Title 43 › Chapter CHAPTER 20— - RESERVATIONS AND GRANTS TO STATES FOR PUBLIC PURPOSES › § 869
The Secretary of the Interior may transfer public land to a State, tribe, territory, county, city, other government unit, or to a nonprofit for public or recreational use. Before a transfer, the applicant must show the land will be used for a real project, is not nationally important, and is no larger than needed. Projects over 640 acres require that the proper State, Tribal, or local authority has adopted comprehensive land use plans and zoning. The public must be allowed to comment, and the Secretary must hold at least one public meeting for any proposed transfer over 640 acres. In Alaska, the Secretary can mark lands for this kind of transfer; those lands stay set aside from other public-land laws unless the Secretary changes that decision, and if no application is filed within 18 months the lands return to general public-land availability. Yearly limits apply to how much land may be transferred. For recreation, a State or its designated park agency or a city/county may receive 6,400 acres (plus small roadside parks and rest sites up to 10 acres each), a nonprofit may receive 640 acres, and a federally recognized Indian Tribe may receive 6,400 acres. No more than 25,600 acres for recreation may be transferred in any one State in a calendar year. If a State does not use its 6,400 acres in a year, unused acreage can only be transferred later if an application was on file by the last day of that year and the total would not have exceeded the yearly limits. For other public purposes, the limit is 640 acres per year for a State program, a political subdivision, a nonprofit, or a federally recognized Indian Tribe. The Secretary may only transfer lands that have been set aside for another federal or local agency with that agency’s consent. These rules do not apply to national forests, parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, Indian lands held for Indians, or certain Oregon grant lands, and they cannot be used to authorize a use already allowed under another law.
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Public Lands — Source: USLM XML via OLRC
Legislative History
Reference
Citation
43 U.S.C. § 869
Title 43 — Public Lands
Last Updated
Apr 6, 2026
Release point: 119-73