that we endorse government control of the public domain in the Western States, under similar regulations as is now in force in the National Forests.” 57

As part of his research, Peterson looked at local efforts asking for government intervention on Utah’s range. One 1929 petition to Representative Elmer O. Leatherwood of Utah’s Second Congressional District identified private lands east of Provo that had been significantly overgrazed. The petitioners argued that mismanagement of these lands threatened Provo with dangerous floods and soil erosion. The petition, which was signed by the mayors of Provo and Springville, requested that Uinta National Forest acquire the lands to ensure watershed protection. 58 Peterson also analyzed a proposed bill written by a Utah committee for federal control of grazing. Much like the 1928 Colton bill, the proposal advocated for the institution of grazing districts and local boards to govern the leasing of the unreserved public domain. Though it remains unclear, this may be the proposition from which Colton structured his land management bill. 59

Peterson’s final report to the Garfield Committee, drawing upon his extensive research, rejected the Hoover proposal, instead calling for federal management of the unreserved public domain. Peterson feared the potentially negative consequences associated with state management of the unappropriated lands. He recognized that the valuable lands of the state had already been homesteaded or reserved as forests, parks, and monuments, and that Utah’s arid climate ensured that only “some of the public land in the state has good grazing value, but on the average it is very low.” 60 Hearkening back to ideas originating with John Wesley Powell, Peterson explained that though land is abundant in Utah, “water is the limiting factor.” 61 Due to its arid geography, Utah’s unreserved domain held a relatively low carrying capacity for both agriculture and ranching. Exacerbating the strain on the state’s rangelands was the fact that grazing had occurred to capacity in the state since 1895, leading to vast areas of overgrazed land. Sheep were especially taxing on the range; some areas succumbed to the intense foraging patterns of hundreds of thousands of sheep. 62

In crafting his argument for federal management of the unreserved domain, Peterson drew upon his local experience with the deleterious effects of overgrazing to illustrate his point. He framed his reasoning by looking at the creation of forest reserves thirty years earlier. To Peterson, it seems, how the forests came under federal regulation was similar to how he envisioned the unreserved domain should be placed under federal oversight: a concerted, local response to environmental exigency. On the Bear River Range, the creation of a forest reserve had come about following Potter’s survey and local action decrying a denuded landscape prone to flooding. Peterson reflected that although many ranchers were initially unhappy with the institution of range regulation, “cattle men and sheep men [thought] that probably the right thing was done with the grazing area.” 63 Citing the cases of Logan and Manti as evidence, Peterson argued that Utahns preferred USFS management of watersheds and proposed that unreserved watershed lands be placed under the supervision of the national forests. 64 To Peterson, the forests provided the answer, not only in how to craft a federal response to a local crisis, but also how to fix the problem of the unreserved domain into the future.

In concluding his report to the Garfield Committee, Peterson outlined, based on his studies, “the attitude of Utah with reference to the public domain.” He provided seven requests, among them the “federal administration of the unappropriated and unreserved 25,147,867 acres in Utah” and “the administration of the forest grazing and grazing on the public domain . . . under the same federal administration.” 65 These recommendations elevated the USFS as the best potential custodian of the unreserved grazing lands. Furthermore, Peterson identified specific grazing recommendations that would benefit ranchers: longterm allotments to ensure dependability for ranchers, a range maintenance and rehabilitation program, the construction of water holes to retain the region’s inconsistent precipitation, a system of year-round permits that efficiently regulated summer and winter grazing, range experimentation that determined best practices for rehabilitation, and permits that allowed for grazing on lands where subsurface minerals existed. 66

Peterson’s recommendations not only reflected the interests of ranchers, politicians, and some citizens of Utah, but also his belief in the proper management of natural resources as embraced by mainstream adherents to the conservation movement. Peterson fit the mold of the utilitarian conservationist portrayed in Samuel Hays’s Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, a promoter of “planning, foresight, and conscious purpose.” 67 Underlying his reasoning behind expanding federal control of the unreserved lands in the West, especially those in relation to grazing, was an ideology of efficiency and proper management, both hallmarks of early twentieth-century Progressivism. He was a committed disciple to the idea, as expressed by Hays, that “federal land management agencies should resolve land use difference among livestock, wildlife, irrigation, recreation, and settler groups.” 68 Trust in centralized institutions like the federal government to expertly administer its landholdings is evident in Peterson’s subtext. His advocacy of scientific rehabilitation of the range was simultaneously progressive and indicative of Peterson’s position as an agricultural academic.

