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BLM Claims 90,000 Acres Does Not Belong To Texas, Attempts To Seize Ranch

BLM Claims 90,000 Acres Does Not Belong To Texas, Attempts To Seize Ranch Does this agency have nothing better to do than ruin peoples lives?

It is 119,000 acres in the local papers. It is also the Red River Bottom, notorious for being fought over by Oklahoma and Texas with each new flood. I live within spitting distance of the Red River, that sandy bottom is pretty rough and very salty, little grows there with any consistency. I was a bit amazed any one ranch used so much of it.

I'll let you 1/4 acre suburban types in on a little something... this crap goes on all the time, that it is now the focus of the hair on fire crowd is laughable.

If you had a clue just how crappy the border is defined along the Red River you damn sure wouldn't build a home there...
 
Thanks. That bad in this case, but such a small percentage of his land it's hard to get worked up over. I do think the feds owe him for the land and/or should give allow a free grandfathered lease for the remainder of his days.

You are being satirical, right? I would get worked up over somebody stealing 140 acres of my land, whether I owned 140 acres or 140,000.

Unless the feds are claiming a valid public interest, in which case eminent domain applies, the feds have no valid reason to harass this rancher, or steal his land.
 
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Click the lick which is assigned to his name in the article. The information at that link is a bit clearer. BLM already seized 140 acres of his land and didn't compensate him. They're intending to seize 90,000 acres along the river but that land is not only his, other ranchers will be affected by that proposed seizure. It's not clear how much more of his land they're going to take from him.

I don't see why he can't retain title to the land if the river shifts its course. The land would now be in Oklahoma and should simply be registered in the OK land registry.

The law seems to be pretending that a river shifting its course somehow erases title to the land which now finds itself on the wrong side of the border and so that land is free for the BLM to grab. That seems kind of insane to me.

Here is a video clip that explains (see 1:21-2:27): Meet Tommy Henderson. The BLM took 140 acres and what they paid him is absurd! | Young Conservatives
 
Isn't that the most stupid BLM justification imaginable? When the river moves south it eroded but when it moved back it was via avulsion and so the border didn't change. Oh brother.

Quite a miracle of science, yes?
 
It is 119,000 acres in the local papers. It is also the Red River Bottom, notorious for being fought over by Oklahoma and Texas with each new flood. I live within spitting distance of the Red River, that sandy bottom is pretty rough and very salty, little grows there with any consistency. I was a bit amazed any one ranch used so much of it.

I'll let you 1/4 acre suburban types in on a little something... this crap goes on all the time, that it is now the focus of the hair on fire crowd is laughable.

If you had a clue just how crappy the border is defined along the Red River you damn sure wouldn't build a home there...

The Red isn't salty, nor sandy. It's called the "red" river because of the red color the stirred up silt creates. That silt used to be prized by Louisiana farmers. They no longer pump the silt into their fields because the locks have stopped the current between Shreveport and Alexandria.
 
I didn't know you guys were into supporting freeloaders.
Now it's Texas.
Color me surprised when you guys decide which laws you will obey and which you won't.
And then threaten gun violence . :lamo

Doesn't "being free" mean, among other things, that one can obey what laws one wishes? As long as one is willing to accept what consequences might ensue?
 
Thanks. That bad in this case, but such a small percentage of his land it's hard to get worked up over. I do think the feds owe him for the land and/or should give allow a free grandfathered lease for the remainder of his days.

Or mabe just not even attempt to sieze it? They can offer to buy the property if it comes up for sale. This Rancher in Texas has a very case against the BLM.

It is amazing that with all the trouble that their efforts against Bundy the freeloader stirred up, the BLM is pursuing this claim in Texas. Cant they see that anal overzealousness, let alone out right theft just alienates the public, gets militia idiots juiced up and makes them more likely to support free loaders like Bundy?
 
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Isn't that the most stupid BLM justification imaginable? When the river moves south it eroded but when it moved back it was via avulsion and so the border didn't change. Oh brother.

Actually it is the STATES' "stupid justification" for the border. Texas and the Feds have one concept, Oklahoma another. This is a CONSTANT source of dispute between the two states, not just the mean ol' Gubmint. The two states are the ones using erosion/sand fill concepts to define the Red River tract.

I thought at one time the border was pinned to the southern 'bluff line'. The Red River isn't much of a river above Lake Texoma, during the summer it doesn't flow and with every spring rain the course is different across the sand flats. Most of the time it isn't even a foot deep, and few yards wide at most.
 
The Red isn't salty, nor sandy. It's called the "red" river because of the red color the stirred up silt creates. That silt used to be prized by Louisiana farmers. They no longer pump the silt into their fields because the locks have stopped the current between Shreveport and Alexandria.

The Red River has a Salt Fork that empties into the Red right around Vernon Texas. Lake Texoma is a great hybrid bass lake. The bass are not freshwater fish but brackish water mutt due to the salt content of the Red River. Towns along the Red River can't draw the water because of the salts. A soil survey map of the Red River, I just happen to have one, shows the soils are sandy silts- Pratt and Tivoli complex, Lincoln, Yahola, and broken Alluvial complex. The creek bottoms are sandy, it is the upland runoff that is clay red fine silt. The Red and most of it's seasonal tributaries (the Salt Fork is one) are great 'dune buggy' highways in the summer drought period.

The Army Corps of Engineers has spent BILLIONS attempting to impound the salt fork in SW Oklahoma to prevent it running into the Red River and stop the salt flow. Lake Texoma sports concerns are up in arms as they spent millions developing an industry around the hybrid striper. Some of this should have made the news, even in Louisiana... ;)

Above Lake Texoma the Red River only runs red after a strong rain brings fresh clay soils from further inland down into the river. most of the time the river isn't red.

