State Land Board Begins Overhaul of Public Records
A newly formed commission finds local records missing and incomplete, setting the stage for a Supreme Court battle over tide land rights.
Erasmus Brainerd, of the state land commission, returned to Seattle from Olympia recently. He reported the commission has been in almost continuous session since June 15. The board has been preparing a comprehensive plan for managing school, tide, university, and capitol lands. Brainerd noted, 'We found the records in the several departments unsatisfactory, incomplete, and in some instances missing. The state has absolutely no record of its school land leases, for instance, and no field notes of any of its surveys.' The commission is also navigating a legal dispute with tide land applicants, having sent an agreed case to the state supreme court to determine whether local boards of appraisers appointed under the 1890 law are superseded by the new 1893 legislation.
“The state has absolutely no record of its school land leases, for instance, and no field notes of any of its surveys.”
This 1893 clash highlights the early, chaotic process of establishing state authority over public lands in Washington. Today, the management of Washington’s aquatic lands and state trust lands remains a deeply contentious legal and civic battleground, often centered on the same questions of development versus public benefit that Brainerd was wrestling with over a century ago.
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