land office

n.
A government office that handles and keeps records of the sale or transfer of public land.

Origin: 1681

The European colonists in America brought with them an idea alien to the first North Americans, that of ownership of the land. From the Europeans' point of view, the land ultimately belonged to the sovereign, who granted it to a colony, which in turn could grant it to individuals. And the supply of new land to the west seemed inexhaustible, to be obtained by treaty or war with the Indians. So in the colonies, transactions dealing with land became much more of a business than they had been in the Mother Country (1617), where land titles were already established.

To take care of this business, the colonies provided land offices. We have a record of one in a Maryland law of 1681, "An Act relating to the Land Office." But the real growth of the land offices occurred in the nineteenth century, when the whole continent was parceled out. The function of the land office was defined by America's first lexicographer, Noah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary: "In the United States an office in which the sales of new land are registered, and warrants issued for the location of land, and other business respecting unsettled land is transacted."

As the westward spread of settlers became a wave and then a tidal wave, the eagerness to register land claims and the push to purchase land created crowds at land offices. So picturesque is the image that land-office business became a descriptive for brisk business. "A practical printer," said the New Orleans Picayune in 1839, "could do a land-office business here." In 1875 the Chicago Tribune remarked, "The tap-rooms adjoining the polls were all open and doing a 'land-office' business." In Louisville in 1887, the Courier-Journal reported, "The doughty burglar...has been doing a land-office business the past few days."

Land offices in the old sense are gone, but land-office business continues doing a land-office business in our language today.

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The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a government office where business relating to public lands is transacted

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