The little-known story of how the U.S. government came to hold nearly one-third of the nation’s land and manage it primarily for recreation, education and conservation. “A much-needed chronicle of how the American people decided––wisely and democratically––that nearly a third of the nation’s land surface should remain in our collective ownership and be managed for our common good.”—Dayton Duncan, author of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea America’s public lands include more than 600 million acres of forests, plains, mountains, wetlands, deserts, and shorelines. In this book, John Leshy, a leading expert in public lands policy, discusses the key political decisions that led to this, beginning at the very founding of the nation. He traces the emergence of a bipartisan political consensus in favor of the national government holding these vast land areas primarily for recreation, education, and conservation of biodiversity and cultural resources. That consensus remains strong and continues to shape American identity. Such a success story of the political system is a bright spot in an era of cynicism about government. This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about public lands, and it is particularly timely as the world grapples with the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.

"Attention to value capture as a source of public revenue has been increasing in the United States and internationally as some governments experience declines in revenue from traditional sources and others face rapid urban population growth and require large investments in public infrastructure. Privately funded improvements by land-owners can increase the value of their land and property. Public actions, such as investments in infrastructure, the provision of public services, and planning and land use regulation, can also affect the value of land and property. Value capture is a means to realize as public revenue some portion of that increase in value through various revenue-raising instruments. This book, based on the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's sixth annual land policy conference in May 2011, examines the concept of value capture, its forms, and applications. The first section, on the conceptual framework and history of value capture, reviews its relationship to compensation for partial takings; the long history of value capture policies in Britain and France; and the remarkable expansion of tax increment financing in California. The second section reviews the application of particular instruments of value capture, including the conversion of rural to urban land in China, town planning schemes in India, and community benefit agreements. The third section focuses on ends instead of means and examines the use of value capture by community land trusts to provide affordable housing, the use of land development to finance transit, and the use of various fees to fund airports. The final section explores potential extensions of value capture mechanisms to tax-exempt nonprofits and to the management of state trust lands in the United States."--Publisher's website.

"'The process of transfer to private ownership of government land or government-supervised Indian land was the woof thread on the loom of the frontier,' the author writes in his preface. 'This thread was continually interlaced with hard experiences in the struggle for existence, thus weaving the fabric of the social and economic history of the American frontier. My aim in this book is to trace this thread from government ownership of the land into private hands.' Although Thomas Jefferson reckoned that the march of population from the Appalachians to the Pacific would take one hundred generations, by 1935 the western wilderness, created by law in the 1780s as the 'unreserved and unappropriated public domain,' had all but vanished. It is the human side of this process of land distribution that Professor Dick examines--'how the land-hungry pioneer interpreted the land laws, or ignored them; his success in "handing up laws" to Congress by frontier usage when existing statutes were inadequate for his needs; his custom of illegally exploiting the natural resources; and the final end of exploitation and the coming of a policy of conservation.' After a brief discussion of colonial land policies and the formation of the public domain in the post-Revolutionary period, the author describes the adoption of the surveying system, the actual work of the surveyors, and how the land was distributed to settlers. There follow chapters on the squatter; the use of land by lumbering interests; the struggle for pre-emption; the campaign of the West for free land and the passage of the Homestead Act; the problems which accompanied the acquisition of land from foreign governments; the occupation and exploitation of the mineral lands; the occupation and use of the grasslands with a discussion of the range wars; land given for internal improvements such as railroads; the openings of Indian reservations with their land rushes or drawings; the final occupancy of the dry land for use by dry-land farming or irrigation; and finally the coming of conservation and the establishment of the permanent public domain in the form of national forests and grazing land. Professor Dick's work goes beyond present books on land in the realm of human interest, for it deals with the people themselves, not with acts of Congress or legal decisions. It also goes deeper than previously published works into such areas as the development of claim clubs, squatting, and the holding of public land by individuals for extended use or speculation while waiting to sell at an advance over the government price."--Dust jacket.

One of the oldest policy debates in U.S. history concerns the allocation, use, and management of public lands, which currently comprise one-quarter of the United States. In this volume, Phillip O. Foss has assembled a selection of original research papers and interpretative essays from recognized authorities with a variety of philosophical orientations in order to present a well-rounded picture of today's views of public lands policy. Contributors describe and analyze the three major trends in lands management: preservation, conservation, and the environmental movement. Issues which have posed continuing problems throughout the history of public lands management are also examined, including the decision to retain or dispose, the establishment of grazing fees, the management of lands with interspersed ownership, the decision to employ centralized or decentralized management tactics, and the allocation of multiple or single use for the land.