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US Forest Land Swindle
Don Soeken ^ | 12/31/2001 | Don Soeken, Sheila Davis and Erich Veyhl

Posted on 12/30/2001 9:32:18 PM PST by countrydummy

US Forest Service Eminent Domain Land Swindle Forwarded by Shiela Davis New River Jumping Branch, WV ... -------------------------------- I got your name from Bill Monro from the landrights.com page. I want to know if you have had any success with the US Forest Service. I have been trying for 20 plus years to get justice and have basically know more than the Forest service about my rights than they do. Can you help me get publicly for this cover-up of basic land rights? Don Soeken 301-953-7353 -------------------------------- January 31, 2000 William E. Damon, Jr., Forest Supervisor George Washington National Forest, USDA 5162 Valleypointe Parkway Roanoke VA 24019 File Code: 510/5510/7150 Ladies and Gentlemen: Dr. Donald R. Soeken and I very much appreciate the six of you meeting with us January 11th. As he said, this is the first face-to-face meeting he has been afforded on this matter in the 25 years since he received a deed to the parcel. Dale Remington's having walked the perimeter of the property earlier this week was particularly helpful. We request your favorable recommendation that Dr. Soeken receive a quitclaim deed covering what he bought June 26, 1975. The process record the Forest Service has so carefully accumulated and preserved verifies and validates Dr. Soeken's explanation of his sole title to the parcel. There occurred at Lynchburg, Virginia in 1939 a civil proceeding presided over by Judge John Paul. This was a "friendly condemnation" to compensate the bankrupt West Virginia Hardwood Company for 226 acres of its land for $565. Everyone proceeded either in ignorance or collusively, since none of the 226 acres in fact lay in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Constructive notice of the Order of Publication appeared in a general circulation newspaper published at Clifton Forge, Allegheny County, Virginia. The text of the notice specified that all the acreage affected lay in Allegheny County, Virginia. The entire suit and result was bogus. Although Judge John Paul was a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Virginia, his ruling affecting land title had force for any specified ground lying within the borders of the entire Commonwealth. Neither the notice nor the pleadings made any hint or pretense to be affecting land outside his bailiwick, such as 226 acres lying in Sweet Springs District, Monroe County, Southern District of West Virginia. (Such a ruling upon West Virginia land title would have needed judicial action from some other U.S. judge in a federal court at Bluefield, West Virginia.) Prior to the 1939 condemnation, the federal government had prepared its own survey of West Virginia Hardwood Company holdings. The government's plat bearing date of 1934 is quite extraordinary in several very revealing respects. First, it mislocated one well-known ancient landmark (the Fletcher's Knob promontory of Fletcher's Ridge). More accurate survey work reveals the real state line to be 1,760 feet away from where the 1934 plat purported to site it. Those persons who received the proceeds of the West Virginia Hardwood Company condemnation funds achieved private enrichment at public expense, like this one we are trying to correct from 1939. Their cleverness is seen in the fact that the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey demarcation of the true and correct state line is clearly shown on the 1934 plat. This protective disclosure shielded the guilty parties from fraud charges, since the real truth was not concealed. The West Virginia sharpsters then used the federal attorney across the line in Virginia in 1939 to liberate money from the federal treasury based upon Forest Service-supplied information that conflicted but was more recent. Pulling the wool over the eyes of authority during the Great Depression so as to assert a phony state line was at once shrewd, amusing, and lucrative. It was both prankish and profitable. It did turn out to be fatally stressful to West Virginia landowner I. W. Davis. He was arrested on his own land in West Virginia, and transported to East Virginia for arraignment. It's very disorienting to have your own government seize you on your own land, transport you under guard to another sovereignty, and arraign you for a crime against realty which the particular court completely lacked any legitimate authority to pursue. I suggest all this contributed to and provoked I. W. Davis' needless death. It is noteworthy that the landowners like I. W. Davis and their successors in title never acquiesced in the scheme. Even the East Virginia prosecution of I. W. Davis never took place where any court had legitimate jurisdiction. In unbroken chain of title from I. W. Davis down to Donald R. Soeken today the West Virginia local government authorities still list on the public records this land to be individually owned. And why not? The schemers who set up the Virginia federal attorney in Lynchburg to gull Judge John Paul also arranged for the results to be put to public record only in the Alleghany County, East Virginia deed books where it has no legal force or effect. Nobody but the bankruptcy court receiver in Charleston, West Virginia (1934) and the Forest Service (1936) had ever placed I. W. Davis' land in the Commonwealth of Virginia. When the interstate boundary commission had to be invoked in 1959 to rectify what had been in confusion for a mere 25 years, it became quite clear that the I. W. Davis land had always been in West Virginia. The '34 and '36 government- sponsored mislocations of the state line were instances of oppression by the sovereign. Further examples of official oppression by the Forest Service followed. The Forest Service carved up the original 315 acre tract. This official action left the I. W. Davis Estate with 15 acres on Route 602 Cove Road in Monroe County, plus landlock-ing another 89 acres above the 226 acres so cavalierly dealt with at Lynchburg federal court. The Forest Service conception of the false state line claiming 226 acres as the heart, isolated the 89 acre head and the 15 acre arm. It is now time for the current generation of Department of Agriculture officials to right this wrong administratively. It would be a further wrong and oppression to make Dr. Soeken litigate at private expense the controversy of