Despite Peterson’s qualifications, thorough study, and persuasive argumentation for increasing federal regulation of the public domain, the committee ultimately chose to follow the president’s initial recommendation. Though the final product of the Garfield Committee matched closely Hoover’s initial proposition, Peterson was not the only member to diverge from the president’s recommendations. The representatives from California, Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho all opposed the land transfer under the president’s conditions. Elwood Mead, the renowned champion of western reclamation, expressed that in California the “consensus of opinion . . . is that the state would regard the transfer of the surface rights . . . to the state as requiring it to assume a responsibility rather than to obtain any direct financial advantage.” 69 Oregon’s representative, E. C. Van Petten, clearly articulated his state’s rejection of the Hoover proposal on the grounds that Oregonians would only want the lands if the federal government had first rehabilitated them. The possibility that Oregon’s ownership of the lands could add unnecessary burden to the state’s already strapped budgets also dissuaded him. 70 George Malone, Nevada’s state engineer and representative from Nevada on the Garfield

Committee, felt similarly. After lengthy consultation with Nevada’s ranchers, Malone determined that they “could not afford to purchase their grazing ranges outright and did not stand to benefit in any way from state control of public lands.” 71 Therefore, Malone’s fear of the negative effects of potential privatization of the range induced him to support the status quo of federal management. 72 Some citizens of Idaho were also not on board with Hoover, believing “it would be an imposition and a burden on the State to take those lands without compensatory returns.” 73

Many other states favored the proposal, at least in part. The controversial part of the Hoover recommendation remained the exclusion of subsurface mineral rights from the transfer package. The committee members from New Mexico, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado all favored parts of the proposal. New Mexico’s representative, Francis Wilson, signaled his state’s favorable attitude toward land transferal, including a letter from New Mexico cattlemen offering their support for state control. However, they advocated for both surface and subsurface rights to be transferred to the state. 74 In Washington, there was divided opinion on the proper course for managing unreserved land, but Ross K. Tiffany, the state’s proxy on the Garfield Committee, personally believed that the federal government should cede the land to the states. 75 Montana concurred with New Mexico, arguing that mineral rights should remain with the surface rights, but desiring state control overall. 76 Colorado also was in favor of a combined surface and subsurface cession to the states. 77 Wyoming, unsurprisingly considering its strong opposition to Colton’s bill in 1928, was completely behind the Hoover proposal but desired subsurface rights as well to ensure its own self-determination. 78

Though the exact process behind the Garfield Committee’s final recommendation is not recorded in William Peterson’s files, the end result is well documented. They published their official suggestions in Report of the Committee on the Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain in January 1931. 79 The committee proposed, as a general principle, that the unreserved federal domain should be responsibly administered “for the conservation and beneficial use of its resources.” While certain designated lands should continue to be held and managed by the federal government, it proposed that unreserved lands used for grazing “should be granted to the States which will accept them” or that some other “responsible administration or regulation should be provided.” With regard to subsurface rights, the committee determined that the federal government will hold them until the states and federal agencies can agree on a uniform plan of management. 80

On the surface, the committee’s general policy recommendations appeared modest. However, considering the pushback from western states regarding the detachment of subsurface rights from surface rights, for even Hoover’s most ardent allies the recommendations fell significantly short in reforming the management of the public domain. Furthermore, the Garfield Committee included a number of special recommendations. Those with the most impactful ramifications for western states suggested that Congress grant the unreserved domain to the states if the states signified a statutory desire for those lands and that if states were uninterested in accepting the unreserved domain, then the president would have power to create a national range from that state’s unaccepted lands. 81

The committee also included some of Peterson’s progressive recommendations, including the provision that any lands granted to the states should be “impressed with a trust for administration and rehabilitation of the public domain” and that the interests of stockmen should be preserved through a year-round permit system that made best use of the range. But in one of its final suggestions, the committee revealed its true colors: “It is the conclusion of the committee that as to agricultural and grazing lands, private ownership, except as to such areas as may be advisable or necessary for public use, should be the objective in the final use and disposition of the public domain.” 82 Under this recommendation, all of the Garfield Committee’s previous proposals could be interpreted as potential methods to forsake the unappropriated, unreserved public domain to private hands, a policy consistent with GLO practice since its creation.

