Northern Pacific Railroad v. Sanders

Citations

• 166 U.S. 620
• 17 S. Ct. 671
• 41 L. Ed. 1139
• 1897 U.S. LEXIS 2054

Syllabus

<p>Lands were expressly excepted from tlie grant made in 1864 for. the benefit of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which were .not free from preemption “or other claims or rights” at the time the line of the road was definitely fixed and a plat thereof filed in the office of the Commissioner of the General Land Office. The general route of the railroad was fixed February 21,1872, and its line of definite location on the 6th of July, 1S82. After the company filed a map of general route, the Commissioner of the General Land Office, under the directions of the Secretary of the Interior, April 22, 1872, transmitted a diagram of that route to the register and receiver of the land office at Helena, Montana, with a letter of instructions directing the withdrawal from sale or location, preemption or homestead entry, all the surveyed and unsurveyed odd-numbered sections of public lands falling within the limits of forty miles as designated on that map. The lands in dispute are within the exterior lines of both the general and definite routes of the railroad. Prior to such definite location certain persons, qualified to purchase mineral lands under the laws of the United States, entered upon the possession of these lands, and did “ file upon ” them “as mineral lands,” applying for patents, and conforming in ¿11 respects to tlie provisions of Chapter 6 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, Title XXXII, relating to “ Mineral Lands and Mining Resources.” The company filed a protest against tlie perfection of any entry of the lands as .mineral lands upon the ground that they were not mineral lands nor commercially valuable for any gold or other precious metals therein contained. At the time of tlie definite location of the Northern Pacific Railroad and of the filing of the plat and map thereof in the General Land Office, the applications for these lands as mineral lands were pending and undetermined, the applicants claiming, before the proper office, that they were mineral