Land lottery

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Land lottery

A land lottery, also called a land ballot, is a way to give people ownership or the right to occupy land by drawing lots. Here are some well-known examples.

Israelite land lottery
- In the Bible, Moses allocated the Promised Land to the Israelite tribes by drawing lots, as described in Numbers. Joshua later carried out the distribution (Joshua). The system combined a sense of divine decision with a population-based allocation.

Georgia land lotteries
- The Georgia Land Lotteries were held between 1805 and 1833 in the U.S. state of Georgia.

Other historic examples
- In Oklahoma Territory, land was allocated to the Kiowa-Comanche and Apache reservation on August 6, 1901.
- At Tule Lake in California, returning WWII veteran homesteaders were allotted land after the war. Reports say many applicants were drawn from a container or pickle jar because there were more applicants than available homesteads.

Israelite land lottery (section summary)
- The allocation used a lottery system tied to each tribe’s adult male population. Some scholars suggest stones or markers were drawn to decide land distribution, seen as a divine decision in the tradition.

Australia
- Queensland: From 1916, Queensland used land ballots to settle marginal agricultural land. The government advertised land with sales maps, and applicants received numbered marbles. A marble was drawn for each land block. The scheme continued into the late 1960s. Usually, only landless men with limited resources could apply, and winning applicants received a leasehold of five to seven years, contingent on living on the land and meeting development criteria.
- Western Australia: In the North-West, land was allocated in the 21st century using a ballot system run by LandCorp, with random draws to assign Crown land.

References
- This summary reflects the main ideas and examples of land lotteries used around the world, from ancient times to more recent government-led schemes.