Estate of Fairbank ex rel. Fairbank v. United States

Davis, Judge,

delivered tbe opinion of the court:

Through this Congressional reference1 we are asked to pass upon still another phase in a continuing dispute over a famous tract of land — Section 36, Township 30 South, Range 23 East, in the Elk Hills of Southern California — a dispute which has remained alive for three generations. As before, the controversy centers on the issue of whether Section 36, which is now concededly oil-bearing, was known to be mineral land in January 1903.

The problem arose because Congress, in the Act of March 3, 1853, 10 Stat. 244, 246, granted to the then new State…