Interesting that Louisiana farmers prized the red silt, it isn't because of the red clay component- most of that comes from the Vernon soil series, the 'B' layer of the more eroded soils types that even mesquite is challenged to grow on. Back in the 50's a company called Frankoma Pottery that made excellent heavy ceramic plates using the 'soil' Louisiana farmers prize so.

Google pictures of the Red River up where the ranch issue is happening. Google the Salt fork of the Red River. Google any of the tributaries and see the sandy bottoms. :peace
 
Here's a novel idea... set points for the border and leave it there. If the river moves it moves, but the points stay the same.
 
The 90,000 acre deed is his. 140 of those acres have already been seized.

You need to go and read the originating article at Breitbart.com. Tommy Henderson does not own 90,000 acres, that is the total acreage along 116 miles of the Red River which is being examined by the BLM.
Congressman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) represents the ranchers in this region of north Texas. According to Thornberry’s legislative analysts, the issue of the ownership of this land dates back to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

I did a bit of searching of the property records in Clay County, TX where Henderson lives - best estimate is that he owns a bit less than 250 acres. Then I did the Google thing and found Mr Henderson being quoted in a 1997 Texas Monthly article
TOM HENDERSON PULLS HIS PICKUP TRUCK off texas Highway 79 north of Byers, a small North Texas town near the Red River. He parks alongside a grassy bluff south of the long bridge over the river by a green sign that reads “State Line.” Since the south bank of the Red is supposedly the border between Texas and Oklahoma, you’d expect to see sandbars and muddy waters just ahead. But thanks to the forces of nature—aided by years of court rulings and lawsuits—the border is now half a mile south of the river in tall grass and woods. “I always liked that movie Red River, where John Wayne steps out of the river and says he’s in Texas,” says Henderson, whose family has farmed along the Red for a hundred years. “But he wouldn’t be in Texas now.”

Henderson is one of many landowners caught up in the politics of where to draw the line between Texas and Oklahoma. He’s also one of six people appointed in the summer of 1995 by Governor George W. Bush to a state commission charged with finally determining a permanent workable location of the boundary, which has been in dispute ever since the 1821 Treaty of Amity, Settlements and Limits set the Red River’s south bank as the divider between U.S. lands acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase and Spanish possessions in North America.
<snip>
Indeed, the long-held notion that the Red River is the legal border between Texas and Oklahoma is more perception than reality. ... All this has caused predictable confusion. “The tax collector often doesn’t know which state the land is in,” Abney says. “There are some instances in which land is not being taxed and others in which Texas and Oklahoma are both trying to tax it.”... Henderson says he has had little recourse when deer hunters in the public lands behind his property have trampled his fences and killed two of his cows, even carving the hindquarters off one. Although his land is in Texas, the land behind his back fence is part of Oklahoma. “So do I call the game wardens in Oklahoma, who have to travel thirty miles and find a bridge to cross to get here?” he asks. “It’s just not feasible for them to do it.”
 
You didn't build that, you don't really own that. Kinda the same thing.
 
What would be wrong with being a better Capitalist under our form of Capitalism. According to Hagar the Horrible, even being a Viking was better than farming.
 
You need to go and read the originating article at Breitbart.com. Tommy Henderson does not own 90,000 acres, that is the total acreage along 116 miles of the Red River which is being examined by the BLM.

I did a bit of searching of the property records in Clay County, TX where Henderson lives - best estimate is that he owns a bit less than 250 acres. Then I did the Google thing and found Mr Henderson being quoted in a 1997 Texas Monthly article

I've lost track of how many breitbart 'news' stories fall apart once the CON game is exposed. The fact is 100 years ago the 'land' Henderson claims is his wasn't there. Overtime the River has deposited silt and sand there with the course moving a bit north. He is just trying to gain land his folks never owned, an Okie was paying the taxes on that land long before Henderson ran a cow on it.

From his 'hunter' story it sounds like he wants control over public land to keep everyone out.
 
I am familiar with one case like this, where a property line was a river.
The court ruled that the property line was where the river used to be,
Just like a regular survey. The river movement did not change the ownership.
 
Isn't that the most stupid BLM justification imaginable? When the river moves south it eroded but when it moved back it was via avulsion and so the border didn't change. Oh brother.

I'd like an explanation of the science of this.
 
Doesn't eminent domain apply?

Public Use

Ordinarily, a government can exercise eminent domain only if its taking will be for a "public use" - which may be expansively defined along the lines of public "safety, health, interest, or convenience". Perhaps the most common example of a "public use" is the taking of land to build or expand a public road or highway. Public use could also include the taking of land to build a school or municipal building, for a public park, or to redevelop a "blighted" property or neighborhood.


They must also pay fair value which they did not in the case of the 140 ac. plot


Eminent Domain
 
BLM Claims 90,000 Acres Does Not Belong To Texas, Attempts To Seize Ranch

Does this agency have nothing better to do than ruin peoples lives?

If the BLM seizes the land, claiming that is should never have been privately owned due to the boundary dispute, grazing of cattle could still be an option

Factually incorrect. From your title headline;
If the BLM seizes the land, claiming that is should never have been privately owned due to the boundary dispute, grazing of cattle could still be an option
Read more at BLM Claims 90,000 Acres Does Not Belong To Texas, Attempts To Seize Ranch


Notice the word IF?
 
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