A 42-Acre Land Fight Near Zillah Ends—For Now
Federal commissioners uphold local land officers in a long-running contest over 42 acres near Zillah, where the Bartholet family filed three times and paid $1.25 an acre trying to prove up desert land.
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.
The commissioner of the general land office has affirmed the decision of the local land officers in the contest of Fred Thompson vs. Joseph Bartholet, Sr., and the Bartholet heirs, whereby the land is awarded to the contestant, subject to an appeal to the secretary. The land in question is some 42½ acres within about a mile of the new town of Zillah, and there is quite a history attached to it. The Bartholds have made strenuous efforts to comply with the law and get the land under water, and have filed on it three times, paying $1.25 per acre all told for desert filings. The commissioner strongly maintained that the equities of the case, which had been urged by the local officers, did not hold in the face of an adverse claim.
“The Bartholds have made strenuous efforts to comply with the law and get the land under water, and have filed on it three times, paying $1.25 per acre all told for desert filings.”
The case turns on the era’s desert-land laws, which rewarded claimants who could bring water to arid acres; today the same ground near Zillah is valuable irrigated farmland. Then as now, a piece of land’s worth depended less on the soil than on who could prove a legal right to water it.
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