A Documentary Record
17 original surveys, federal withdrawals, homestead and mineral patents, and land-use orders — the paper trail of who has held the ground beneath Vidal, from Henry Washington's 1856 survey to the conservation of the desert today.
Township 1 South · Range 23 East · San Bernardino Meridian
The Scanned Archive · 1856—1990
Begin with the survey that set the grid and the master plat that gathered a century of claims onto one page. Every image opens larger; each original scan is one click away.
1854 – 1858
Henry Washington's cadastral survey of the township, contracted December 26, 1854 and executed in 1856. The plat divides the land into thirty-six mile-square sections and tallies roughly 19,000 acres of public land surveyed, with some 4,000 acres of mountain country left off the grid — the framework of ownership for everything that followed.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)Filed August 16, 1971
The Bureau's graphic record of title for the partially surveyed township, mapping the segregated tracts, mineral surveys 5521 and 5530, patented homesteads, rights-of-way, and the contaminated military-use area — the single sheet that shows, at a glance, who holds what.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)Browse the full chronology
17 documents · five eras
1902 – 1919
At the turn of the century the young Reclamation Service swept the entire Colorado River corridor into federal reserve. Under the Reclamation Act of 1902, the land around Vidal was withdrawn from settlement in the "first and second forms" for the Colorado River project — then, parcel by parcel, released again as it proved unnecessary to the dams and canals downstream.
February 17, 1913
Acting Director Morris Bien recommends revoking the July 2, 1902 withdrawal over lots 1 and 2 of Section 1, T. 1 S., R. 23 E. — the fractional section at Vidal — noting the land was already covered by a homestead entry and held "no power possibilities." The order that opened the first private title in the valley.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)1919
The holding-agency index listing, township by township, the Colorado River lands recommended for restoration to entry — including T. 1 S., R. 23 E. It records the 1919 Reclamation Service letter finding the sweeping river withdrawals "no longer necessary to the interests of the project."
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)September 27, 1919
The General Land Office instructs the Los Angeles land office to reopen the vacated withdrawals to settlement and entry, setting the hour and rules for homestead filing. The formal reopening of the Vidal townships to private claim after seventeen years of federal reserve.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)1913 – 1932
Once the river withdrawals lifted, the quarter-sections around Vidal passed into private hands under the Homestead Act of 1862. The two patents that bracket this era both cover Section 1 — the fractional section at the heart of the townsite — and carry the signatures of two presidents twenty years apart.
March 22, 1913
Signed by President Woodrow Wilson, this patent conveys the fractional northeast quarter of Section 1 — 160.64 acres — to Hanson A. R. Brownell, the first homestead title proved up on the ground at Vidal. Serial patent 320350, Los Angeles land office 07717.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)1913
The modern Bureau of Land Management General Land Office database entry for the Brownell patent, confirming the meridian, township, range, and section subdivisions and noting the United States' reservation of mineral rights.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)November 2, 1932
Signed by President Herbert Hoover, this patent grants the southeast quarter of Section 1 — 160 acres — to the heirs of Victor Emanuel Johnson, completing the private settlement of the townsite section. Record of Patents number 1059483.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)1922 – 1957
The hills around Vidal fell within the Bendigo Mining District, and the richest paper trail the ground ever produced is a set of federal mineral patents. Cattleman and Imperial Valley developer William F. Holt patented two clusters of lode claims in 1922; three decades later, Edward La Force patented eight placer claims on a single section.
September 28, 1922
William F. Holt's Alice, Comet, Fraction, Good Enough, Home Stake, Longworth, Lucky Boy, and Mineral Hill lode claims — Mineral Survey 5521 — across Sections 25 and 36 of T. 1 S., R. 23 E. and Section 30 of R. 24 E., in the Bendigo Mining District. Patent 881732.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)October 18, 1922
Holt's Reliance, Independence, Klondyke, and Fraction No. 2 lode claims — Mineral Survey 5530 — embracing part of Section 25, signed by President Warren G. Harding. The metes-and-bounds description ties each claim to the earlier 5521 survey and to the section corners set in 1856. Patent 883813.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)April 26, 1957
Edward La Force's eight Pearlie Ann placer claims, all within Section 13 of T. 1 S., R. 23 E., patented for 160 acres. The last private mineral title granted in the immediate Vidal area. Patent 1170632.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)1956 – 1994
By mid-century the story shifts from acquisition to administration. The government resurveyed the township, folded the surrounding public land into decades of multiple-use classifications, and finally drew it into the great desert conservation frameworks — the California Desert Conservation Area, wilderness designation, and the areas of critical environmental concern that govern the land today.
