Tarpey v. Madsen

after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.

A narrow but important question is presented by this record. The land in controversy is an odd numbered section within the place limits of the grant to the Central Pacific Railroad Company. The identification of the lands which passed by that grant was made at the time the map of definite location was filed in the office of the Secretary of the Interior, and by him approved, to wit, October 20, 1868, and the question is whether there was anything in the occupation or entry by Olney to defeat the title apparently then passing to the railroad company. That there was nothing of record affecting the validity of that title is conceded. No one, by. an investigation of any public record, could have ascertained at that time that there was any doubt in respect thereto.

It is true that there was then no local land officé in which those seeking to make preemption or homestead entries could file their declaratory statements or make entries, and the want of such an office is made by the Supreme Court of the State one of the main grounds for holding that the land did not pass to the railroad company. We agree with that court fully in its discussion of the general principles involved in the failure of the Government to provide a local land office. The right of one who has actually occupied, with an intent to make a homestead or preemption entry, cannot be defeated by the mere lack of a place in which to make a record of his intent. In many States the statutory provision in respect to suits is that the defendant, on receiving service of summons, must within a certain time file his answer in the office of the clerk of the court. It cannot be doubted that if, before he is thus called upon to file his answer the office is burned, and the clerk dies, and there is no place or individual at which or with whom his answer can be filed, such accident or omission will not defeat his right to make a defence, or give to the plaintiff a right to take judgment by default. Where the accident or omission is not the fault of the party but of the Government, or some official of the government, such accident or omission cannot defeat

And in this respect we must notice the oft-repeated declaration of this court, that “ the law deals tenderly with one who, in good faith, goes upon the public lands with a view of making a home thereon.” Ard v. Brandon, 156 U. S. 537 , 543; Northern Pacific Railroad v. Amacker, 175 U. S. 564 , 567. With this declaration, in all its fulness, we heartily concur, and have no desire to limit it in any respect, and' if Olney, the original entryman, was pressing his claims every intendment should be in his favor in order to perfect the. title which he was seeking to acquire. - But when the original entryman, either because he does not care to perfect his claim to the land or because he is conscious that it is invalid, abandons it, and a score of years thereafter some third party comes in and attempts to dispossess the railroad company (grantee of Congress) of its title — apparently perfect and unquestioned during these many years — he does not come in the attitude of an equitable appellant to the consideration of the court.

It must be remembered that mere occupation of the public

“ And though these rights or claims rested on no statute, or any positive promise, the general recognition of them in the end by the Government, and its disposition to protect the meritorious actual settlers, who were the pioneers of emigration in the new territories, gave a decided and well understood value to these claims. They were the subjects of bargain and sale, and, as among the parties to such contracts, they were valid.”

But notwithstanding this recognition of the rights of individual occupants as against all other individuals, it has been uniformly held that no rights are thus acquired as against the United States. In Camfield v. United States, 167 U. S. 518 , this court sustained a bill filed by the United States to compel by mandatory injunction certain parties to vacate public lands which they were occupying without any intent to purchase, and whose occupancy therefore stood in the way of others who might wish to enter and acquire title under the land laws of the United States. See also Frisbie v. Whitney, 9 Wall. 187 ; The Yosemite Valley Case, 15 Wall. 77 .

The original Union Pacific Railroad act ( 12 Stat. 492 , sec. 3) excepted from the grant of the odd sections to the railroad company all those tracts to which an adverse right had attached “ at the time the line of said road is definitely fixed.” The act does not in terms prescribe how or by what evidence it shall be determined that the line of said road has become definitely fixed, and for many years after its passage, interpreting this and other like railroad land grants, the ruling of the land department was that the line was definitely fixed whenever it was surveyed, staked out and marked on the face of the earth, United States v. Winona &c. Railroad, 165 U. S. 463 , 473, and that if at that time there was no adverse right the title of the railroad company was settled. Of course, this left such date one to be determined by oral testimony, and so as to each individual odd-numbered tract within the place limits of the grant the question of title was determined by evidence of the time of surveying, staking and marking on the face of the earth the line of

After referring to the rule in reference to the filing of the map of definite location in the office of the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Justice Miller, announcing the conclusions of the court, said (p. 640}:

“ This filing of the map of definite location furnished also the means of determining what lands had previously to that moment been sold, reserved or otherwise disposed of by the United States, and to which a preemption or homestead claim had attached ; for, by examining the plats of this land in the office of the register and receiver, or in the General Land Office, it could readily have been seen if any of the odd sections within ten miles of the line had been sold, or disposed of, or reserved,

or a homestead or preemption claim had attached to any of them.”

And again (p. 641):

“ It is not conceivable that Congress intended to place these parties as contestants for the land, with the right in each to re-' quire proof from the other of complete performance of its obligation. . . . The reasonable purpose of the government undoubtedly is that which it expressed, namely, while wé are giving liberally to the railroad company, we do not give any lands we have already sold, or to which, according to our laws, we have permitted a preemption or homestead right to attach. No right to such land passes by this grant.”

And finally (p. 644):

“ Of all the words in the English language, this word attached was probably the best that could have been used. It did not mean mere settlement, residence or cultivation of the land, but it meant a proceeding in the proper land office, by which the inchoate right to the land was initiated. It mejint that by such a proceeding a right of homestead had fastened to that land, which could ripen into a perfect title by future residence and cultivation. With the performance of these conditions the company had nothing to do. The right of the homestead having attached to the land it was excepted out of the grant as much as if in a deed it had been excluded from the conveyance by metes and bounds.”

