The Town That Owned Nothing: Metaline's Squatters Fight Two Companies for Their Own Ground
Fifty residents of an unsurveyed Pend Oreille River mining camp petition the Spokane land office for a federal townsite — after a silver-lead company and a cement-clay claimant both tried to patent the ground out from under their homes.
The mining town of Metaline is located in territory that has not yet been surveyed by the government; consequently residents of the town have been unable to secure title to the property they have occupied, having simply squatters' rights on the same. For some time there have been conflicting claims to rights to the property on which the town is located. The Sterling Silver Lead Co. has had a placer claim on it, and John Z. Bettancourt, of Cement, has been endeavoring to hold it as a cement clay proposition. Both the Silver-Lead and Mr. Bettancourt had applied for patents on the property, and in a hearing in Stevens county court on Monday, the Silver-Lead people withdrew their claims in favor of creating a government townsite. A petition of 50 residents of the place had been filed at the land office at Spokane, asking for a government survey and the creation of a townsite. A special agent of the government recently visited the town and reported adversely on the claims of both contestants.
It is likely that the prayer of the petitioners will soon be granted and a survey ordered. In that event the squatters will get first choice of lots by paying $10 per lot and a proportionate cost of the survey and making of plats. They will be entitled to select a business and a residence lot, but must show improvements in order to be able to do so. The balance of the lots will be retained by the government and auctioned off from time to time.
The dispute over the townsite has long been a drawback to the little mining town, and now that there is a prospect of securing title to their property more and better improvements will be made by the residents. With the surety of a railroad, Metaline will soon take her place among the leading silver-lead camps of the west.
“The dispute over the townsite has long been a drawback to the little mining town.”
Metaline is still a tiny Pend Oreille River town — the county itself was not carved out of Stevens County until 1911 — and its whole shape was set by this fight over whether anybody could actually own the ground they lived on. Then it was a placer claim and a cement-clay patent; today the same questions about who holds title to rural Washington land, and what the federal government gets to decide, are still being litigated.
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