New Mexico Territorial Laws and Treaties NM TERR LAWS ENABLING ACT § 10

It is hereby declared that all lands hereby granted, including those which, having been heretofore granted to the said territory, are hereby expressly transferred and confirmed to the said state, shall be by the said state held in trust, to be disposed of in whole or in part only in manner as herein provided and for the several objects specified in the respective granting and confirmatory provisions, and that the natural products and money proceeds of any of said lands shall be subject to the same trusts as the lands producing the same.

Disposition of any of said lands, or of any money or thing of value directly or indirectly derived therefrom, for any object other than that for which such particular lands, or the lands from which such money or thing of value shall have been derived, were granted or confirmed, or in any manner contrary to the provisions of this act, shall be deemed a breach of trust; provided, however, that the state of New Mexico, through proper legislation, may provide for the payment, out of the income from the lands herein granted, which land may be included in a drainage district, of such assessments as have been duly and regularly established against any such lands in properly organized drainage districts under the general drainage laws of said state.

No mortgage or other encumbrance of the said lands, or any thereof, shall be valid in favor of any person or for any purpose or under any circumstances whatsoever. Said lands shall not be sold or leased, in whole or in part, except to the highest and best bidder at a public auction to be held at the county seat of a county wherein the lands to be affected, or the major portion thereof, shall lie, notice of which public auction shall first have been duly given by advertisement, which shall set forth the nature, time and place of the transaction to be had, with a full description of the lands to be offered, and be published once each week for not less than ten successive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation published regularly at the state capital, and in that newspaper of like circulation which shall then be regularly published nearest to the location of such lands so offered; nor shall any sale or contract for the sale of any timber or other natural product of such lands be made, save at the place, in the manner and after the notice by publication thus provided for sales and leases of the lands themselves: provided, that nothing herein contained shall prevent said proposed state from leasing any of said lands referred to in this section for a term of five years or less without said advertisement herein required.

All lands, leaseholds, timber and other products of land before being offered shall be appraised at their true value, and no sale or other disposal thereof shall be made for a consideration less than the value so ascertained, nor in any case less than the minimum price hereinafter fixed, nor upon credit unless accompanied by ample security, and the legal title shall not be deemed to have passed until the consideration shall have been paid.

Lands east of the line between ranges eighteen and nineteen east of the New Mexico principal meridian shall not be sold for less than five dollars per acre, and lands west of said line shall not be sold for less than three dollars per acre, and no lands which are or shall be susceptible of irrigation under any projects now or hereafter completed or adopted by the United States under legislation for the reclamation of lands, or under any other project for the reclamation of lands, shall be sold at less than twenty-five dollars per acre: provided, that said state, at the request of the secretary of the interior, shall from time to time relinquish such of its lands to the United States as at any time are needed for irrigation works in connection with any such government project. And other lands in lieu thereof are hereby granted to said state, to be selected from lands of the character named and in the manner prescribed in Section Eleven of this act.

There is hereby reserved to the United States and exempted from the operation of any and all grants made or confirmed by this act to said proposed state all land actually or prospectively valuable for the development of water powers or power for hydroelectric use or transmission and which shall be ascertained and designated by the secretary of the interior within five years after the proclamation of the president declaring the admission of the state; and no lands so reserved and excepted shall be subject to any disposition whatsoever by said state, and any conveyance or transfer of such land by said state or any officer thereof shall be absolutely null and void within the period above named; and in lieu of the land so reserved to the United States and excepted from the operation of any of said grants, there be, and is hereby, granted to the proposed state an equal quantity of land to be selected from land of the character named and in the manner prescribed in Section Eleven of this act.

Every sale, lease, conveyance or contract of or concerning any of the lands hereby granted or confirmed, or the use thereof or the natural products thereof, not made in substantial conformity with the provisions of this act shall be null and void, any provision of the constitution or laws of the said state to the contrary notwithstanding.

It shall be the duty of the attorney general of the United States to prosecute in the name of the United States and its courts such proceedings at law or in equity as may from time to time be necessary and appropriate to enforce the provisions hereof relative to the application and disposition of the said lands and the products thereof and the funds derived therefrom.

Nothing herein contained shall be taken as in limitation of the power of the state or of any citizen thereof to enforce the provisions of this act; provided, that the secretary of the interior is hereby authorized in his discretion to accept on behalf of the United States, title to any land within the exterior boundaries of the national forests in the state of New Mexico, title to which is in the state of New Mexico, which the said state of New Mexico is willing to convey to the United States, and which shall be so conveyed by deed duly recorded and executed by the governor of said state and the state land commissioner, with the approval of the state land board of said state, and as to land granted to the said state of New Mexico for the support of common schools with the approval of the state superintendent of public instruction of said state, as to institutional grant lands with the approval of the governing body of the institution for whose benefit the lands so reconveyed were granted to said state, if, in the opinion of the secretary of agriculture, public interests will be benefited thereby and the lands are chiefly valuable for national forest purposes, and in exchange therefor, the secretary of the interior, in his discretion, may give not to exceed an equal value of unappropriated, ungranted, national forest or other government land belonging to the United States within the said state of New Mexico, as may be determined by the secretary of agriculture and be acceptable to the state as a fair compensation, consideration being given to any reservation which either the state or the United States may make of timber, mineral or easements.

Authority is hereby vested in the president temporarily to withdraw from disposition under the Act of June 25, 1910 (Thirty-Sixth Statutes at Large, page 847), as amended by the act of August 24, 1912 (Thirty-Seventh Statutes at Large, page 497), lands proposed for selection by the state under the provisions of this act.