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Title 16, ConservationRelease 119-102

§32 Lease of Lands Within Park

Title 16 › CHAPTER 1 — NATIONAL PARKS, MILITARY PARKS, MONUMENTS, AND SEASHORES › SUBCHAPTER V — YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK › § 32

Last updated Aug 21, 2026|Official source

Summary

The Secretary of the Interior can lease small parts of Yellowstone National Park for up to twenty years. He sets the yearly rent. He may rent separate tracts up to twenty acres each, and no one person or company may hold more than ten tracts. The leases are for building and keeping hotels and for protecting stages, animals, and equipment. Leases must not include any geysers or other park curiosities or block public access to them. No lease can cover land within one-eighth of a mile of geysers, Yellowstone Falls, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Yellowstone River, Mammoth Hot Springs, or other curiosities. Leases only give rights to the specific land and time written in them. Renters must follow all laws and park rules, or the lease can be revoked. The Secretary may choose whether or not to lease; it is his decision.

Full Legal Text

Title 16, §32

Conservation, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

The Secretary of the Interior is authorized and empowered to lease for a period not exceeding twenty years, at an annual rental to be determined by him, to any person, corporation, or company he may authorize to transact business in the Yellowstone National Park, separate tracts of land, not exceeding twenty acres each, at such places not to exceed ten in number to any one person, corporation, or company, in said park as the comfort and convenience of visitors may require for the construction and maintenance of substantial hotel buildings and buildings for the protection of stage, stock, and equipment. Such lease or leases shall not include any of the geysers or any objects of curiosity or interest in said park, or exclude the public from free and convenient approach thereto, or include any ground within one-eighth of a mile of any of the geysers of the Yellowstone Falls, the Grand Canyon, or the Yellowstone River, Mammoth Hot Springs, or any object of curiosity in the park; nor shall such lease convey either expressly or by implication any exclusive privilege within the park, except on the premises held thereunder and for the time therein granted. Every lease made for any property of said park shall require the lessee to observe and obey each and every provision in any Act of Congress, every rule, order, or regulation made or which shall hereafter be made and published by the Secretary of the Interior concerning the use, care, management, or government of the park, or any object or property therein under penalty of forfeiture of such lease, and shall be subject to the right of revocation and forfeiture, which shall therein be reserved by the Secretary of the Interior. The provisions of this section are not to be construed as mandatory upon the Secretary of the Interior, but the authority herein given is to be exercised in his sound discretion.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Codification The first paragraph of this section is from act
June 4, 1906, as amended by act Mar. 2, 1907, which changed the authorized term of leasing from ten years to twenty years as set out above. It superseded earlier provisions covering similar matter contained in the first sentence of act Aug. 3, 1894. The second paragraph of the section is from act Aug. 3, 1894, which contained a further proviso that “persons or corporations now holding leases of ground in the park may, upon the surrender thereof, be granted new leases hereunder, and upon the terms and stipulations contained in their present leases, with such modifications, restrictions, and reservations as the Secretary of the Interior may prescribe” which has been omitted as temporary and executed. A further provision that “so much of that portion of the act of March third, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, relating to the Yellowstone Park as conflict with the act, be and the same is hereby, repealed” and the portion of the act
March 3, 1883, referred to in such provision, have been omitted from the Code, the last named portion having been superseded by the Acts cited to text.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

16 U.S.C. § 32

Title 16, Conservation

Last Updated

Aug 21, 2026

Release point: 119-102