whose state line was where as seen by three sovereignties - West Virginia, East Virginia, and Uncle Sam. A federal judge presiding in Bluefield, West Virginia would surely spot the lack of symmetry and denial of fair play that this 1939 scheme so baldly presents. A party such as the Forest Service is not permitted in law to profit from its own wrong. A inept survey job by rangers in 1936 was not sanitized by whatever Judge John Paul was tricked into signing in 1939. When this substantial error was carried into the condemnation proceeding in 1939, the results were comic, collusive, or both. The second extraordinary feature of the government's 1934 plat is that it offers two distinct straight lines diverging in a vee to be the same boundary (and opted for the demonstrably wrong one). Third, the "schizophrenic" boundary proposed by this plat's vee-line happened to be the one separating not only two distinct counties, but also two states of the union! Fourth, the plat was commissioned by the U.S. receiver in bankruptcy stationed at the U.S. District Court in Bluefield, West Virginia. While the Forest Service exercises good authority to survey a proposed taking, the authority to survey a state line seems to be lacking, since the state line is normally thought to be an immutable and settled starting point. For example, it is unseemly for the U.S. Forest Service to make any attempt to place elsewhere a state border previously specified as reliable by the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey. Yet that is what happened in 1934; it is a documentary fact on the plat's face. Normally, condemnation proceedings done in exercising the power of eminent domain clear up questions of land title for the areas of taking shown on the plat exhibited in court. In this instance that usual expectation could have no effect upon Monroe County, West Virginia land; it was as legally remote from Judge John Paul's lawful perview as if it had lain in Monroe County, Michigan. The Virginia-based condemnation proceeding in 1939 could not pretend to affect the cross-border land title taken up by Dr. Soeken in 1975. He and his predecessors have faithfully paid Monroe County, West Virginia real estate taxes as if [East] Virginia's Judge John Paul had never ruled. What force if any did the 1939 ruling have on the side of the border not the judge's state? Soeken and his several predecessors in title (see Monroe Co. WV land records) never intended any disrespect to Judge Paul; keeping land tax paid current is one of the expected burdens of ownership, and is not the act of any speculative volunteer. We take it as a kindness you and your staff's willingness to consider any pressing need for reasonable access to road egress and power line right of way. The way to clear up how a utility can lay its line in a right of way paralleling a state-maintained road to reach Dr. Soeken's Balkanized parcel is to quitclaim it to him as was done for his adjoining landowner Woodrow Anderson. So long as the federal government asserts a conflicting interest in Soeken's parcel, Route 8 at the parcel's edge will continue to be the responsibility of Uncle Sam. If the Forest Service would kindly recede to the state line, and cease to blight the Soeken parcel, the State of West Virginia would then be unambiguously responsible for the continuity of Route 8, and the electric company could go forward on the Soeken side without offending some imagined national interest. (The edge of Route 8 opposite the Soeken parcel is a sheer drop to a stream at the bottom; this isn't the sort of terrain through which running a power line comes cheap.) Many of us present January 11th are the descendants of Scotch-Irish and English pioneers who proved themselves to be among the most land-hungry of peoples who ever penetrated an unmapped continent. That fact acccordingly made all of us wonder why a mountaineer who was Soeken's predecessor in title would not be more assertive in 1939 to actively protect his ownership of the West Virginia parcel? I suggest the correct answer is that his lawyer determined the putative condemmna-tion of 226 acres in the Virginia Commonwealth could have no effect on title to land actually in the State of West Virginia. It was a splendid prank to liberate Uncle Sam of $565 when the Roosevelt Depression was raging. (The Roosevelt Depres-sion was what occurred when the imposition of Social Security taxes stripped capital out of an anemic economy, reversing the recovery until World War II.) For example, a federal judge sitting and ruling in Parkersburg or Wheeling could have very well affected Virginia land titles once upon a time -- though not after the breakaway that occurred in the midst of Civil War. By the time Judge Paul reached the federal bench in the 20th Century the territorial sweep of his land title rulings were uniquely truncated by the 19th Century secession of anti-secessionists. There are no other two states so yoked together jurisprudentially while their sovereignty is so zealously separated. No Virginia jurist would rule to hop that state boundary, even though Monroe is one of the most lamented of the Lost Counties. The fact that the border has been monumented since the 1959 Interstate Boundary Commission is fumbled about (because the federal mislocation of Fletcher's Knob in 1934 and 1936 was remarked upon by that Commission in 1959 but was conveniently ignored in 1978). Also left pregnantly unstated by the OGC in 1978 was the locale of the federal district court in which during 1949 the deathtime estate of I. W. Davis had to pay for cutting timber he had believed to be his own. In what state was the live Mr. Davis arraigned for "timber trespass"? He was apparently arrested on his own mountain and hauled to Lynchburg VA. Why was not the "sawdust felon" sent to Bluefield WV? The Forest Service's Office of General Counsel in Atlanta did make the following observation in a letter dated February 24, 1978: "... the documentation submitted by you reflects that the subject tract of land, although now located in West Virginia, was located in Virginia at the time the United States of America acquired title to the subject tract of land." This is tantamount to asserting that a court is incapable of being divested of jurisdiction after the fact (though that is not the flaw in the statement. The flaw is that the court proceeding was always bogus). That quoted statement erects a false premiss from which unreliable conclusions flowed. It assumed