This makes me wonder when the government's plan changed. If the "checkerboard" was meant to hold land until it rose in value and then sell it, why are so many of those parcels public today?
My understanding from the episode is that the plan was never for the public lands to grow in value. The private lands were given away or sold as incentives, and the owners could choose to capitalize off them immediately (e.g. as soon as the railroad reached nearby) or hold onto them for profit.
But this is verbatim what the article saud, you should have read it:
"This checkerboard pattern allowed the government to keep all the undeveloped sections in between and wait for them to go up in value before turning around and selling them to developers."
99pi articles are transcripts of the podcast episodes. I said what I remembered hearing when I listened to the podcast episode last week, which I apparently misremembered.
I wonder if they really have all that much value now. Barring any particularly lucrative natural resources, if one publically owned square is surrounded by private owners, who have the right to restrict travel, then that kind of heavily limits the market, doesn't it? And by that, presumably the price is limited as well.