Acts of 1895 Chapter 77

WHEREAS, The Congress of the United States has by an act, approved December 27, 1894, appropriated seventy-five thousand dollars for the purchase of the battlefield of Shiloh, in the State of Tennessee, and for beginning the establishment of a National Military Park thereon, where the history of all military organizations engaged in that battle is to be impartially preserved by tablets and monuments, and where all the States which had troops in the engagement are to have equal rights and recognition:

SECTION 1. That upon the acquisition of title by the United States, through the payment of such sum as may be agreed upon with the respective owners, or fixed by the decree of any court which may have proper and legal jurisdiction of the matter, the jurisdiction of the State of Tennessee over the said tract thus acquired, its lands and roads, is hereby ceded to the United States for the purposes set forth in said Act of Congress, approved December 27th, 1894, establishing the said Shiloh National Military Park--that is to say, over a tract situated in Hardin County, or in Hardin and McNairy Counties, in the State of Tennessee, or over so much thereof as the commissioners of the park may deem necessary to acquire, to wit: Beginning at low water mark on the north bank of Snake Creek, where it empties into the Tennessee River; thence westwardly in a straight line to a point where the river road to Crump's Landing, Tennessee, crosses Snake Creek; thence along the channel of Snake Creek and Owl Creek; thence along the channel of Snake Creek to Owl Creek; thence along the channel of Owl Creek to the crossing of the road from Hamburg to Purdy; thence southwardly in a straight line to the intersection of an east and west line drawn from the point where the road to Hamburg, Tennessee, crosses Lick Creek, near the mouth of the latter; thence eastward along the said east and west line to the point where the Hamburg road crosses Lick Creek; thence along the channel of Lick Creek to the Tennessee River; thence along low water mark of the Tennessee River to the point of beginning, and such other lands contiguous thereto as the said park commissioners may consider it necessary to acquire; Provided, that this cession is upon the express condition that the State of Tennessee shall so far retain a concurrent jurisdiction over said lands and roads, as that all civil and criminal processes issued under the authority of the State of Tennessee, may be executed thereon in like manner as if this Act had not been passed.

SECTION 2. That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.

Passed: April 26, 1895.