The O&C lands: From past to present

A history of western Oregon lands now managed by the Bureau of Land Management; background for the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR).

The history of timberlands managed by the Bureau of Land Management in Western Oregon begins with a railroad and a land grant.

The railroad was needed by Oregon and California businessmen to tie their states’ commerce together, while the land grant was a deal issued by Congress to give capital to the venture and attract more settlers to the West.

But the deal went bust. Because of the terrain, it hardly got off the ground. A series of bungled construction startups and land exchanges left behind a legacy as checkered as the pattern of public lands that now comprise the O&C lands.

The story of the O&C lands begins in the 1850s, when Congress adopted a policy of issuing land grants to private companies for the advancement of railroads and westward expansion. The grants gave companies capital to finance their work. As construction advanced, companies patented the land and sold it to settlers.

In 1866, Congress issued a land grant in Western Oregon to promote the construction of a railroad between Portland and Davis, Calif. The grant was made in a checkerboard format — typical at the time — of square-mile plots on each side of the right-of-way.

After the consolidation of two companies, the Oregon & California Railroad Company was formed in 1869, according to a report from the Bureau of Governmental Research and Service at the University of Oregon.

The grant gave Congress the right to amend or repeal it if the line did not reach the California border by July 1, 1875. The railroad reached Roseburg by 1872.

However, few farmers saw much of the land south of the Willamette Valley suitable for agricultural purposes — as it was marketed — because of its steep terrain and heavy timber cover. The O&C company had a hard time finding buyers, despite increased demand for timber.

Construction was suspended in 1874. The company left much of the land unpatented to avoid paying property taxes.

Construction picked up again in 1881, as the lumber market improved, and in 1887 the line was completed at the California border.

But it wasn’t only settlers who were buying the railroad lands. Much of the land had been sold to Midwest timber companies, for much more than the going price, violating the grant’s mandate that only settlers could buy 160-acre parcels for no more than $2.50 an acre.

By 1907, the Oregon Legislature urged compliance with the 1869 grant, but settlers were not buying the rugged land.

Congress reclaimed more than 2 million acres in 1916 and also 93,000 acres of the Coos Bay Wagon Road land, due to similar circumstances.

In 1937, Congress passed the O&C Act and revested the land to the federal government. The lands fell under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Interior with the act.

Under the O&C Act, the lands — which were off property tax rolls — were designated for permanent timber production to bring economic stability to local communities and industry. Half of the timber receipts they produced, on 2.1 million acres of public forests, were slated for the coffers of local communities in 18 Oregon counties.

During the 1980s, when logging in Western Oregon had hit its peak, conservationists rang the alarm bell for threatened species such as the northern spotted owl.

The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was created to protect threatened species, while also allowing 205 million board feet to be harvested annually. But harvest levels reached an average of only 134 million board feet, and local communities were affected by the shortened production.

The timber industry followed with a lawsuit — settled by the BLM three years ago — claiming the agency had failed to keep timber production high and communities afloat as the O&C Act had warranted.

On Aug. 9, a federal forest management plan was proposed that could more than triple the annual timber harvest. It is a draft environmental impact statement for the BLM’s Western Oregon Plan Revisions.