Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 76.djvu/1491

 76 STAT.1

PROCLAMATION 3 4 4 4 - J A N. 5, 1962

1443

IN W I T N E S S WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed. DONE at the City of Washington this twenty-eighth day of December in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and [SEAL] sixty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-sixth. JOHN F. KENNEDY

By the President: DEAN R U S K,

Secretary of State.

Proclamation 3444 HOMESTEAD CENTENNIAL YEAR By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

WHEREAS May 20, 1962, marks the centennial of the enactment of the Homestead Act (12 Stat. 392), approved by President Lincoln, inducing settlement and cultivation of the undeveloped public lands and the establishment of homes thereon; and WHEREAS the granting of patents to more than 270 million acres of public domain lands has promoted the economic, social, and political development of this country through the establishment of farms, ranches, and communities and has provided the foundation for our highly productive agricultural economy; and WHEREAS the Homestead Act and supplemental acts of Congress, which are unique and distinctively American, stand as a tribute to the wisdom of those responsible for their enactment, in providing for the settlement of the public lands and thereby contributing to our free enterprise system by offering landless and laboring people an opportunity to acquire lands to provide for the needs of their families; and WHEREAS the Homestead Act and supplemental acts provide for the further recognition of those who have served in the armed forces of the United States; and WHEREAS specific Federal administration of the lands of the public domain began one hundred and fifty years ago with the establishment on April 25, 1812, of the General Land Office, now the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior, and the development of the West has been coextensive with, and based substantially upon, the acquisition, use, and disposal of these lands; and WHEREAS the Nation's public lands have contributed to the development and maintenance of the land-grant colleges and universities and the transcontinental and other railroads, and constitute the resource from which our national forest and park systems have been created; and WHEREAS the approximately 477 million acres of public domain, under the administration of the Department of the Interior, constitute a vital and necessary national land reserve, a trust dedicated to the greatest use and benefit of the public; and

January s, 1962

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