The West's Largest Landowner: the US Government -- Sort of Related to the Bakken

From The American Pageant, Volume II: Since 1865, by David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey, c. 2006, p. 607:

"... the federal goverment is by far the West's largest landowner -- and that federal projects, especially dam-building, have done more to shape the region than all the cowboys and farmers put together."

I wish I could insert the graphic that accompanies that caption (a picture is worth a thousand words).

This is the percent of land owned by the federal government in selected states (all numbers rounded):

• Utah: 67%
• Wyoming: 51%
• Colorado: 35%
• North Dakota: 3%
• Oklahoma: 3%
• Texas: 2%

Source: Center of the American West and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2003.

I post this because I think it helps shed light on one of the reasons why the Bakken was so quickly developed and why the Barnett Shale and  Eagle Ford in Texas will be quickly developed. (In Pennsylvania where much of the activity in the Marcellus Shale is centered, federal land ownership represents 3% of the state, a not uncommon figure for the eastern states.) The founding fathers were sincere to the concept of private land ownership, something that was lost once "modern" government was established and the west was settled. But I digress.

Bakken activity inside the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota was delayed until Senator Byron Dorgan intervened at the federal level to move things along.