factuality of the proposition still to be established. That quoted statement was a bit of wishful thinking, that would have to be swallowed whole and unexamined to be intellectually supportable. Scrutinized here, the 1934 government plat showing the state boundary as a vee-line. The plat indicated the parcel was headed directly down the federal maw as a piece of West Virginia, regardless of where the state line really fell. Here's why. The 1934 plat legend indicates that the company's receivership was based in Charleston WV (presumably the bankruptcy division of the federal district court there). The not-so-hidden reason was to include whatever was or had been West Virginia Hardwood Company land no matter what side of the border it lay over; the U.S. receiver's engineer A. L. Sheldon gratuitously challenged the accuracy of the state line as located on U.S. topographical maps. By including this feature he provided the data by which to correct his mislocation of the state line. Judge Paul was naked of authority over West Virginia land titles. If he had no jurisdiction, what legitimate power did he ever possess to vest the Soeken parcel in the U.S. Department of Agriculture? None. Wrong judge. Wrong courthouse. Wrong state. The condemnation proceeding was completely wrongheaded as to the State of West Virginia, and entirely vacuous in the Virginia Commonwealth. The Forest Service never got the normally curative effect in West Virginia that legitimate condemnation confers, since no legally cognizable proceeding ever took place in 1939 as to the Soeken parcel. By its explicit terms the land affected by the condemnation lay in Alleghany County only, not in other environs unspecified. Can a court be divested of "jurisdiction" after the fact when it had no authority in the first place? To even research and litigate this weighty issue would be a long and expensive diversion. We suggest any fair evaluation of the government's 1934 plat indicates that the Soeken parcel was never before Judge Paul to decide. Hence this legal conundrum (about divesting "jurisdiction" that had previously attached) is not to be reached here. It would be oppressive to force this knotty principle to judicial decision at private expense. --------------------- Hi: I will give you some of the background and you can send it to you friend who is a US Attorney. What is his or her name?After the bankruptcy engineer made the error in the survey of the 15000 acres of the bankrupt West Virginia Hardwood Company (WVHC) could not get their money until all boundaries were clear. The easiest way of them to clear the title was to condemn the land and take it. They did condemn it and took the heart out of the property. They did not pay the owner of the property any money or damages. I have an old logging road that an adjoining owner has let me use, but the power company will not give me a figure on the cost unless I pay for the cost to determine the cost of the power line. The line would have to be underground because I do not have a right of way the the power co. needs. The federal law that allowed the government to buy the 15,000 acres only gave the Forest Service permission to buy land in Virginia. This is the reason that the Forest Service maintains to this day that the land was in Virginia in 1939. However, in fact the 1856 survey placed it in Monroe Co. My surveyor agrees with the 1859 survey. At this point the facts of this case are being coverd-up by the US Forest Service. The reason for this is that they can! There is no oversight on the Forest Service(FS). Senator Bryd and Rockafeller have been impotent on this case. Congressman Rahall has asked the right questions, but the FS has ignored his questions.There is not one person who has been able to get straight answers from the FS. I have researched the deeds and there are no restrictions on the property. I can not get electric power to the property. The land is now hunting land but could be residential if I had proper access. In the early history the person who owned the 315 acres land at the time of the condemnation did not know that 226 acres of his land was condemned and made into the George Washington NF. After he sold the land to J. E. Paul, a one armed timber cutter the FS arrested him for trespassing and cutting wood on the NF. He was to be tried in Lynch berg, VA. Before he could be tried he sued the person that he bought the land from and Mr. Paul lost the case in Monroe Co. Court. The jury said the the former owner A. P. Wylie had the land free and clear. J. E. Paul was going to be tried in Lynchburg but he died during the trial without a wife but he had two young girls. They inherited the property, paid Monroe Co. taxes on the 315 acres until I bought it in 1973. I have been attempting to quit claim the 226 acres since that time. The biggest break that I have had is that Federal condemnations must take place in the State where the land is located. Two years after we wrote the letter that you have the FS said that it does not matter where land is condemned. They are forcing me to Federal Court. The problem with Federal court is that if you get a bad Judge you lose even though you case may have merit. Many of the Judges in W.Va. are pro government and I could lose because of the Judge's prejudice towards citizens. I have chosen for now to fight the Forest Service until I find one honest person in the GW National Forest Service regional office in Roanoke. Plans and future direction: I need grass roots support to give me some political power with the Federal legislators in W. VA. I have maps from the FS that I will share with you or any one who wants to see them. These maps show the error in the survey and it is the only time that a private survey which was completed by the bankrupt West Virginia Hardwood Company set a state line which the FS took as the line in 1936. This state line then is the only place in the county that the FS made a state line. The 1927 Geodetic Survey Map of West Virginia had the line in the proper place but the FS ignored it in favor of the private survey done by the WVHC bankruptcy engineer. Apparently the WVHC had some powerful persons in key places to get the government to take a piece of W. VA. land and not pay the person for it. In fact they land-locked the property and have coverd up their mistake for some 65 years. I have many files on this case and I can share them with you when I come to Gap Mills. In the meantime can we get something going? -------------------


