United States v. Hunter

236 F. Supp. 178, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6695
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. California
DecidedOctober 21, 1964
DocketNo. 2315-ND
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 236 F. Supp. 178 (United States v. Hunter) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Hunter, 236 F. Supp. 178, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6695 (S.D. Cal. 1964).

Opinion

CROCKER, District Judge.

This is an action by the Government to enjoin defendant from watering and grazing his cattle within the boundaries of Death Valley National Monument, The presidential proclamation which created the Death Valley National Monument on February 11, 1933, provided that:

“The Director of the National Park Service under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, shall have the supervision, management, and control of this monument as provided in the Act of Congress entitled ‘An ACT to establish a National Park Service, and for other purposes,’ approved August 25, 1916 (39 Stat. 535-536), and acts additional thereto or amendatory thereof.”

This statute provides that the Secretary may issue grazing permits in all National Parks (except Yellowstone) and monuments. (16 U.S.C. § 3.) The defendant has refused to apply for a permit although by Title 36, Code of Federal Regulations 1.20, the running at large, herding, driving across, or grazing of any livestock is prohibited, unless a permit has first been procured, and he has refused the request of the Superintendent of the Death Valley National Monument to remove his cattle from the monument.

Defendant claims a vested right to continue to water his cattle at springs within the area now known as Death Valley National Monument without securing a permit, and without any interference by any agent of the United States Government. This claim is based upon the apparently undisputed fact that he and his predecessors in interest, his father and grandfather, have watered cattle at said springs continuously since 1871. Defendant claims that by the continuous consumption of water by his cattle at these springs upon the public domain he has acquired an appropriative right to continue to water his stock there -without supervision or regulation by the Government. Defendant concedes that possibly his use of the said water at the springs may be enjoined by the Government, but claims that if so, he should receive compensation for the deprivation of his use. He has indicated his willingness to waive any claim to compensation in excess of the jurisdictional amount of $10,000.

It is the Government’s contention that defendant in grazing his cattle in Death Valley National Monument without a permit is a trespasser, and it is legally entitled to have him perpetually enjoined from causing his cattle to graze therein.

Defendant’s claim to a legally vested right is based upon the Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 251, enacted by the United States Congress in that year. The area in which the springs are located is public domain, so defendant is not claiming any right to the water as a riparian owner. Likewise, it is well-settled that no right by prescription may be obtained as against the Government.

It necessarily follows that the only possible basis for defendant’s' defiance of the Government’s order to either secure a license or remove his cattle from the public domain within Death Valley National Monument is a right acquired by appropriation. Defendant claims that by the continuous watering of his cattle at the springs he not only acquired an appropriative right to the quantity of water consumed by the cattle — from 200 to 400 head — , but he also claims that he acquired a right to graze the cattle at the springs as a necessary incident to the watering of the cattle, since it is a physical impossibility for him to water the cattle at the springs unless he can also permit the cattle to graze upon the land upon which the springs are located. He likens the right to graze his cattle to an easement for the conduct of water over another’s land by means of pipes, conduits, canals and ditches. In other words, it is defendant’s contention that he not only acquired the vested right to an indefinite amount of water from the [180]*180springs by appropriation but that he likewise acquired a vested right to the use of an indefinite area upon which the springs are located for grazing purposes.

The arguments sustaining his position are somewhat convincing, but an examination of the history of the Act of 1866 and an analysis of the decisions interpreting that Act compel the conclusion that under the facts of the instant case no rights by appropriation, either to the use of the water of the springs for the watering of defendant’s cattle or to the nearby contiguous land for grazing purposes, were ever acquired by defendant.

It is well-settled that prior to the passage by Congress of the Act of 1866 any person settling upon or occupying land of the public domain in the Western States, or using any of the water thereon, was a mere trespasser and could acquire no rights as against the owner, the United States Government. However, the United States Government took no steps as against such trespassers, and such a failure to assert its rights of ownership, in effect, encouraged and promoted the occupancy of the lands and the use of their natural resources by the trespassers. After the discovery of gold in California in January 1848, followed by the ceding of part of the public lands of Mexico to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 9 Stat. 922 on July 4,1848, a rush of population from the East poured into California to occupy and mine the public lands now belonging to the United States. As disputes arose between the miners as to possession of mining locations as well as the use of water necessary to successful hydraulic or placer mining operations, customs became established in the mining camps to the use of water by prior appropriation — “first in time, first in right”— which became valid local law in the absence of any specific State or Federal legislation authorizing the appropriation of water, or providing procedural steps for acquiring appropriative rights therein. Hutchin’s “California Law of Water Rights,” p. 43, et seq.; Jennison v. Kirk (1879) 98 U.S. 453, 457-458, 25 L.Ed. 240. These customs and regulations upheld in court as valid local laws were naturally favorable to the mining industry, and on April 20, 1852, St.1852, p. 158, an enactment by the California legislature entitled, “An Act prescribing the Mode of maintaining and defending possessory actions on Public Lands in this State,” specifically provided that any person “now occupying and settled upon, or who may hereafter occupy or settle upon any of the Public Lands in this State, for the purpose of cultivating or grazing the same” could maintain an action for interference, with or injury done his possession, “PROVIDED that, if the lands so occupied and possessed, contain mines of any of the precious metals, the possession or claim of the person or persons occupying the same for the purposes aforesaid, shall not preclude the working of such mines’ by any person or persons desiring so to do as fully and unreservedly as they might or could do had no possession or claim been made for grazing or agricultural purposes.”

The Supreme Court of California interpreted the Act as giving miners superiority of possession not as against all non-miners, but only as against occupiers and settlers of public lands for the purpose of cultivating or grazing the same. Tartar v. Spring Creek Water & Mining Co., 5 Cal. 395; Fitzgerald v. Urton, 5 Cal. 308, 309; Burdge v. Underwood, 6 Cal. 45, 46.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Mantle Ranches, Inc. v. United States Park Service
945 F. Supp. 1449 (D. Colorado, 1996)
United States v. Osterlund
505 F. Supp. 165 (D. Colorado, 1981)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
236 F. Supp. 178, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6695, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-hunter-casd-1964.