Americans entrusted to their federal government the management of the

enormous areas of unsettled land to the west and south of the original 13 colonies.

Between independence and federation, most of the new states agreed, at the

Continental Congress in 1785, to place their often conflicting western territorial

claims under national administration. After federation, the lands contained in the

Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 likewise became national property,

subject to disposition and regulation by the U.S. Congress. Subsequently treaties

with Spain, Mexico, and the United Kingdom added the territories that now

constitute Florida (1819), Oregon, Washington and Idaho (1846), California and

parts of other western states (1848), and the remainder of the Southwest (1850,

1853) to that vast area. Texas was an exception, as it had already attained

independent statehood when it joined the Union in 1845, and it retained title to all

the public lands within the present boundaries of the state while in 1850 selling

extensive lands outside those borders to the federal government. By the time Drake

drilled his well near Titusville in 1859, the United States had amassed a public

domain extending to 1.31 billion acres (2.19 million square miles).