The doctrine thus announced, that rights on either side as between the railroad company and the entrymen are determined by the facts appearing of record, has been repeatedly recognized since. In Hastings & Dakota Railroad v. Whitney, 132 U. S. 357 , these rights were discussed by Mr. Justice Lamar, who, by reason of his experience as Secretary of the Interior, was preeminently qualified to speak in reference thereto. And an entry which was clearly open to challenge by the government was held to be effective to withdraw the land from the operation of the railroad grant. On page 361 Mr. Justice Lamar observed :

“ In the light of these decisions the almost uniform practice of the department has been to regard land, upon which an entry of record valid upon its face has been made, as appropriated

and withdrawn from subsequent homestead entry, preemption settlement, sale or grant until the original entry be cancelled or declared forfeited; in which case the land reverts to the government as part of the public domain, and becomes again subject to entry under the land laws.”

And then, after referring to the contention that the Dwimeyer case was not conclusive because in that case the entry was valid on its face, 'while this was defective, he added (p. 364):

“ But these defects, whether they be of form or substance, by no means render the entry absolutely a nullity. So long as it remains a subsisting entry of record, whose legality has been passed upon by the land authorities, and their action remains unreversed, it is such an appropriation of the tract as segregates it from the public domain, and therefore precludes it from subsequent grants. In the case before us, at the time of the location of the company’s road, an examination of the tract books and the plat filed in the office of the register and receiver, or in the land office, would have disclosed Turner’s entry as an entry of record, accepted by the proper officers in the proper office, together with the application and necessary money, an entry the imperfections and defects of which could have been cured by a supplemental affidavit or by other proof of the requisite qualifications of the applicant. Such an entry attached to the land a right which the road cannot dispute for any supposed failure of the entryman to comply with all the provisions of the law under which he made his claim. A practice of allowing such contests would be fraught with the gravest dangers to actual settlers, and would be subversive of the principles upon which the munificent railroad grants are based.”

Still later, in Whitney v. Taylor, 158 U. S. 85 , in which the validity of a preemption entry was challenged as against a railroad grant, we said (p. 94):

“ But it is also true that settlement alone, without a declaratory statement, creates no preemption right. ‘ Such a notice of claim or declaratory statement is indispensably necessary to give the claimant any standing as a preemptor, the rule being that his settlement alone is not sufficient for that purpose.’ Lansdale v. Daniels, 100 U. S. 113 , 116. And the acceptance

of such declaratory statement, and noting the same on the books of the local land office, is the official recognition of the preemption claim. While the cases of Kansas Pacific Railway Co. v. Dunmeyer, and Hastings & Dakota Railway Co. v. Whitney, supra, involved simply homestead claims, yet, in the opinion in each, preemption and homestead claims were mentioned and considered as standing in this respect upon the same footing.”

And in Northern Pacific Railroad Company v. Colburn, 164 U. S. 383 , we held distinctly that no mere occupation of a tract of public land in and of itself excepted that tract from the operation of a railroad grant; that a settler could not dispute the claim of a railroad company until and unless he had filed his entry in the proper land office. Still later, in Northern Pacific Railroad v. Sanders, 166 U. S. 620 , 630, we said:

“ Any other interpretation would defeat the evident purpose of Congress in excepting from railroad grants lands upon which claims existed of record at the time the road to be aided was-definitely located. What that purpose was has been frequently adverted to by this court.”

And subsequently, on page 631, we quoted, as the settled law in this respect, from Kansas Pacific v. Dunmeyer the first of the quotations therefrom heretofore given in this opinion.

If it be said that this rule ignores the privileges given to temporary occupants of land to make entry within a short time it must be said that it also denies the personal right of the railroad company to fix definitely its line of road. For when the company has by resolution of its directors established such line, and that has been marked on the ground by posts and stakes, it has done all required by the letter of the statute. If it be said that the railroad company may, notwithstanding its personal action thereafter, vote to locate its road on a different line, so on the other hand may it be said that the individual occupant of a tract may abandon' his thought of entry; and by making each- of the parties’ rights, to wit, those of the railroad company, and the individual, turn on a matter of record, the court simply gave definiteness and certainty to the congressional grant. It was said in Missouri, Kansas & Texas Rail

It will be noticed that the third finding of the register and receiver states that on the 20th day of October the land in dispute contained “ the improvements of a Iona fide settler,” which, as they held, also excepted the tract from the grant. This matter is also referred to in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Utah. But the exception in the amendatory act of 1864, 13 Stat. 358 , of “ the improvements of any bona fide settler,” so far from sustaining the conclusion of the local officers, makes against it, for specifically exempting improvements contemplates cases in which the settler shall have a right to remove his improvements, although he may not have a right to perfect his title to the land. The exception is not of land' on which are improvements of a bona fide settler but simply the improvements of a bona fide settler, thus distinguishing between a right to the land and a right to be protected in respect to the improvements.

Recapitulating, we are of opinion that a proper interpretation of the acts of Congress making railroad grants like the one in question requires that the relative rights of the company and an individual entryman, must be determined, not by the act of the company in itself fixing definitely the line of its road, or by the mere occupancy of the individual, but by record evidence, on the one part the filing of the map in the office of the Secretary of the Interior, and, on the other the declaration or entry in the local land office. In this way matters resting on oral testimony are eliminated, a certainty and definiteness is given to the rights of each, the grant becomes fixed and definite; and while, as repeatedly held, the railroad company may not question the validity or propriety of the entryman’s olaim of record, its rights ought not to be defeated long years after its title had apparently fixed, by fugitive and uncertain testimony of occupation ; for if that be the rule, as admitted by counsel for defendant in error on the argument, the time will never come at which

For these reasons, we are of the opinion that the judgment of the Supreme Gourt of the State of Utah is eri'oneous, and it must ~be reversed and the case remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

The Chief Justice, Me. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice White dissented.