The Battle for the St. James Mission Land
Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln denies a church petition for land, sparking a debate over the government's military reservation boundaries in Vancouver.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Secretary Lincoln was requested to grant permission to a Catholic community to erect a church upon one of the military reservations in the West. He declined, stating that harmless licenses have been expanded into claims for whole military reservations and all the buildings upon them at an expense of more than $500,000. It was ascertained that the case referred to by Secretary Lincoln is that of the St. James mission in Vancouver, Washington Territory. Established in 1838 on the north bank of the Columbia River, the mission has operated continuously. A bill was introduced in Congress to issue a patent for this land, covering areas outside the half-acre where its church and mission houses are located, but the measure has faced repeated scrutiny and stalling in committee.
“In one case what appears to have been originally a harmless license, has now been expanded into a claim for a whole military reservation.”
This dispute over the expansion of institutional claims on public land mirrors ongoing modern tensions in the Pacific Northwest regarding tribal treaty rights versus public land usage, and the long-standing debate over how military and civic spaces are reallocated as populations grow.
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