Sections 16 and 36: Origins of Public Education Funding

Updates

January 16, 2012: North Dakota's School Land Permanent Trust Now Reaching $2 Billion

Original Post

The origins of granting sections 16 and 36 of each township to public education.

Early History of North Dakota: Essential Outlines of American History
by Clement Augustus Lounsberry
page 628.

"The idea of assigning a constant share of all United States public lands, for the support of free education, wherever the public domain might extend beyond the limits of the original states, was first engrafted upon this nation, by our Revolutionary forefathers, in the general ordinance for public surveys, passed by Congress May 20, 1785; this great statute devoting section 16 in each township "for the maintenance of public schools within the said township."

"This original benerfaction for education as doubled for the Dakotas and some other states, by subsequent legislation adding section 36, thus granting one-eighteenth of the lands surveyed; and in the newer states of Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arizona, Congress granted school selection in certain sections additional to the original two."