# Railroad Land Grants



## Bwells (Mar 30, 2014)

I seem to remember from a long time ago that railroads were given land grants to entice the railroads to build the transcontinental rail system. I do remember it was in a checkerboard pattern so that the railroads did not have a monopoly on the land and so that the government could still have some say in the process.
I did a search and after looking at a few websites I ran across this one, http://landgrant.org/
At the top of that page is a section entitled “taking back our land” http://www.landgrant.org/forfeiture.html
Scrolling down to “The movement for forfeiture gains steam”, I found this: The unfortunate checkerboard pattern of the land grants had begun during the canal land grant era, and continued with the railroad grants as a concession to opponents both of land subsidies and of interstate railroads. Land grant proponents compromised by agreeing to grant every other square-mile section of land to the railroads. The rationale for this was that the government's sections would double in value because of their proximity to the railroad, and thus the government would lose no revenues from its own land sales. The reality turned out quite differently for a number of reasons, including the fact that ultimately, not all the checkerboards were sold by the railroads or by the government, and the fact that the government did not always receive the expected $2.50 per acre.
Anyone knowing more about how these grants were arranged? I seem to recall the area was two squares wide with alternating ownership.


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