Oregon and California Railroad

. As part of the U.S. government's desire to foster settlement and economic development in the western states, in July 1866, Congress passed the Oregon and California Railroad Act, which made of land available for a company that built a railroad from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, distributed by the state of Oregon in land grants for each mile of track completed. Two companies, both of which named themselves the Oregon Central Railroad, began a competition to build the railroad, one on the west side of the Willamette River and one on the east side. The two lines would eventually merge and reorganize as the Oregon and California Railroad. The land was distributed in a checkerboard pattern, with sections laid out for on either side of the rail corridor with the government retaining the alternate sections for future growth. By 1872, the railroad had extended from Portland to Roseburg. ==Mismanagement and fraud==

While construction was still ongoing, multiple charges of land fraud arose. The company was accused of rounding up individuals from saloons in Portland's waterfront district, and paying them to sign applications to purchase parcels of O&C lands as "settlers," then selling these fraudulent instruments in large blocks to corporate interests through corrupt middlemen. That elaborate money laundering and land fraud scheme was only the beginning: Southern Pacific Railroad eventually abandoned the pretense of nonexistent settlers, and sold lands in large parcels directly to developers for as much as US$40 per acre. By 1902, with land prices soaring, the company declared it was terminating land sales altogether. When the scandal broke in 1904 through an investigation by The Oregonian it had grown to such a magnitude that the paper reported that more than 75% of the land sales had violated federal law. Newly elected President Theodore Roosevelt, as part of his plan of progressive reforms, vowed in 1903 to "clean up the O&C land fraud mess, once and for all!" Over the following two years, Roosevelt's investigators collected evidence, and over 1,000 politicians, businessmen, railroad executives, and others were indicted. Many were eventually tried and convicted on charges including fraud, bribery, and other corruption. The federal government sought return of the grant lands from the railroad not actually part of the right of way for the railroad line itself. ==Revestiture of lands==

In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the railroad had been built as promised, so the railroad company should not be forced to completely forfeit the lands, despite having violated the terms of the grant. Congress responded in 1916, with the Chamberlain-Ferris Act. This law put the O&C lands back in U.S. federal government control, and compensated the company at an amount equivalent to what it would have received had it abided by the $2.50 per acre limit. As timber revenue on the O&C lands has declined over the years, counties have faced financial difficulty as they struggle to fill the revenue gap. == See also ==