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Title 16, ConservationRelease 119-102

§519 Agricultural Lands Included in Tracts Acquired; Sale for Homesteads

Title 16 › CHAPTER 2 — NATIONAL FORESTS › SUBCHAPTER I — ESTABLISHMENT AND ADMINISTRATION › § 519

Last updated Aug 21, 2026|Official source

Summary

The Secretary of Agriculture can examine small farmable areas that ended up inside land bought under this law. If the land can be farmed without harming forests or streams and is not needed for public use, he can describe and offer those parcels for sale as homesteads to actual settlers. Each parcel can be no more than 80 acres and must be sold at a price the Secretary sets, under rules he makes. When a parcel is sold, control of that land goes back to the State where it lies. No one can claim any rights to land, water, or resources taken under this law except in the way described here.

Full Legal Text

Title 16, §519

Conservation, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

Inasmuch as small areas of land chiefly valuable for agriculture may of necessity or by inadvertence be included in tracts acquired under this Act, the Secretary of Agriculture may, in his discretion, and he is authorized, upon application or otherwise, to examine and ascertain the location and extent of such areas as in his opinion may be occupied for agricultural purposes without injury to the forests or to stream flow and which are not needed for public purposes, and may list and describe the same by metes and bounds, or otherwise, and offer them for sale as homesteads at their true value, to be fixed by him, to actual settlers, in tracts not exceeding eighty acres, in area, under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe; and in case of such sale the jurisdiction over the lands sold shall, ipso facto, revert to the State in which the lands sold lie. And no right, title, interest, or claim in or to any lands acquired under this Act, or the waters thereon, or the products, resources, or use thereof after such lands shall have been so acquired, shall be initiated or perfected, except as in this section provided.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

References in Text

This Act, referred to in text, means act Mar. 1, 1911, ch. 186, 36 Stat. 961, popularly known as the Weeks Law, which enacted this section, former section 513 and 514 of this title, and sections 515 to 518, 521, 552, and 563 of this title and amended section 480 and 500 of this title. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see

Short Title

note set out under section 552 of this title and Tables. Codification “Such

Rules and Regulations

as he may prescribe” was substituted for “such joint

Rules and Regulations

as the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior may prescribe” in view of the

Transfer of Functions

under this section to the Secretary of Agriculture from the Secretary of the Interior by section 1(k) of Pub. L. 86–509, set out as a note under section 2201 of Title 7, Agriculture.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

16 U.S.C. § 519

Title 16, Conservation

Last Updated

Aug 21, 2026

Release point: 119-102