Deseret Salt Co. v. Tarpey

Citations

• 142 U.S. 241
• 12 S. Ct. 158
• 35 L. Ed. 999
• 1891 U.S. LEXIS 2582

Syllabus

<p>The grant of public land to the Central Pacific Railroad Company by the acts of July I, 1862, 12 Stat. 489, c. 120, and July 2, 1864, 13 Stat. 356, c. 216, was a grant inprcesenti; and the legal title to the granted land, as distinguished from merely equitable or inchoate interests, passed when the identification of a granted section became so far complete as to authorize the grantee to take possession.</p> <p>Rutherford v. Greene, 2 Wheat. 196 cited and followed.</p> <p>Patents were issued, not for the purpose of transferring title, but as evidence that the grantee had complied with the conditions of the grant, and that the grant was, to that extent, relieved' from the possibility of forfeiture for breach'of its conditions.-</p> <p>Wisconsin Central Railroad Co. v. Price County, 133 U. S. 496,'510 approved.</p> <p>The provision in the statute, requiring the cost of surveying, selecting and conveying the land to be paid into the treasury before a patent could issue, does not impair the force of the operative words of transfer in it.</p> <p>The railroad company could maintain an action for the possession of land so granted before the issue of a patent, and could transfer its title thereto by lease, so as to enable its lessee to maintain such an action.</p>