Can 840 Acres of University Land Become 42 Veterans’ Farms?
White Bluffs boosters asked the state university to sell 840 acres near Vernita at $10 an acre, arguing that settled farms would raise the value of the rest.
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.
Fred M. Weil, who is devoting nearly all of his time now to work in connection with the extension of the soldier settlement to a 100-unit project, arrived home last Sunday evening from the Coast to spend Christmas with his family. Mr. Weil says he is meeting with splendid success in the settlement extension work and feels confident that the enlargement of the project can be brought about if he can stay on the job a few weeks more.
On Wednesday, Mr. Weil, J. C. Lloyd, W. J. Kincaid, D. S. Wilkinson, E. J. O’Leary, Charles M. Sanford, Jay Smith, H. Sollibakke, Virgil Kapp, Roy O. Robinson and Ford Johnson drove over to Yakima to look after matters in connection with the project extension work. Mr. Weil went on from Yakima to the Coast, where he expects to be a pretty busy man for the next few weeks.
The additional acreage necessary for the enlargement of the project that the committee proposes to secure lies in the vicinity of Vernita and is now owned by the state university. The university owns 4,600 acres in that neighborhood. The property is under control of the board of regents, consisting of seven members living in different parts of the state. The university will be asked to sell 840 acres, or 42 20-acre tracts, to the state for the minimum price of $10 per acre, for the settlement work, and the committee proposes to show the regents that in addition to providing farms for ex-service men, it will be a good business move for the university to make such a sale, on the ground that the balance of the 4,600 acres still retained will be more valuable and more salable with 42 twenty-acre improved farms settled by ex-service men than is the entire 4,600 acres now.
The university acquired its land in this county as well as thousands of acres in other counties in the state by grant a good many years ago; and with the exception of a few sales here and there, and a few dollars that came to it through rentals on leased land in isolated places, its farm land has been a dead horse on its hands. In the past there was a tendency on the part of the regents to hold this land for exorbitant prices, higher than lands of a like character in the same neighborhood, justifying such action on the ground that as the money was to go for educational purposes, every dollar possible should be realized for the sale of the land. This was a laudable position for the regents to take, but as men of means who were willing to pay these high prices have seldom appeared, there has been of late a growing feeling that if the university ever expects to realize anything for its farm lands, it will have to promote its own interests and lend its aid to land settlement projects such as the one that is now being carried out by the state in this valley.
“The university will be asked to sell 840 acres, or 42 20-acre tracts, to the state for the minimum price of $10 per acre, for the settlement work.”
The proposal foreshadows later debates over public land, veterans’ benefits and whether government should sell cheap acres to build communities or hold out for top dollar. In the Columbia Basin, the question of who gets access to land—and at what price—still shapes rural life.
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