it occurred to the state administrations that it was worth while to make up the unfilled quota of its University grant, its lapsing Agricultural College grant, its neglected internal improvement and capitol building grants and to identify its swamp and tide lands.
The dilatoriness of the state in getting its lands and the moderate values it put upon those it did get are thus to be accounted for. Lands of any value in the eyes of the early Oregonians were occupied before the government got around to survey them. The worth of lands of types different from those to which they were accustomed had to be demonstrated through actual use. This did not come about until nearly a decade after the admission of the state.
It is unreasonable to pass judgment against a generation whose public officials failed to anticipate the wealth that would have accrued to the state had well-forested areas been appropriated by the state, or areas easily susceptible of irrigation, or those preeminently adapted to fruit culture. The possibilities in such Oregon lands are just now being disclosed. No such tests were required for an equally successful administration of state lands by a Mississippi valley state. Nor did the Oregon community have any example to emulate in the conserving of the public interest in such resources.
Vacant lands have only a prospective or speculative value, based upon anticipated demand and utility. Until the middle of the eighties there lay the unspanned wilderness of a thousand miles and more between the frontier of the Mississippi valley and the Oregon settlement. A shorter but almost equally difficult stretch of wilderness separated the settled portions of Oregon and California. Under these conditions the stream of incoming settlers was naturally thin, not enough to cause a speculative value to be placed upon any considerable body of vacant land. Lands, even if proven productive, especially if there are almost unlimited unoccupied areas of them, have but a nominal value.
