The Homesteader Who Outlasted a Mining Town

Loomis, May 9.—Napoleon Sabourin, who has been holding a homestead timber-squatter's right upon surveyed government land, has received notice from his Washington attorneys that the Secretary of the Interior has refused the petition of Samuel Silverman for a rehearing of his contest on the timber ground, which he had taken up as a placer claim. This ends a long and bitter contest and leaves Sabourin in undisputed possession of his homestead.

Sabourin originally located his homestead in 1889, but afterward abandoned it for a period of two years, when he again settled upon the same ground. In 1891 Silverman covered the same tract with placer locations, platted the town of Loomiston, built the Black Bear quartz mill, and built a water ditch over a mile and one-half long to furnish power for the mill. Sabourin contested the placer claims in the local land office, and the case was decided in his favor. Silverman appealed, and the decision of the local land office was reversed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington. Sabourin appealed from this decision to the Secretary of the Interior, and Silverman's petition for a rehearing was refused. The land is in one of the townships surveyed by the government; it will probably be platted and put on the market. The land is valuable.