Shortly after publication of the report, the committee began to receive feedback from a variety of interests from across the West. Opinion was mixed on their recommendations, with some westerners resoundingly against the proposals and others in wholehearted agreement. Those in opposition were particularly pointed in their remarks. In April 1931, Charles Donnelly, president of the Northern Pacific Railway Company, adamantly rejected the committee’s conclusions. He contended that the “transfer of title to the States . . . would be of such doubtful advantage to all concerned as to make retention of title by the United States much more desirable. We think the administration of the public lands should be continued in the Interior Department . . . to put into effect leasing regulations supported by well-considered grazing research and range improvements.” Four days later, Horace Dunbar, vice president of Citizens National Trust and Savings Bank of Los Angeles, wrote: “I would much rather trust our remaining public domain to National rather than State sovereignty. . . . I favor leaving to Congress and an aroused National consciousness of proprietorship and responsibility the care of our lands, however valueless our limitations of today may label them, rather than to turn them over to the dangers and temptations of state control.” 83 Though Dunbar did not specify what “dangers and temptations” state control could pose on the public domain, it can reasonably be assessed that part of that fear stemmed from the committee’s outright endorsement of privatizing the unappropriated domain.

The committee’s suggestions ultimately achieved statutory embodiment despite the cries of opponents. Committee member W. B. Greeley refused to sign the report, and others did so reluctantly. 84 Regardless of the obvious lack of unanimity, the committee passed the report and sent it to the president and Congress. Senator Gerald P. Nye, R-ND, and Representative John M. Evans, D-MT, introduced H.R. 5840 based on the committee’s report in their respective houses. 85

The bill faced an uphill climb from the start. Evans, chairman of the House Committee on the Public Lands from 1931 to 1932, led the hearings on H.R. 5840 from February 13 to April 5, 1932. The first to appear before the House committee was none other than Utah’s governor, George H. Dern, who set the tenor for how the hearings would play out: impassioned opposition to the bill from western states leaders. His objections to H.R. 5840 centered on the bill’s failure to relinquish subsurface rights to the state, the dilapidated state of the unreserved federal lands in Utah, the extreme environmental consequences Utah had experienced in recent years from mismanagement of private lands, the interstate nature of watershed boundaries, and his fear of eventual privatization of the public domain. 86

Prominent Utah ranchers legitimized Dern’s testimony. As part of his testimony, he submitted a series of letters from an assortment of ranchers and agriculturalists throughout the state, including John M. Macfarlane and Charles Redd. Redd, head of one of Utah’s most successful ranching families, argued against state control, insisting “with the State administration of the range we would have all the evils of a second Federal bureau, plus the difficulties over State lines, as well as the uncertainty of policies resultant from changing political administrations. . . . A definite stand for control by the Forest Service is the proper move at this time.” 87 Macfarlane clearly articulated a stance, similar to William Peterson, favorable to USFS management of the unreserved domain.

An undated photo of George Dern on horseback. As Utah governor Dern agitated for states’ rights when it came to natural resource use, but rather than accept the surface rights to the public domain as offered by the Hoover administration, he promoted federal rangeland regulation. Utah State Historical Society, photo no. 12114.

Furthermore, Macfarlane concurred with Governor Dern: “As to the States taking over the public domain and making grazing districts of it, I am opposed to this action. Grazing districts do not conform to state lines and with each State setting up different systems of control, I feel it would be a serious handicap to the livestock industry. The public ranges need rehabilitation and proper supervision and I do not think the States have the money nor the experience to do this.” 88 When he later addressed the committee in person, Macfarlane succinctly argued against the Evans bill, stating that mismanagement of private lands had caused devastating floods in northern Utah, that interstate watersheds could not be effectively managed by states, that state boundaries do not adhere to grazing sections, that coordination of summer and winter ranges is more effective under one federal bureau, that the federal government is more equipped to train a professional staff, and that conservation is best left in the hands of federal entities. In closing, Macfarlane invoked classic Progressive Era conservation rhetoric: “We believe that we ought to conserve [the range] for the generations to come. Those are the reasons why Utah thoroughly indorses control of the public domain by the Federal Government.” 89

