Whitaker v. McBride

Citations

• 197 U.S. 510
• 25 S. Ct. 530
• 49 L. Ed. 857
• 1905 U.S. LEXIS 1164

Syllabus

<p>The question of the title of a riparian owner is one of local law, and un~. restricted grants of the Government, bounded on streams and other waters, are to be construed according to the law of the State in which the lands lie. Hard-in v. Jordan, 140 U. S. 371.</p> <p>Government surveys of public lands are not open to collateral attack in an action at law between private parties.</p> <p>A meander line is not a line of boundary but a means of ascertaining the quantity of land in the fraction which is to be paid for by the purchaser.</p> <p>.Where the Government has surveyed and patented the lands up to the bank of a channel in which an unsurveyed island is situated,' a patentee of the land on such bank, although his land may. itself be. an island surrounded by two channels of the river, has all the rights of a riparian owner in the channel lying opposite his banks, including the unsurveyed island if, as a riparian owner, he is entitled thereto by the laws of the State.</p> <p>By the law of Nebraska, as interpreted by its highest court, riparian proprietors own the bed of a stream to the center of the channel. The Government as original proprietor has the right to survey and sell any lands, including islands in a river or any other body of water, and if it omits to survey an island in a stream and refuses to do so when its attention . is called to the matter, no citizen- can overrule the Department, and assuming that the island should be surveyed, occupy it for homestead or preemption entry. In such a case the rights of riparian owners 'are to be preferred to those of the settler.</p>