Who owns the Western United States?
Drilling through my RSS feeds today I fell back in love with the Strange Maps blog. A wonderful collection of cartographical curiosities; I had forgotten how much I enjoyed reading it.
This particular selection details federal ownership of land across the United States. Private ownership-loving America holds about 30% of it’s total landmass in federal hands. Mostly, this land is weapons testing grounds, military bases, natural parks and reserves, and aboriginal reserves. In other cases, it is federally owned land leased to private companies for resource exploitation and profit-seeking activities.
Between the eastern states and the West there is a stark contrast in public ownership. Nevada, for instance is nearly 85% state owned whereas Connecticut and Rhode Island are just 0.4%.
State-level control isn’t considered in these numbers, so it would be interesting to see how that addition changes the final tally of public to private ownership.
For a government that seems to love public land they sure do resist public health care — actually most public activity or ownership that might help non-rich folks.
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