The most notable opponent of the bill was none other than Gifford Pinchot, the first chief forester of the U.S. Forest Service. Though governor of Pennsylvania in 1932, Pinchot still made his voice heard in the debates over national conservation. Most abhorrent to Pinchot was the bill’s proposal to allow a special committee to determine whether lands within national forests should be reevaluated to determine if they fit the Forest Service’s guiding policies, and, therefore, stripped from USFS management if they did not. Furthermore, he was also opposed to state management of the unreserved domain, instead arguing for USFS control of those lands. Concurring with Dern and Macfarlane, Pinchot contended that grazing was inherently an interstate issue, and, therefore, must be managed federally. 90

As the two final testimonies against the bill, Macfarlane and Pinchot’s speeches must have had some staying power with representatives on the committee. Following the hearings, the committee decided to drop the bill due to the opposition expressed toward it. As E. Louise Peffer observed, “Perhaps no more universally unpopular public land bill had ever been introduced in Congress.” 91 Public opinion had coalesced behind the effort to defeat the bill. The Hoover proposal to divest the unreserved domain to the states, after three years of study and congressional debate, was dead.

Utah’s role in the public land debates did not end with the successful defeat of the Evans bill. Representative Colton, in his role as a member of the Committee on the Public Lands, introduced another land bill that ran concurrent to the Garfield Committee bill. With public opinion clearly galvanized against efforts to convey federal lands to the states, Colton reawakened his proposal to organize the unreserved federal domain into “locally controlled, but federally owned grazing districts.” 92 Fortunately for Colton, public opinion among ranchers became more favorable toward federal management as time passed. Much of the West had entered a drought in 1934 that further exacerbated the poor condition of the nation’s unreserved rangeland. 93 The situation was, indeed, dire for livestock growers. John Evans, Colton’s committee colleague, worked with Colton to successfully move the legislation through the House; however, the bill languished in the Senate. Unfortunately for the Republican Colton, his time had run out. As part of the Roosevelt wave, Democrats swept Republicans, including Colton, out of Congress in 1932. His bill, left in limbo, never made its way out of the Senate. 94

Colton’s work was not permanently defeated, however. Democratic Representative Edward T. Taylor of Colorado resurrected the Colton bill in 1933. Taylor added some changes to Colton’s initial statute, yet much of the text was directly lifted from the previous bill. 95 In fact, one “head of the Grazing Service noted, ‘Except for the intervention of an election, the [Taylor Grazing Act] would now be known as the Colton Act.’” 96 Initially a staunch advocate for homesteaders and an enemy toward attempts to implement regulation on the unreserved domain, Taylor had since shifted to favoring federal grazing controls. 97 Following months of robust debate, Taylor proved successful in passing his bill in 1934 after garnering support from the secretaries of Agriculture and Interior, conservationists, ranchers, and western politicians. The process of organizing the unreserved, unappropriated public domain of the West into grazing districts administered by the newly created United States Grazing Service was set to begin.

The passage of the Taylor Grazing Act may have been impossible without the groundwork performed by Utah’s ranchers and politicians. Governor George Dern and John M. Macfarlane combined their efforts to successfully defy the Garfield Committee’s recommendation to divest federal control of the public domain to the states. Contrary to contemporary popular perception of Utah’s heritage as sagebrush rebels, Utah politicians and ranchers in the 1920s and early 1930s were sagebrush conservationists, arguing for increased federal management of the rangeland. Not only did Utahns help defeat the transferal bill in Congress, Don Colton, a Utah congressman, was the original mind behind the foundations of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Twelve years after the passage of that bill, the United States Grazing Service merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the largest landholder in the West. Antipathy toward the BLM runs deep in contemporary Utah and the West as rhetorical and sometimes physical (in the case of a protest in Moab in 1980, and more recently the Bundy standoff in 2014) battles are waged between politicians, ranchers, and federal land managers. Yet many Utahns and westerners more generally have forgotten or are unaware of the broad support for federal ownership of public lands and cooperation with federal agencies in the management of those lands in the early twentieth century. Without the efforts of Utahns like George Dern, John M. Macfarlane, William Peterson, and Don Colton the federal landscape in the West would likely not resemble what it is today. Utahns, not distant Washington bureaucrats, are largely responsible for implementing a program of federal regulation that continues in the West to this day.

