HOW TO SECURE PUBLIC LANDS.
As a general rule, only surveyed lands are subject to entry. Under the mineral land laws, however, claims can be located upon unsurveyed lands.
The public lands are divided as to price into two classes: those whose minimum price is $1.25 per acre and those whose minimum is $2.50 per acre. The latter, usually called "double minimum lands," are in most cases the alternate sections reserved in railroad or other public land grants. In some cases Indian reservations restored to the public domain have been rated differently, the price varying from below the single minimum to above the double minimum.
The remaining public lands are subject to entry under the homestead law, the desert land law, and the timber and stone act; by the location of scrip; and as town-site entries. Mineral lands are subject to entry only under the mining laws; and special laws provide for the disposal of coal lands and lands containing petroleum. Any person who is the head of a family or is over twenty-one years old, and who is a citizen of the United States, or has declared his or her intention to become such, may enter 160 acres of land without cost, except the land-office fees provided by law, inhabiting, cultivating, and making actual residence thereon for the period of five years; or such a settler may at the expiration of fourteen months from date of settlement commute the entry by paying the government price for the land.
No part of the public domain is now (since 1889) subject to private cash entry, except in the state of Missouri and in cases where Congress has made special provision therefor. The preemption and timber culture laws were repealed in 1891. It has also been provided that no public lands of the United States shall be sold by public sale, except abandoned military reservations of less than 5,000 acres, mineral lands and other lands of a special nature, and isolated tracts that have been subject to homestead entry for three years after the surrounding land has been disposed of.