In response to plans for surveying and settling the Uintah Valley by white settlers, President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1861 reserved the entire valley of the Uintah River within Utah Territory as an Indian reservation encompassing 2,080,000 acres, and Congress confirmed that action on May 5, 1864, creating the Uintah Valley Reservation for the permanent settlement and exclusive occupation of tribes in Utah Territory; although a treaty concluded with the Ute Indians of eastern Utah on June 8, 1864, under which they ceded all land claims in eastern Utah except the Uintah Valley, was never ratified by Congress, by 1870 most members of the Tumpanawach, San Pitch, Pahvant, Sheberetch, Cumumba, and Uintah bands of Utes had relocated there and become absorbed into the Uintah band. On August 3, 1875, Nathan Kimball authorized Contract No. 64 with Charles L. DuBois to establish the initial point for surveys of the Uintah Indian Reservation, and on August 30, 1875 DuBois selected and marked the Initial Point of the Uintah Special Meridian, then surveyed the meridian line and base line and began subdividing the land through the Three-mile Method, which divided townships and sections down to 40-acre allotments marked by stone monuments; by the close of the June 30, 1876 fiscal year, he had run 1,300 miles of line, set more than 4,000 stone markers every quarter mile, and subdivided more than 161,000 acres for allotment. From 1870 to 1900 federal Indian policy shifted toward allotting reservation land to individuals, and under the General Allotment Act of February 8, 1887 and the Indian Appropriations Act of May 27, 1902, allotment on the Uintah Reservation was to be completed before the remaining land was restored to the public domain and opened for settlement; a commission appointed on April 3, 1905 completed the allotments by June 1905, and on July 14, 1905 Theodore Roosevelt opened the unallotted lands for settlement, after which hundreds of non-Indian heads of households paid $1.25 per acre, leaving of the original 2,080,000-acre reservation about 104,000 acres allotted to individual Indian families, 1,072,000 acres held in trust for their benefit, and 1,004,000 acres returned to the public domain.