The accompanying map indicates the illegal fencing of government land in Wheeler County, Oregon, by the Butte Creek Land, Livestock & Lumber Company, of Fossil. It is claimed that 18,360 acres of public lands were embraced in this inclosure, which was used entirely by the big corporation as a pasture to the exclusion of all adjacent homesteaders. Tracts marked with an X, as shown on the map, are unappropriated government lands. The dotted lines indicate the system of fencing employed by the corporation, while the lines noted by the cross-marks represent the "rim-rock," or immense ledges that were used to form portions of the chain fence. The general policy of the company seems to have been to connect the rim-rock with the system of fences by the aid of "dummy" homestead entries, upon which their lines of fencing were constructed as rapidly as the filings were made. For shielding the officers of the company against criminal prosecution, John H. Hall was dismissed from office, and later convicted by a jury in the Federal Court at Portland, Oregon.
standing Hall's contention that the statute of limitations had run against their criminal liability in 1903, when the matter was before the United States Grand Jury, Thayer and associates were indicted September 2, 1905, for the same offense, at the suggestion of Mr. Heney, who held that the criminal responsibility of the accused was still active at that date.
Those involved in this indictment were Claude Thayer, Clark E. Hadley, Maurice Leach, Walter J. Smith (since deceased), Thomas Coates, John Tuttle, Charles E. Hays and G. O. Nolan, all of whom, with the exception of Hays, were prominent residents of Tillamook county. Later the case against Hays was dismissed, as it was established to Mr. Heney's satisfaction that he had never been connected with any fraudulent effort to acquire the lands. On the contrary. Hays filed a motion in Court during the July term in 1906, wherein he claimed the credit of having first called the attention of Secretary Hitchcock to
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