A Surveyor's Delay, a Land Office Snarl, and Four Dead Men in Okanogan

The settlers in this section have been patiently waiting several years to have the land in this locality platted and put upon the market by government that they may file and prove up on their homesteads. The contract for survey of townships 39 and north, range 25 east, Willamette meridian, was let to DeKalb of Ellensburg in June, and he surveyed the same that summer. Nothing more was done until December, 1893, when a special of the general land office inspected the field work and reported the work as incomplete upon two of the townships. In the summer of 1894 the deputy surveyor visited the ground and went over his work; then nothing has been heard of the matter. Correspondence with the department at Washington City brings out the fact that much of the delay has been occasioned by the procrastination of the surveyor in forwarding his field notes to the general land office. The land embraced in the townships includes the town of Loomis and from several miles south of there to the forty-ninth parallel, and is well watered and very valuable, a good share of it being under cultivation. There have been long and expensive litigations over some of this land, and some of the suits are still pending. During the past two years four men have been killed in disputing over their respective boundary lines, and when it is considered that nearly four years have elapsed since the contract for the survey was let it would seem as if the parties through whose negligence the matter has been allowed to drag its way were to a certain extent morally responsible for their lives. Our congressmen would certainly receive the heartfelt thanks of the people of Northern Okanogan if they would use their influence to bring the acceptance of these surveys to an early issue.