Notes

1 Clyde A. Milner II, Anne M. Butler, and David Rich Lewis, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American West, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 488.

2 Hearings before the Committee on the Public Lands, House of Representatives, Granting Remaining Unreserved Public Lands to the States, 29, Hathi Trust, accessed November 17, 2017, https://babel.hathitrust.org /cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015023182515;view=2up;seq=1. Milner et al. reproduced this part of this transcript in their edited volume.

3 Hearings, 27.

4 Hearings, 28. For Dern’s concerns about federal reclamation, see Milner et al., Major Problems, 490.

5 Karen R. Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property between Them (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 1–15. Merrill centers the conflict between ranchers and federal land managers on their divergence in defining property. While land managers emphasized constitutional and executive authority, ranchers pointed to use as a central function of property rights. Merrill further argues that these battles became more inflamed after the institution of regulation under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.

6 Hearings, 19.

7 Milner et al., Major Problems, 490.

8 Letters from ten Utah ranchers and agriculturalists were added to the end of Dern’s testimony. See “Hearings,” 29–37.

9 For more on the Sagebrush Rebellion in Utah, see Jedediah S. Rogers, “The Volatile Sagebrush Rebellion,” in Utah in the Twentieth Century, ed. Brian Q. Cannon and Jessie L. Embry (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), 367–84.

10 Dennis Romboy, “Utah Poised to Lead Another Sagebrush Rebellion over Federal Land,” Deseret News, March 4, 2012, https://www.deseretnews.com/article /865551474/Utah-poised-to-lead-another-Sagebrush -Rebellion.html.

11 George Henry Dern, School Land Titles in Public Land States: Address of Governor George H. Dern of Utah before the Governors’ Conference, 1926, copy at J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City (hereafter JWML). Dern focused much of his angst on a technical rule that stated that a state’s title to school lands did not attach until after being surveyed. As a result of Dern’s efforts, Congress passed the Jones Act of 1927 which conferred mineral rights on state school lands to the states. For more on this, see Charles S. Peterson and Brian Q. Cannon, The Awkward State of Utah: Coming of Age in the Nation, 1896–1945 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015), 246–47.

12 Dern, School Land Titles, 2–3, 27.

13 George Henry Dern, Public Land Policies, 1929, 14, copy at JWML.

14 While many historians have engaged with Dern and the Garfield Committee in their analysis of the evolution of western lands policy in the early twentieth century, this work focuses on how Utahns—in particularly Dern, William Peterson, John Macfarlane, and Don Colton—held a nuanced perspective on land management that played a significant role in derailing the Garfield Committee’s recommendations. This article also explores seldom evaluated environmental factors that weighed upon Dern and his contemporaries to oppose the proposed land transfer. In reference to the same period, Leisl Carr Childers discusses the Garfield committee and Nevada’s reaction against the land transfer bill in Leisl Carr Childers, The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). Carr Childers contrasts her work as a Great Basin history to Merrill’s argument in Public Lands and Political Meaning. Carr Childers contends that Merrill’s assertion that the Hoover proposal represented a western shift toward states’ rights was untrue in the context of the Great Basin (Nevada, Utah, and Idaho) states’ position that surface rights alone were unsuitable for state management and could be especially harmful to Great Basin ranchers. This article argues that Dern and his Utahn colleagues occupied a middle ground recognizing the importance of states’ rights while simultaneously pushing for a federal solution to the problem of the unreserved public domain.

15 Ralf R. Woolley, Cloudburst Floods in Northern Utah, 1850–1938 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946), iii, 107.

16 Woolley, 36–42, 59–61.

17 Al Warden, “Ogden Boys Escape Death in Torrents,” Ogden Standard Examiner, August 14, 1923.

18 Woolley, Cloudburst Floods, 107.

19 “Cloudburst Death Toll Mounts, Mangled Bodies Found in Debris; Scouts Victims,” Ogden Standard Examiner, August 14, 1923; Floyd A. Zimmerman, “Ogden Honeymooners Missing in Deluge,” Ogden Standard Examiner, August 14, 1923; “Terrible Torrents Deal Death and Desolation,” Davis County Clipper, August 17, 1923; “Cloudburst Causes Disastrous Flood,” Box Elder News, August 14, 1923.

