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Article: Railroads, Federal Land Grants to (Issue)
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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RAILROADS, FEDERAL LAND GRANTS TO
(ISSUE)
Between 1850 and 1871 the United States government used a portion of the public domain (federally owned land) to assist and encourage the building of railroads. In all, during that twenty-one year period approximately 1.31 million acres of land were transferred to private ownership. This represented 9.5 percent of the public domain as it stood in 1850 (1.39 billion acres). The land was located in twenty-seven states, but the largest grants were made in California (11.5 million acres), Kansas (8.2 million acres), Minnesota (9.9 million acres), Montana (14.7 million acres), North Dakota (10.6 million acres), and Washington (9.5 million acres). ...