Continued from
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-n...f/2016/01/supreme_court_already_ruled_th.html
Public opinion and willing sales
The high court's decision didn't stop arguments over how to best use the land and water of Harney County, however.
The federal government didn't immediately kick the squatters off its land. And the French-Glenn Co. kept operating, at first under ownership of two Portland investors. They built channels in 17 miles of the Blitzen River and diverted water for irrigation, according to information on the refuge's website.
In 1916, 46 percent ownership in the huge ranching operation was sold to Louis Swift of the Swift Meat Packing Co. out of Chicago, who would come to own all of French-Glenn in 1928.
Evolving views of how to manage water rights and irrigation needs in the West complicated decisions about how best to use public lands, including those of Harney County, Langston said.
State leaders, prompted by Swift and a land speculation group he created, leaned on Oregon lawmakers and the state land board to allow developers to drain Malheur Lake and its tributaries, she said. They planned to create a massive irrigation system that they said could turn Harney County into an agrarian paradise, she said.
But pro-conservation forces pushed for the federal government to assert its ownership and strongly regulate land and water use in the area.
Fred Otley, a rancher whose many descendants still work the land of Harney County, said favoring the irrigation plan over a nature preserve was "not for the benefit of the Oregon public" and would benefit only "the dry lands of a millionaire land and cattle corporation," Langston writes in her book.
Growing support from Harney County's small landholders and squatters along with pressure from the Audubon Society, which had considerable support in Portland and Salem, helped scuttle the state irrigation enterprise.
So did the Depression and profound Dust Bowl-era drought that hit the area in the early 1930s. The weather pattern delivered too little water and too little forage and hay to raise many cattle; the economy meant too few people could afford to buy much beef.
Amid the prolonged controversy and uncertainty, the federal government sued Oregon in an effort to end both.
The lawsuit, argued before the Supreme Court in March 1935, sought a clear declaration that the federal government had unfettered ownership of all 82,000 acres.
The decision turned on whether the waters of the Malheur refuge were "navigable" at the time Oregon became a state. That's because, under the acts of Congress that admitted new states to the union, ownership of navigable waterways was automatically conveyed to the state.
Hundreds of people testified and reams of water and land measurement records were examined before the court concluded that, no, boats had never routinely plied the waters of the refuge for commerce, or any other purpose.
The upshot of the court's decision was crystal clear: The federal government owned, without restrictions of any form, the entire acreage.
By 1935, Swift willingly sold its 65,000 acres adjoining the refuge and its water rights to the Blitzen to the federal government so it could expand and acquire water for the refuge.
Seven years later, prompted by the same economic and climatological forces, a widow of a U.S. senator sold her family's once-powerful Double-O ranch to the federal government, bringing the refuge to 161,000 acres, just 27,000 shy of its full size today.
-- Betsy Hammond