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Dear Friends: I am still not good at this, but this is something all of you need to read and get! The Forest Service KNOWS they are in violation of the law in this case....no, they know it was and is so illegal! The whole thing was! But they are refusing to here this man's pleas for justice (imagine that).....please help him! countrydummy
1 posted on 12/30/2001 9:32:18 PM PST by countrydummy (countryd@stargate.net)
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To: countrydummy
"this is something all of you need to read and get!"

Then please learn to paragraph.

All it takes is a few well-placed < p>

2 posted on 12/30/2001 9:37:05 PM PST by okie01
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To: countrydummy
W needs to drop the hammer on the NFS. Bubba screwed up the regulations so bad it will take a Harry Potter to fix it.
3 posted on 12/30/2001 9:40:05 PM PST by Vote 4 Nixon
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To: countrydummy
You'll get much more readership of your post if you format it with <p> to break it into paragraphs. Why don't you Freep mail me after you get it straightened out. I'd love to read it but not like this.
4 posted on 12/30/2001 9:42:45 PM PST by upchuck
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To: upchuck
I am so sorry, I am blonde and it is hard for me! Truthfully, I just can't get it, when I try

my computer goes nuts....and i loose it....I really wish I had done better, I really do!

5 posted on 12/30/2001 9:46:20 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: upchuck
see, I tried the paragraph thing and it won't take it! Thanks XP!!!
6 posted on 12/30/2001 9:49:07 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: countrydummy
Can you get the URL for the source and let someone else try?
7 posted on 12/30/2001 9:49:37 PM PST by Libertarianize the GOP
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To: countrydummy
I can't read this.

Fix it with paragraphs please.

Thanks.