20 “Proclamation by the Governor Asking Aid for Storm Sufferers,” Davis County Clipper, August 17, 1923.

21 Among the commission members was Utah business magnate Mariner S. Eccles.

22 “Forest Examiner Gives Version Cause of Flood,” Davis County Clipper, August 31, 1923. Baker studied the sediment found in the flood residues and compared it to the sediment found in the fire-stricken portions of the drainages, finding an inexplicable match.

23 Woolley, Cloudburst Floods, 112.

24 “Heavy Rains in the Mountains Cause Damage So. of Co. Seat,” Davis County Clipper, July 11, 1930.

25 Special Flood Commission, Torrential Floods in Northern Utah, 1930 (Logan: Agricultural Experiment Station, 1931), 5.

26 Peterson and Cannon, Awkward State of Utah, 247–48.

27 “Governor Dern Sees Price’s Flood Firsthand, Bees Furnish Omen to Utah’s Chief Executive,” News-Advocate (Carbon County, UT), September 16, 1927.

28 Thomas Alexander casts Cannon’s environmental contributions as indicative of a religious and civic desire to conserve and beautify the natural world for the benefit of current and future generations of Utahns. See Alexander’s “Sylvester Q. Cannon and the Revival of Environmental Consciousness in the Mormon Community,” Environmental History 3 (October 1998): 488–507.

29 Special Flood Commission, Torrential Floods, 6, 7.

30 Special Flood Commission, 31–34.

31 Special Flood Commission, 34–42. Woolley in Cloudburst Floods counters the argument that the denudation of plant cover by overgrazing had an especially large impact on flooding in Utah during this period. He stresses the physiographic and climatic nature of the state to contend that cloudbursts have always caused large floods in the state and that the increase in population in flood zones has led to a larger impact on human life and livelihood.

32 Special Flood Commission, Torrential Floods, 42.

33 Special Flood Commission, 7, 8–9, 43. Woolley, Cloudburst Floods, 14, contends that the original natural condition did not diverge notably from the plant cover that was on the range when the floods occurred in 1930. Woolley came to this conclusion using historical accounts running back to 1540.

34 “Overgrazing Given as Main Reason for Centerville Floods,” Davis County Clipper, September 19, 1930.

35 The report is unclear on the extent of timber cutting on the area, though the researchers do say that settlers did use conifers in the canyons until the 1910s.

36 Special Flood Commission, Torrential Floods, 19, 22.

37 Special Flood Commission, 25.

38 More on the implementation of the commission’s recommendations is in Thomas G. Alexander, The Rise of Multiple-Use Management in the Intermountain West: A History of Region 4 of the Forest Service (Washington DC: U.S. Forest Service, 1987), 105–6; Charles S. Peterson and Linda E. Speth, “A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest,” Wasatch-Cache National Forest, September, 25, 1980, 235–39, accessed July 8, 2019, https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS /stelprdb5053310.pdf; George W. Craddock, “Floods Controlled on Davis County Watersheds,” Journal of Forestry 58 (April 1960): 291–93.

39 For a Utah example of this rural support for park creation, see Betsy Gaines Quammen, “American Zion: Mormon Culture and the Creation of a National Park,” in The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays on Mormon Environmental History, ed. Jedediah S. Rogers and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019), 131–51.

40 “Peterson, William, representative from Utah, report,” 8, box 6, fd. 32, Utah Agriculture Experiment Station Directors Files, USU 18:17, Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah (hereafter USUSCA). This is part of a report written by William Peterson, director of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station and agriculture professor at the Utah State Agricultural College, for the Committee on the Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain, discussing the status of public lands in the state of Utah. For a more detailed look at Potter and his survey, see Charles S. Peterson, “Albert F. Potter’s Wasatch Survey, 1902: A Beginning for Public Management of Natural Resources in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39, no. 3 (Summer 1971): 238–53.

