Example 2

RG 49, Records of the Bureau of Land Management, public Land Disposals. Abandoned Military reservations, 1818-1945, 60 ft.

Arranged chronologically by date of initial disposition or activity on the reservation land. Executive orders, correspondence, title papers, plans, maps, blueprints, tracings, and printed items that document the General Land Office’s role in the creation of military reservations from public lands and its responsibility for the disposal of reservations or portions of reservation abandoned by the War and Navy Departments. The records include information about goods and services available on the posts. Related records are found in other series of records of the General Land office and among the general records of the Department of the Interior, the office of the Chief of Engineers, the office of the Quartermaster General, the Adjutant General’s office, United States Army commands, and the office of the Judge Advocate General (Army).

A. Intrinsic value criteria

  1. Example of physical form? No. These are routine types of records of the Government in the 19th and 20th centuries.
  2. Aesthetic or artistic? Occasionally. The cartographic and architectural items and usually utilitarian, although some have artistic embellishments.
  3. Unique or curious physical features? No. There are no three-dimensional material or unusual bindings, seals, papers, or inks.
  4. Age? Yes. The pre-Civil war records concerning military reservations in the United States are small in quantity in comparison to the records of post-Civil War periods. In these files, pre-and post-Civil War materials are interfiled.
  5. Exhibit potential? Yes. These records could be used for exhibits on military posts, exploration of the West, organization of the frontier, surveying, land disposition, military organization, and even autographs (William Tecumseh Sherman, Joel Poinsett).
  6. Authenticity? No problem.
  7. General public interest? Yes. Many military historians and enthusiasts use these materials; the Council on Abandoned Military Posts is particularly interested.
  8. Legal basis of an agency or institution? No. These are records of the implementation of land acquisition and disposition policy, not the records of the establishment of the basis for the policy.
  9. Policy at high level of Government? No. Although the records do contain significant correspondence from the Secretaries of War and the Interior regarding the implementation of land disposition policy, this correspondence does not document the making of policy.

CONCLUSION: the records have intrinsic value.