8 posted on 12/30/2001 9:50:23 PM PST by the irate magistrate
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To: countrydummy
(all of the above replies apply here...you need to format this so it isn't so difficult to read!)

None of this comes as any surprise. The Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, BLM, etc. all overstep their boundaries. We have no right to our property as it stands, and it only gets worse as time goes by. These government agencies usurp more and more of our property rights, usually at the behest of myriad 'environmental' groups who wish to restrict your right for you to do what you will with your land as you see fit. Screw 'em all. The federal and state governments should not be in the land ownership bidness, and need to stay out of our affairs.

9 posted on 12/30/2001 9:51:05 PM PST by cincinnati_Steve
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To: Vote 4 Nixon
Well, I still hope GW will do something right, besides the war on terrorism...that is another subject.....but if you know anything about me, which you may not, I am a simple landowner of less than an acre of land and I am under threat of condemnation from the NPS, FS, etc...all those good ole boys.....and the reason for this post was to show how these good ole boys lie and steal and cheat! I am sick of it!
10 posted on 12/30/2001 9:55:42 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: cincinnati_Steve
I am working on re-posting it, but xp has it's own ideas on how it will do things.....drives me wacky....I will try again and you are so right!
11 posted on 12/30/2001 9:58:43 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: Libertarianize the GOP
well it was sent to me, I could send it to someone willing to post it if I had their email address....I would love for someone that knows what they are doing to post this!
12 posted on 12/30/2001 10:01:04 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: the irate magistrate
I am so sorry! I am trying so hard, this mans story needs to be heard! I am asking for help, I will send you what I have if you can post it better than I did....please....this man needs help and needs it now! Sheila
13 posted on 12/30/2001 10:04:01 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: countrydummy
Check your freep-mail in th upper right corner of the header on the latest posts.
14 posted on 12/30/2001 10:08:02 PM PST by Libertarianize the GOP
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To: Libertarianize the GOP
Right should be left
15 posted on 12/30/2001 10:08:38 PM PST by Libertarianize the GOP
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To: countrydummy;Carry_Okie;snopercod;Dog Gone;Angelique
Your plite is the same as former residents of the Cyahoga(sp) Valley just south of Cleveland, OH. The FRONTLINE program covered it well about 10 years ago in a program entitled: "For The Good Of All."

You may already know this and I know you're in a terrible fight, but the law means nothing to these Federal Agencies! They will see to it that you lose "the viewshed" to their "plan!" They seriously rationalize their own lawlessness as them having the moral high-ground... "For The Good Of All!"

They're not gonna stop it, even if it kills you! Even a Millionaire in Ventura County, CA wouldn't sell-out to these fanatics and they had him killed, by deputies from a neighboring County!!! Nobody does anything about it!!!

Dan Lungren, CA Atty General who ran for Governor in '98 stifled the local DA's investigation!!! It's hideous and insidious!!! The power is immense and they are relentless, ruthless, remorseless and are ruining the America I grew up in!!!

Sorry to depress you, but it's true.

16 posted on 12/30/2001 10:11:28 PM PST by SierraWasp
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To: Libertarianize the GOP
I really want to read this. Could you ping me when it gets straightened out?
17 posted on 12/30/2001 10:19:17 PM PST by farmfriend
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To: countrydummy
I'd read it if I could do so without going blind. Use some paragraphs or line breaks.
18 posted on 12/30/2001 10:28:32 PM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
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To: SierraWasp
No you are not depressing me any further than I have been! But guess what? I am not giving up! Why? I have people like you and all the Freepers that will stand beside me, that is why I posted (or tried too) this man's request for help! I and the Sisters of the River (sounds so liberal don't it..haha) have managed to keep our lands now for 3 years past what the government would have had....and we have big boys helping us also! I know all about "For the Good of the All" and look at what time frame all of that happened in.....times are different, those people never had a chance, but we do! All of us together with the net have allot more power than we did before! I will never give up! I own my land, I sweat and bleed over this land every year, and I will not let some stupid federal agency take it.....over my dead dang body only! This is my children's land...this is what I have spent my life to give to them.....it is theirs and theirs alone! Not for the good of the all! What has the good of the all ever done for me and mine and you and yours? Nothing! I am so dang passionate about this...I better shut up!
19 posted on 12/30/2001 10:29:40 PM PST by countrydummy
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To: countrydummy
Re-post
20 posted on 12/30/2001 10:32:41 PM PST by Libertarianize the GOP
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