41 “Proclamation 500 (1903): Setting Aside Manti Forest Reserve, Utah,” Wikisource, accessed December 4, 2017, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Proclamation_500.

42 Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development (Washington, DC: Public Land Review Commission, 1968), 568–85.

43 For instance, on the Toiyabe Range in Nevada, the range had come under administrative control, parceled into grazing allotments and units designed to provide a degree of stability to ranchers. See USDA, The Public Domain of Nevada and Factors Affecting Its Use, Technical Bulletin No. 301, by E. O. Wooten, April 1932 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 37.

44 E. Louise Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain: Disposal and Reservation Policies, 1900–50 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), 184–99. See also Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning, 81–102. Merrill stresses the fears ranchers had as USFS grazing policy threatened to shift dramatically during the latter half of the 1920s.

45 Carr Childers, Size of the Risk, 18–19, outlines one of the most prominent disposal acts to appear in the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Stock- Raising Homestead Act of 1916, which created the possibility of substituting ranching for farming if it led to private land ownership. See also Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning, 28, 67–76.

46 C. L. Forsling, “Memorandum Report on the Desert Winter Range of West Central Utah and Eastern Nevada,” box 7, fd. 6, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

47 “Hearings,” 26. Dern quotes two Utahns who were particularly alert to the degradation of Utah’s public domain. The first, William Bailey, former chairman of the State Board of Equalization, stated “the lands are being rapidly devastated and ruined by overgrazing” and “the public range is being depleted and it would seem almost, if not completely, ruined for many years to come at least.” Another, John Schmutz, citizen of St. George, said he had “raised cattle on the public domain for 40 years” and “that today it does not produce more than 10 per cent of what it produced 40 years ago.”

48 George Stewart, “William Peterson—An Appreciation,” Utah State Quarterly 6, no. 3 (February 1930): 3. For an alumni association story on Peterson, see Utah Agricultural College, “1909 A. C. U. Graduate Yearbook Graduates,” 176, USU Digital Exhibits, accessed December 5, 2017, http://exhibits.usu.edu/items/show/13945.

49 “Don B. Colton, LDS Official, Ex-Solon, Dies,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 1, 1951.

50 “Thinks Government Should Aid Monument,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 22, 1926; “Colton Introduces Bill on Grazing Land Leases,” Salt Lake Telegram, January 13, 1928; John Bristol, “Colton Grazing Bills Meet Opposition,” Salt Lake Telegram, February 6, 1928; “Colton Bill May Be Restricted,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 13, 1928. For Colton’s correspondence with both William Peterson and John Macfarlane concerning the bills, see “C-D,” box 9, fd. 2, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

51 Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain, 203. Originally cited in 71 Cong. Rec. 3570–71 (1929).

52 “Colton Sponsors Public Lands Expense Bill,” Salt Lake Telegram, December 3, 1929. For more on the nuance of Republican Party positions in the state of Utah during the 1920s and 1930s, see Peterson and Cannon, Awkward State of Utah, 242–50. Colton actually refused to support the Republican gubernatorial incumbent Charles Mabey in his failed reelection bid against Democrat George Dern in 1924.

53 Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain, 203–4. Originally cited in 71 Cong. Rec. 408 (1929–30).

54 Stat. 153, chapter 127, 71st Congress, 2d session (1930).

55 Report of the Committee on the Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain, January, 1931 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931), ii, accessed December 8, 2017, https://babel.hathitrust.org /cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028157611;view=1up;seq=1.

56 Box 6–8, USU 18:17, USUSCA. These documents can be found in William Peterson’s files. As a member of the committee, Peterson received copies of all major reports sent to the Garfield Committee.

57 “Utah Cattle and Horse Growers’ Association,” box 8, fd. 4, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

58 “Petition to E. O. Leatherwood, 2nd Congressional District, to include area above Provo in Uinta National Forest,” box 8, fd. 5, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

59 “A bill prepared by a Utah committee for federal control of grazing on the public domain,” box 8, fd. 6, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

60 “Peterson, William, report,” 3, box 6, fd. 32, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

61 “Peterson, William, report,” 2. For information on Powell’s life and ideology, see Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 133–35, and Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (New York: Penguin Books, 1954).

62 “Peterson, William, report,” 4.

