Portal:Oregon/Selected article/113

The Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands (commonly known as O&C Lands), are approximately 2,600,000 acres (1,100,000 ha) of land located in eighteen counties of western Oregon. Originally granted to the Oregon & California Railroad to build a railroad between Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California, the land was reconveyed to the United States government by act of Congress in 1916 and is currently managed by the United States Bureau of Land Management. Since 1916, the 18 counties where the O&C lands are located have received payments from the United States government as compensation for the loss of timber and tax revenue, beginning as a 50% share of timber revenue on those lands but changing over the years as timber production decreased. The governments of several of the counties have come to depend upon the O&C land revenue as an important source of income for schools and county services. The most recent source of income from the lands, an extension of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, expired in early 2012, leaving some counties scrambling to find new sources of funding.