Pub. 15 2022 Issue 1 • UCLS Foresights 33 The subdivision plan was a problem. Van Roggen explained: “I just visualized that we would have a land surveyor divide the land into parcels. But 21 million deeds were printed, and since it would take a square inch of paper to mark in the deed number, we’d have to have a subdivision plan the same number of acres in size.” A solution was reached: the deeds were numbered consecutively, according to a master plan. If you wanted to find, say, lot number 11,935,000 you simply had to start in the northwest comer of the land, travel east 7,000 inches, go south 1,705 inches, and there you’d be, standing on your inch. “Theoretically,” says Van Roggen, “you could find any square inch in the subdivision.” The promotion was first announced on the Sgt. Preston network radio show on Jan. 27, 1955, and advertisements appeared in 93 newspapers. The public response outdistanced Baker’s wildest dreams. Quaker Oats cereal sold as quickly as the deeds could be printed and stuffed into the boxes. Letters from new landowners flooded the Quaker Oats offices. “Where exactly,” thousands of children asked, “is my inch located?” “Howmuch is it worth?” One youngster sent in four toothpicks and a piece of string and asked the Quaker people to erect a fence around his property. “Interest in the promotion,” says Baker “was unbelievable.” But all good things, alas, must come to an end, or so Quaker Oats thought. The Sgt. Preston show went off the air in the late 1950s. The Klondike Big Inch Land Co., kept alive for a number of years to handle inquiries, was dissolved in 1965. And the 19 acres of Yukon land were repossessed by the Canadian government for non-payment of $37.20 in taxes. Yes, Quaker Oats would have liked to forget the whole thing, but it couldn’t. Unlike plastic whistles, the Yukon land deeds weren’t played with for a week and thrown away. You don’t, after all, toss out a “gold-embossed” deed to land, even if it is just for one square inch. Who knows, it might be worth something someday. People squirreled them away and forgot about them. For a while. Quaker Oats received hundreds of inquiries every year, from kids who grew up and rediscovered a deed, and from executors of estates who came across a Big Inch deed in a deceased’s belongings. How much, they all wanted to know, is this land worth now? Is the deed genuine? Where exactly is it located? Officials in Ottawa, only slightly amused, referred all correspondents to the Quaker Oats Co. in Chicago. And Quaker had the unhappy – and time-consuming – task of telling them that the deeds were worthless, that the Klondike Big Inch Co. no longer existed, and that the Canadian government had taken back the land. v Originally published in Canadian Magazine, 1975.
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