Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Federal ownership of land is a legacy thing, every State after the original 13 started as a Federal territory with the vast majority of it having no private owner on record, so they were almost entirely Federally-owned by default and for whatever reason the for-private-purposes ownership wasn't transferred to the States as they formed. That vast stretch of red in the Western half of the country is overwhelmingly deserts and mountains, and what marginal farmland is there isn't competitive with the Great Plains, so there's no interest at the scale needed to make visible progress on moving it into the private market.