use. The Court defined “appropriated” as “nothing more nor less than setting apart the thing for some particular use.” Id. at 512, 13 Pet. 498. According to the Court: [Whensoever a tract of land shall have once been legally appropriated to any purpose, from that moment the land thus appropriated becomes severed from the mass of public lands; and ... no subsequent law, or proclamation, or sale, would be construed to embrace it, or to operate upon it; although no other reservation were made of it. Id. at 513, 13 Pet. 498. The patent holder therefore “acquired no title whatsoever to the land in question.” Id. at 515, 13 Pet. 498. Numerous cases have acknowledged and followed the appropriation doctrine. E.g., United States v. O’Donnell, 303 U.S. 501, 510, 58 S.Ct. 708, 82 L.Ed. 980 (1938) (<HOLDING>), citing Wilcox, 38 U.S. at 513, 13 Pet. 498;
holding that subsequent patent did not convey lands that had previously been appropriated it is a familiar principle of public land law that statutes providing generally for disposal of the public domain are inapplicable to lands which are not unqualifiedly subject to sale and disposition because they have been appropriated to some other purpose the general words of the granting act are to be read as subject to such exception recognizing validity of water rights appropriated on public domain for use on school trust land even though appropriator did not own or intend to patent place of use holding that the waters of the state are a public asset and noting that this court has previously determined that public land public revenue a municipallyowned utility and wild salmon are all public assets that cannot be appropriated by initiative footnotes omitted recognizing validity of water right appropriated to irrigate land appropriator only occupied on public domain holding that land that is permanently appropriated to an inconsistent use is abandoned