1956 (accepted 1961)
Roger F. Wilson's dependent resurvey of Township 1 South, Range 23 East, executed January–March 1956 and accepted by the Bureau of Land Management in 1961. It restored Henry Washington's 1856 corners to their true original positions and surveyed portions never before subdivided.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)September 22, 1967
The BLM's proposed classification of the Chuckwalla Planning Unit — including T. 1 S., R. 23 E. — for multiple-use management, segregating the public lands from agricultural entry and sale while a hearing was set at El Centro.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)December 6, 1967
The final order classifying the Chuckwalla Planning Unit public lands for multiple use, confirming the framework under which the unclaimed land around Vidal would be managed for the next generation.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)1977
The tabular history of every entry, order, and patent affecting the township, section by section: the 1902 reclamation withdrawals, the 1913 and 1919 restorations, the homestead and mineral patents, oil-and-gas leases, transmission-line rights-of-way, and the 1976 designation of the California Desert Conservation Area.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)September 13, 1990
The Federal Register notice terminating ten multiple-use classifications across some 10.4 million acres of the California Desert District — the Barstow, El Centro, Needles, Ridgecrest, and Palm Springs–South Coast resource areas — as the 1980 California Desert Conservation Area Plan superseded the older classifications.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)September 13, 1990
The companion index to the 1990 terminations, itemizing each classification order (CARI numbers) being lifted and the counties affected, including Riverside and San Bernardino — the administrative closing of the multiple-use era around Vidal.
Open original scan(opens in a new tab)17 records preserved. Originals drawn from the U.S. General Land Office and the Bureau of Land Management; modern patent data via the BLM General Land Office Records.
An Essay from the Record
The land at Vidal has almost never been owned in the ordinary sense. For most of its recorded history it has been federal ground — measured, withdrawn, leased, classified, and conserved by the United States — and the handful of private titles ever proved up here cluster around a single square mile of the public-land grid: Section 1 of Township 1 South, Range 23 East, of the San Bernardino Meridian.
That grid itself is the oldest instrument in the record. In 1856, Deputy Surveyor Henry Washington ran the township lines across the eastern Mojave under a contract dating to 1854, dividing the country into thirty-six mile-square sections and leaving the rougher mountain ground unsurveyed. Every claim, patent, and lease that followed would be written in the language his survey established — sections, quarter-sections, and lots keyed to corners he set in the sand.
For the first two decades of the twentieth century, the land was simply closed. Under the Reclamation Act of 1902, the entire Colorado River corridor — Vidal included — was withdrawn from settlement in the "first and second forms" for the Colorado River project. The dams and reservoirs were built far downstream, and the desert around Vidal proved to have, in the words of the Reclamation Service, "no power possibilities." Beginning with a 1913 revocation over the fractional Section 1 and culminating in the sweeping General Land Office restoration order of 1919, the government released the land back to entry.
Only then could private title take hold, and it did so narrowly. In 1913, Hanson A. R. Brownell proved up the fractional northeast quarter of Section 1 — 160.64 acres — on a patent signed by Woodrow Wilson, the first homestead title on the ground at Vidal. Twenty years later, in 1932, the southeast quarter of the same section passed to the heirs of Victor Emanuel Johnson on a patent signed by Herbert Hoover. Between them, these two families held the core of the townsite.
The mineral estate tells a parallel story in the surrounding hills, which lay within the Bendigo Mining District. In 1922, the developer William F. Holt patented two clusters of lode claims — Mineral Surveys 5521 and 5530, bearing names like Alice, Comet, Good Enough, Reliance, and Klondyke — spanning Sections 25, 30, and 36. Their metes-and-bounds descriptions tie back directly to the section corners of the 1856 survey. Mineral title continued into the postwar years: in 1957, Edward La Force patented eight Pearlie Ann placer claims across Section 13, the last private mineral grant in the immediate area.
After mid-century the record turns from acquisition to stewardship. The Bureau of Land Management resurveyed the township in 1956 — Roger F. Wilson restoring Washington's original corners — and folded the unclaimed land into successive multiple-use classifications beginning in 1967 under the Chuckwalla Planning Unit. The master title plat filed in 1971 and the land status records of the 1970s map the whole tangle of withdrawals, patents, rights-of-way, and oil-and-gas leases on a single grid. In 1976 the land was drawn into the newly created California Desert Conservation Area; the older classifications were formally terminated in 1990; and in 1994 the California Desert Protection Act placed the neighboring Riverside Mountains into wilderness.
Today the ground at Vidal is managed, not owned — held in trust as public land and folded into the conservation frameworks that now define the eastern Mojave. The through-line of its title history is not a succession of proprietors but the long presence of the federal government itself, briefly interrupted by a few homesteaders and miners whose names survive mostly in the patents they left behind.