The title of John D. Leshy’s political history of America’s public lands, Our Common Ground, introduces the central fact of the story he invites us to read. The American federal public land estate is our land, a shared heritage of more than 600 million acres owned collectively by the American people and managed by the federal government.

Yet despite a vast literature on public lands, which he points out focuses mostly on categories such as national parks or forests, much of the American public does not have a comprehensive understanding of how they came to have such a public land legacy. Leshy sets out to consider “the entire history of these lands as a single American institution” and succeeds admirably.

Our Common Ground ($45 hardcover, Yale University Press) is a large and ambitious undertaking, but a critically important one in many ways. In his preface Leshy writes:

Although Native Americans, women, and people of color were largely excluded from participating in many of the key decisions that produced America’s heritage of public lands, the future promises to be much different. This is part of the beauty of this national institution. Because these lands are in public hands, they remain subject to the will of the people – as defined more broadly today than ever before – which means they can play a part in redressing some of the injustices of the past.

Because of this, making the public land story accessible in a single volume has never been more important. As discussed in the last part of the book, public land policy remains a subject of lively debate. Political rhetoric has taken on a more partisan cast than at any time since the Civil War . . . . The polarization has spawned exaggerated or misleading claims about the history of the public lands. Some who advocate stripping the Unites States of significant amounts of public land offer narratives about how “elites” in the national government control the public lands and have put a “stranglehold” on local communities, and how an “angry West,” in a “sagebrush rebellion,” aims to “get our lands back.”

The truth is quite different.

John Leshy should know the story, and how to present it. Now Professor Emeritus at the University of California Hastings College of Law, he served as Solicitor (General Counsel) of the Department of the Interior throughout the Clinton Administration, and in other posts focusing on public lands stretching back to the Carter Administration. He is widely published on federal land and resource law and brings to the story not only a historian’s perspective but that of a legal scholar.

Our Common Ground, due to be released in April, is certainly scholarly with 70 pages of notes (“shortened citations” as well as a “Select Bibliography”) which are testimony to his extensive knowledge and solid research, but this book is not a dry treatise. Its organization is clear and effective, dividing the story into 8 parts, 63 brief chapters, the chapters sectioned by subheads, which adds up to 600 pages of text. For instance, in a chapter titled “Public Lands, Science, and History: The Antiquities Act,” subsections are “John Lacy and Edgar Lee Hewitt Take Charge,” “The Antiquities Act of 1906,” “Implementation of the Antiquities Act,” “Grand Canyon National Monument,” and “Mount Olympus National Monument.” This clear and succinct organization helps the reader to follow the political, legal, and administrative complexities of public land policy battles from the founding of the United States and the Ordinances of 1784, 1785, and 1787 to the current battles over Grand Staircase – Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.

Leshy’s approach is chronological, as it must be. He observes that “the nation has never adopted a grand design for its public lands. Instead, decisions have been made incrementally and for reasons that evolved over time.” This incrementalism become evident as the story unfolds. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, for instance, land and natural resources in the expanding nation seemed endlessly abundant.  Leshy describes how, a century after the founding of the United States, the thinking of George Perkins Marsh and others began to change perceptions of the natural world and its limitations, an intellectual revolution regarding the nature upon which the nation depended. Also, populations of once abundant animals like the bison and passenger pigeons were shrinking toward extinction, and leaders began to worry about running out of resources like water and trees. Initially, Congress reserved most power over public land policy to itself, but that began to change as public land politics evolved, and Leshy explains how the executive branch’s engagement in public land policy grew until presidents, especially Theodore Roosevelt, exerted great influence over public land policy.

Several threads wind through the story. One is the history of the policy of divestment of public lands, which early on was the primary goal of the new government – as incentive for national expansion and development. Leshy writes, “Public lands policy before the Civil War primarily focused on divestiture in service of goals on which there was broad consensus – advancing settlement by Euro-Americans and keeping the nation unified through the admission of new states.” After the war, abuses of divestiture policies like the Homestead Act, vast railroad land grants, and the Mining Law of 1872 led to an era described by historian Vernon Parrington, as “a kind of ‘huge barbecue.’” Leshy quotes Parrington, who wrote “All the important persons, leading bankers and promoters and business men, received invitations” to the barbecue, and it was “a splendid feast.” This led to a backlash, which over decades, along with other factors, resulted in a gradual retreat from divestiture and to reform of public land policy toward retaining public lands and protection of them. This resulted in land and resource conservation and the creation of federal agencies dedicated to long-term public land management, most famously the Forest Service and National Park Service.

Leshy follows another thread, which is lasting tension between state and federal governments regarding public lands. Factions within states have repeatedly campaigned for obtaining more federal land than was usually granted with statehood. An issue from the beginning, this tension is present to this day as in campaigns in Western states “to get our land back.” Such campaigns repeatedly arose after portions of the public lands had been reserved in the national park, forest, and wildlife refuge systems.  Unreserved lands remained, and this prompted movements to transfer some of this land to the states. Leshy recounts how a committee formed to study the matter produced a report in 1931. Among the Garfield Committee recommendations was, as Leshy writes, “that all remaining unreserved public lands be put under ‘responsible administration or regulation for the conservation and beneficial use of its resources,’ and that the states be given the option to accept that responsibility.” The states, however, were cool to this idea and had three concerns. One was that “the public lands they might eventually be offered were more a liability than an asset.”  Secondly, the states would lose “the key to the door of the U. S. Treasury that the public lands supplied.” And third, mineral rights would not be included. The states were already receiving 90 percent of revenue derived from federal mineral leases under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 yet feared that without mineral rights they would have no control over this revenue stream in the future. So why take on the expenses involved in managing the public lands without the potential for the greatest financial return?

