Twenty-Four Homesteaders Caught in a Forestry Protest
Most of the settlers protested by the forestry department near LeClere Creek survive the first round at the Spokane land office, but Thomas P. Iverson loses and more rulings are pending.
Up to the present time but two of the 24 cases protested by the forestry department against settlers in the vicinity of LeClere Creek, principally in Township 36, Range 44, have been decided adversely to the settlers. Supervisor Millar has received word that the Spokane land office has passed on the following cases, which were heard before Sidney W. Rogers, U.S. Commissioner for this district, and which were approved: Michael O'Connor, Wm. Morley, Patrick Hurley, Henry Hahner, Esther L. Hines, George A. Stuart, Walter A. Stark, Frank E. Stone, J. C. Perry, John L. McAbee and Archie J. Slusser.
In the case of Thomas P. Iverson the land office rendered a decision adverse to Iverson. The General Land Office will have to pass on all of these decisions before they are final, and there may be several changes. The hearing of two or three of the cases has been postponed until a later date in order to give the special agents more time to look up evidence that came in too late for use. It is intimated that there will be sufficient evidence to allow of an adverse decision or two on some of the remaining cases.
“Up to the present time but two of the 24 cases protested by the forestry department against settlers in the vicinity of LeClere Creek ... have been decided adversely to the settlers.”
The 1909 protests pitted homesteaders against the young Forest Service and federal land bureaucracy—a conflict still alive in the West over public lands, grazing, timber and private inholdings. For these settlers, a land-office ruling was the difference between a farm and dispossession.
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