"dpb" wrote in message ...
Swingman wrote:
...
Most railroads in the US are private companies, and their tracks are
located
on land owned by them in fee simple. Railroads were historically given
huge
swaths of land on either side railways as an incentive to extend their
reach
and open up our frontiers to settlement and commerce.

While the surface of a good part of that land has been sold to a third
parties down through the years, the minerals were most often reserved in
those transactions.

AAMOF, Union Pacific Railroad still remains one of the largest mineral
owners in the US, particularly out West where they own entire sections
of
land that alternate on either side of the tracks, in a checkerboard
manner,
for hundreds, if not thousands of miles (IIRC, across 23 states), and
they
have an entire department that deals with nothing but the leasing of
those
retained mineral rights. BTDT.

True enough, but iirc, none of the western railroad land grants were in
OK or TX?

Many states awarded their own "land grants" to encourage railroads and the
economic benefits they brought to an area. The Texas and Pacific got
5,173,120 acres of _land grants_ from Texas between 1873 and 1881 to build
their railroad in Texas.

AAMOF, the Texas Pacific Land Trust is still the largest _private_ landowner
in the State of Texas and generates much income from its mineral rights
thereunder.

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Last update: 5/14/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)