63 “Miscellaneous report on disposition of public domain,” 15, 16–17, box 6, fd. 21, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

64 “Peterson, William, report,” 9–10, box 6, fd. 32, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

65 “Peterson, William, report,” 14–15. It is unclear if he is referencing the USFS or a potentially new regulatory agency.

66 “Peterson, William, report,” 16.

67 Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), 266.

68 Hays, 271.

69 “Mead, Elwood, representative from California, report,” 1, box 6, fd. 24, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

70 “Van Petten, E.C., representative from Oregon, report,” 7, box 6, fd. 27, doc. 2, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

71 Carr Childers, Size of the Risk, 29.

72 Carr Childers, 30. Carr Childers also discusses the unique nature of Nevada’s public lands situation, especially the federal government’s ownership of 90 percent of the state.

73 “Statement by James R. Garfield, chair,” 6, box 6, fd. 9, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

74 “Wilson, Francis, representative from New Mexico, report,” box 6, fd. 25, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

75 “Tiffany, R.K., representative from Washington, report,” box 6, fd. 26, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

76 “Brandjord, I.M., representative from Montana, report,” box 6, fd. 28, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

77 “Moynihan, Charles, representative from Colorado, report,” box 6, fd. 31, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

78 “Jenkins, Perry, representative from Wyoming, report,” box 6, fd. 30, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

79 Report of the Committee on the Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931), 1. Addressed to President Hoover, the report responded to five specific questions addressed previously by his administration. Should the states or the federal government administer the vacant, unreserved, unappropriated public domain? How should conservation of water resources be implemented, especially in regard to reclamation and flood control? Should states be part of the program to conserve subsurface minerals? Is the national forest system accomplishing the nation’s goals in regard to timber conservation? How can administrative changes produce greater efficiency in national conservation?

80 Report, 2. The committee seems to have left the proposed administrative body’s identity intentionally ambiguous so that states could decide if they were interested in managing the unreserved domain in their respective states.

81 Report, 2–3.

82 Report, 6–8 (emphasis added).

83 Donnelly and Dunbar’s statements in “Comments received on the report of the committee,” box 6, fd. 2, doc. 2, USU 18:17, USUSCA.

84 Peffer, Closing of the Public Domain, 210.

85 Evans bestowed upon the bill the interminable title: “H. R. 5840, a bill to grant vacant, unreserved, unappropriated, nonmineral lands to accepting States, and to authorize the President to establish national ranges in nonaccepting States; to create a board authorized to determine as to the disposition of certain areas of public domain; to enable the United States, the States, and individuals to exchange lands for the consolidation of mingled areas, and granting lands to certain States to achieve that purpose; to provide for the control, disposition, and protection of stock-watering places and of intrastate and interstate stock driveways; and for the conservation of grazing resources, and for other purposes.” For brevity’s sake, it was also known as the Evans bill. For Nye and Evans’s sponsorship of the bill, see Peffer, Closing of the Public Domain, 211. For the bill’s title see, “Hearings,” 1.

86 Hearings, 9–29.

87 Hearings, 33.

88 Hearings, 31. It is unclear whether or not Redd and Macfarlane represented the majority of Utah ranchers with their ideas. However, they did represent institutions that had a vested stake in ranching on the public domain throughout the state.

89 Hearings, 201–5.

90 Hearings, 210, 212–16.

91 Peffer, Closing of the Public Domain, 212.

92 Carr Childers, Size of the Risk, 32.

93 Gates, Public Land Law Development, 610. The drought hit Utah especially hard in 1934 after Colton had already left Congress. For more on its impacts on Utah, see Leonard J. Arrington, “Utah’s Great Drought of 1934,” Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (Summer 1986): 245–64.

94 Peffer, Closing of the Public Domain, 216.

95 The most important change was nixing Colton’s stipulation that any state could back out of having their unreserved lands federally managed if it so desired. See Gates, Public Land Law Development, 610.

96 Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning, 241. Quote from comments by Clarence Forsling in Public Land Policy: Proceedings of the Western Resources Conference, ed. Phillip O. Foss (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1968), 90.

97 For brief histories on Taylor’s positions, see Peffer, Closing of the Public Domain, 216; Gates, Public Land Law Development, 610; Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning, 139.