This was just one of many episodes in the debate over whether the state or federal government should control the public lands in Western states. The states did not jump at the opportunity, and there were other opponents to transfer, too.

Reaction from interest groups with a stake in the public lands was almost uniformly negative. The minerals industry and some larger ranching enterprises preferred to deal with a single government rather than with multiple ones. Livestock associations in Nevada, which were composed mostly of large livestock enterprises, preferred to take their chances with the federal government. Defenders of the free ride that the Mining Law of 1872 provided on public lands did not welcome the prospect of states gaining control of minerals with an obligation to administer them through a leasing system that required payment of royalties. Some smaller-scale ranchers, miners, and homestead advocates worried about being marginalized if state governments had more control of public lands. The Idaho Wool Growers Association protested that its members could be deprived of access to free forage on the public lands.

This single paragraph by Leshy reveals the incredible complexity of the state vs. federal public lands debate and the many stakeholders and interests involved. It is a good example of the insightful way he follows a thread that, in the political debates about it today, may be framed as simple and straightforward (transfer “their” land back to the states), but involve many players, many values, and complicated backstories.

Another thread is the issue of how little revenue the people’s land contributes to the national treasury due to machinations of special interests against the common interest. In a chapter titled “Pillaging Public Lands for Wood, Grass, and Minerals” Leshy recounts myriad abuses perpetrated on public lands with little or no return to the nation and the laws and neglect that allowed this situation, even encouraged it in some cases. Mining and especially public land grazing get special treatment by Leshy, with the grazing issue appearing in the story from immediately after the Civil War down to the present. After describing the origins of concerns about destruction of forests, Leshy explains how “the adverse ecological effects of abusing grasslands tended to be less dramatic than that of razing forests; as the historian William Voigt put it, the contrast was comparable to that between a drought and a flood. Thus, the movement that was forming to curb abuses of public land resources focused much more on protecting forests and water supplies than on controlling overgrazing.” Over a century the public range was abused by ranchers who, to this day, wield great power though their contribution to the treasury and to the supply of the nation’s food supply is miniscule. Leshy’s account explains how this happened, and he details frustrating efforts to remedy the situation.

Leshy is a very accessible writer, telling the public land story in a straightforward, expository style. He uses no jargon and avoids excessive verbiage. Many scholars have difficulty restraining themselves when writing about subjects they know better than anyone else, but not John Leshy. No doubt his work in public land administration at the Department of the Interior, where he gained a deep understanding of the politics of public lands, and his avowed goal of reaching an audience unfamiliar with the story he is telling, helped him write for a general audience as clearly as he does.

Doing justice to such a monumental work as Our Common Ground is difficult in a brief review. The story is a political epic stretching over 225 years with a multitude of players and complexities. Leshy faced the daunting task of deciding what should be in this single-volume account to reveal the essence of public land history. As selective as he is, the book is 600 pages, and to tell the story in detail would probably take ten volumes as long. I have studied this history extensively and thought I knew a lot about it, and I do, but I learned much from Leshy’s account. Especially valuable is the legal perspective he brings to the story, explaining what to many of us may seem arcane and difficult to understand constitutional, political, and legal issues in a clear and accessible way. Anyone curious about what lies behind the public land estate of today and the myriad controversies involving it, be they about oil and gas leasing, protection of biological diversity, wildlife management, conservation and restoration, national park and forest policy, or many other topics, will gain much insight from this book.

Our Common Ground is a work to be read over time, difficult to read cover-to-cover because it requires concentration, effort, and stamina, all richly rewarded. It is a great introduction to many topics that the reader can then pursue, if desired, by dipping into the author’s notes and bibliography. If, for instance, one wishes an overview of the history of national parks, a considerable portion of eight chapters scattered through Parts 3 through 8 are devoted to that story, from the emergence of “America’s Best Idea” to current issues of national park management. Chapters around these present the context of this park history. Some readers may think Leshy spends too little time on a part of the story of interest to them, but he sets the stage for further exploration. That is one of his goals, to tell the story in such a way as to not bog the reader down in detail and pique the curious reader to learn more.

After a lifetime devoted to the subject, Leshy concludes that the arc of America’s public land history has bent toward keeping a “common ground” and protecting its diverse values in the face of many who would degrade it and direct its riches to themselves. The story is certainly not over, and many challenges lie ahead, which he summarizes at the end of Our Common Ground. In his concluding chapter he writes that “it seems beyond much doubt that if asked, most Americans today would agree that holding and protecting a large amount of land in national ownership, open to all, has been extraordinarily visionary and beneficial. When examined through the long lens of the nation’s history, our public lands have shown how our governing process, for all its imperfections, can work to produce a result that most Americans support.” Wrapping up, he quotes Scottish philosopher Adam Smith and early 20th century national parks crusader J. Horace MacFarland’s contentions that a great nation should protect some measure of its most beautiful and bountiful land for everyone’s benefit. “That Americans have heeded Smith’s and MacFarland’s advice is a success story deserving of celebration – one particularly welcome in the sour, polarized political era in which we live.”