Right Of Way

[jeaton]

MC

Thanks for the lead. I can probably contact our town clerk and discover if the tax bills are being paid and the address of the tax payer.

I am not too worried that any owner would develop the tract. The ROW separates about 15 acres of swamp land (think up to your neck in muck) from from the other 100 acres of higher land. There never was and never will be a need to have unimpeded access, unless the oil well comes in. HA HA. Even if some nut wanted to stick a building on the property, it would be down in a hole and subject to spring flooding.

Besides, I would open up a path for smowmobilers just on my side of the property line.[}:)][}:)].

Jay

[fuzzybroken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tilden

Most of the time, if you are polite and interested in the railroad's activities and explain that you are just looking, and not "borrowing" stuff railroad staff tend to leave you alone. Of course having said this I'll probally be driven off the next time I'm at the LOOP.

"Forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us..."

[:D],
-Mark
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton

Going back to the original thread. I have been thinking about purchasing the piece of CMStP&P ROW running through the farm if I could ever find out who has the title on the property. Now I am not so sure. Maybe the house sits on somebody elses land! Since the track was torn up in 1943 and Milwaukee Road property has gone through ownerships like a ping-pong ball, I think I'll just leave it to the snowmobilers to enjoy.

Otherwise, it is a nice quiet place in the summertime. MC could bring out his students to practise. [bow][bow][bow]

Jay[:D]

The RR doesn't have to be involved for things to be really screwed up - I have a friend who bought a house (and of course the land it sat on). Somewhere in the course of the survey / title search / etc., it was discovered that both my friend and his neighbor both held legal title to a couple of acres between them. Took a while to sort that one out.

[MFIllini5]

As a city planner, I have to be very familiar with all this. In Illinois, oftentimes property maps are published by Sidwell Company. They are referred to as "Sidwells". Anyone can view them at most county and township offices. Generally speaking, the older the platting of property boundaries, the more confusing and illogical. Oftentimes it seems that people in the past were just lazy or didn't think about how things might be handled in the future. Due to the railroads being as engrained in our nation's history as they are, they are definitely involved in many of the problems we face today in cleaning up these property "messes" (such as in redeveloping a downtown area). From a municipality's perspective, getting anything accomplished involving a railroad is often very difficult. It's kind of the same feeling I have in general about the federal and state governments oftentimes as a citizen. Local governments are often very progressive and non-political though. These are the ones I have worked for. As far as property of any sort, keep in mind that no 2 properties are alike, even if they are the same acreage, etc. Right of way widths are just one of many things (natural features, etc.) that vary widely with each property. Many times farm house lots extend to the middle of the street fronting them - the land was never dedicated to the public road right-of-way. There are all sorts of crazy things like this. This is the reason that real estate investment is so lucrative compared to other forms of investment. Property wasn't necessarily meant to be a commodity, but that is the way the Europeans set this nation up. A lot of the problems in the whole property system have to do with government setting or not setting a standard. Maybe if more people were involved in government and set up better systems, these things wouldn't be issues now. No, everyone just likes to complain about the government, when in reality the government is them or their non-action.

[mudchicken]

MFI-5:

The next time one of our cental Illinois offices "borrows" me to sort out another puzzle, we''ll keep you in mind. The "mothership" in Bloomington has kept us plenty busy in the past. (Had some great fun with the former Illinois Terminal)

Mudchicken[banghead][banghead][banghead]

ps...Ironically, the government under the guise of the ICC in 1913, set up an impressive Railroad Cadastre that the current technical professionals and GIS gurus are absolutely clueless about. The Wall Street trash (the "For the, By the, and above all else the balance sheet " clowns[:(!]) beancounters and clueless politicians have spent the past 15 years trying to dismantle it.[V][V][V]

[Anonymous]

Anybody in Texas, or interested in Texas and Railroad property could have a blast with the General Land Office records. I was doing some unrelated research and came upon this site, http://wwwdb.glo.tx.us/central

[jwinter]

Regarding those large federal land grants given to railroads in the early days. I thought part of the reason for these was so the railroad could sell this land to make money to continue building. Is that right?

[mudchicken]

Turkstribe and jwinter would be advised to look at the Congessional Acts of 1862 and 1875, IMO the most influential Acts in terms of railroad expansion in the American West. (There are others and then there are the bills tied to specific railroad lines)....

On top of that, the GLO (General Land Office, now the BLM) was to play referee for the courts in cases of conflicts of building railroads and could VOID a railroad's reason to be.

The comments in this thread remind me that many a student in high school and college level history classes has been taught a very distorted amd misleading version of what went on with railroads in the last half of the nineteenth century. (i.e.-"bad" railroads, robber barons and collusion/graft). The good that the railroads did, the noble efforts and the unbelievable accomplishments tend to get lost in the wash....I think our troubles with inept journalists at New York Times and Wall Street Journal can be traced back to this failure to teach. (It used to be "muckraking"; it is now the uninformed leading the totally clueless.!.....followed by Bergie stepping in.)

[Anonymous]

Well, and occasionally government speak with forked tongue (think so????nah! never happen!!). I'm reminded that the Katy was awarded 3,110,400 acres of fairly lucrative and valuable land grants on tribal lands in Indian Territory and 270,970 acres in Kansas by the feds for winning the construction race south from Kansas to Texas, only to have them yanked by the US Supreme Court in 1907 in a precedent setting decision in a case brought by the tribes. The Court ruled that the Federal Government had no right to give the grants because Indian land was not public land. The loss of revenue from the sale of these lands, along with Gould's shenanigans, fatally crippled the Katy, with the unpaid debts following them around like a pack of hungry dogs until they'd had enough and merged with UP in 1988.

What a prize!

So much for robber barons.

MC is absolutely right on this.