The Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands (commonly known as O&C Lands), are approximately 2,600,000 acres (1,100,000 ha) of land located in eighteen counties of western Oregon. Originally granted to the Oregon & California Railroad to build a railroad between Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California, the land was reconveyed to the United States government by act of Congress in 1916 and is currently managed by the United States Bureau of Land Management.

Since 1916, the 18 counties where the O&C lands are located have received payments from the United States government at 50% share of timber revenue on those lands. Later, as compensation for the loss of timber and tax revenue decreased, the government added federal revenues. The governments of several of the counties have come to depend upon the O&C land revenue as an important source of income for schools and county services.

The most recent source of income from the lands was funded through an extension of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 which allocated $110 million to the counties. The act was renewed each succeeding year at reduced spending levels, most recently for $25.6 million in 2023. The act has not been renewed since 2023, leaving the affected counties with budget shortfalls. In 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act redirected proceeds from timber sales on the lands from the counties to the federal government, potentially exacerbating the funding gap.

As part of the U.S. government's desire to foster settlement and economic development in the western states, in July 1866, Congress passed the Oregon and California Railroad Act. This act made 3,700,000 acres (1,500,000 ha) of land available for any company that built a railroad from Portland to San Francisco. The land was to be distributed by the state of Oregon in 12,800-acre (5,200 ha) land grants for each mile of track completed. Two companies, both of which named themselves the Oregon Central Railroad, began a competition to build the railroad, one on the west side of the Willamette River and one on the east side. The two lines would eventually merge and reorganize as the Oregon and California Railroad. In 1869, Congress changed how the grants were to be distributed, requiring the railroads to sell land along the line to settlers in 160-acre (65 ha) parcels at $2.50 per acre. The land was distributed in a checkerboard pattern, with sections laid out for 20 miles (32 km) on either side of the rail corridor with the government retaining the alternate sections for future growth.

By 1872, the railroad had extended from Portland to Roseburg. Along the way, it created growth in Willamette Valley towns such as Canby, Aurora, and Harrisburg, which emerged as freight and passenger stations, and provided a commercial lifeline to the part of the river valley above Harrisburg where steamships were rarely able to travel. As the railroad made its way into the Umpqua Valley, new townsites such as Drain, Oakland, and Yoncalla were laid out.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the railroad was that it provided access to Oregon's vast forests for large-scale logging operations. But despite the large number of grants, it was difficult to sell to actual settlers because much of the land was not only heavily forested (chiefly in Douglas-fir and Western Hemlock), but rugged and remote; moreover, the railroads soon realized that the land was much more valuable if sold in larger plots to developers and timber companies. As a result, some individuals posed as settlers to purchase the land at the $2.50 per acre rate and then promptly deeded them back to the railroad, which amassed the smaller plots into larger ones and resold them at a higher price to timber interests.

A scheme to circumvent the settler grants altogether soon emerged. A railroad official hired a surveyor and logger named Stephen A. Douglas Puter to round up people from Portland saloons, and then take them to the land office where they would register for an O&C parcel as a settler, and then promptly resell to the railroad for bundling with other plots and resale to the highest bidder, typically as much as $40 an acre. In 1904, an investigation by The Oregonian uncovered the scandal, by which time it had grown to such a magnitude that the paper reported that more than 75% of the land sales had violated federal law.

Between 1904 and 1910, nearly a hundred people were indicted in connection with the fraud, including U.S. Senator John H. Mitchell, U.S. Representatives John N. Williamson and Binger Hermann, and U.S. Attorney John Hicklin Hall.