Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/148

138 intendents were called upon to select indemnity school lands. As early as 1866 intending purchasers, too, were granted the privilege of securing lands at the minimum price for reporting to the governor lands that were approved as indemnity selec- tions 1. From 1887 to I ^95, though the governor was author- ized to employ a locating agent, the selection of lieu lands as well as the designating of "base" devolved almost if not quite entirely upon the intending purchaser 2. This arrangement was fraught with fraud and trouble to the state. Though fully exposed by the state land agent Davenport, of 1895- 1899, there was a reversion to the old practices from 1899 to 1903. This dual line of state land officials, with their respective functions, the state land agent representing the governor in selecting and caring for the lands of the state and the state land board for selling them and caring for the proceeds, needs to be clearly kept in mind if the tangled skein of the state's land 1 transactions is to be straightened out.

Sale of Oregon School and University Lands— The sale of Oregon lands by the state land board began in 1867. It was acting under the law of 1866 providing for the sale of school lands. Soon after the passage of this law, the board reports, "numerous applications for the purchase of school lands came in" and, in many instances, from several parties for the same tracts, and it soon became evident the only method to adopt, in justice to the school fund and to the parties desirous of purchasing, would be to offer all the school lands at public sale . . . the minimum price was fixed at $2.00 per acre ; terms one-third down for farming and grazing land, and one-half down for land chiefly valuable for timber, with interest on deferred payments at the rate of ten per cent payable semi- annually. . . " It is noticeable, however, that notwith- standing the method of sale to highest bidder the abstracts of

1 General Laws, fourth regular sess., 1866, pp. 27-30.

2 "Base" or "basis" used in connection with accounts of procedures and transactions pertaining to lieu or indemnity lands designates "those parts of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections in each township which have been otherwise appropriated under the laws of the United States, and for which the state is permitted by the general government to take land in lieu."