The Interior history

1824: Secretary of War John C. Calhoun establishes the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of War.5 The agency is also called the Indian Office.

However, in the months following the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the proposal reasserted itself as the federal government and its responsibilities expanded enormously.

An Act to establish the Home Department, and to provide for the Treasury Department an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (March 3, 1849)The United States Statutes at Large, United States Federal Government , (1849), 395, Congressional Globe (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw)

1850: The first federal railroad land grant is for a line from Chicago, Illinois to Mobile, Alabama.10

The Republican Party adopts homesteading in its 1860 election platform, and passage is made possible by the secession of Southern states from the union.

1862: The Morrill Act provides grants of federal land to the states.

1869 Interior began its geological survey of the western Territories with the Hayden expedition.

1872 Congress establishes Yellowstone as the first National Park.

1875: Interior Secretary, Columbus Delano, resigns from office in the face of various corruption scandals.

1879: The United States Geological Survey is created within Interior to research and map the nation's lands, thus consolidating activities that had taken place within both Interior and the War Department.

The Indian Reorganization Act abolishes the allotment system established in 1887, forms tribal governments, and affirms the Secretary's trust responsibilities.

1891: The Forest Reserve Act allows presidents to set aside protected forest areas on federal lands.

1902 The Bureau of Reclamation is established to construct dams and aqueducts in the west.

1903 President Theodore Roosevelt establishes the first National Wildlife Refuge at Pelican Island, Florida.

1910 The Bureau of Mines is created to promote mine safety and minerals technology.

1920 The Mineral Leasing Act establishes the government's right to rental payments and royalties on oil, gas, and minerals production.

1922: News of the Teapot Dome bribery scandal breaks.

1925 The Patent Office is transferred to the Department of Commerce.

1930: The blue ribbon Garfield Commission supports President Herbert Hoover's call to transfer ownership of millions of acres of western lands to the states.

1935 The Bureau of Reclamation completes construction of Hoover Dam.

1940 The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is created from the Bureau of Fisheries and the Bureau of Biological Survey.

1946 Interior's General Land Office and Grazing Service are merged into the Bureau of Land Management.

1968: Congress authorizes the massive Central Arizona Project to channel water with huge pumps and aqueducts from the Colorado River to Phoenix, Tucson, and surrounding areas.

1973: Congress passes the Endangered Species Act, which expands federal power over private lands.

1976: The Bureau of Reclamation's Teton Dam in Idaho collapses a year after it was built.

1977 The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act is established to oversee state regulation of strip coal mining and repair of environmental damage.

1980 The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act is enacted adding 47 million acres to the National Park System and 54 acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System.

1982 The Minerals Management Service (now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement) is established to facilitate mineral revenue collection and manage the Outer Continental Shelf offshore lands.

9 James Muhn and Hanson R. Stuart, Opportunity and Challenge: The Story of BLM (Washington: Department of the Interior, September 1988), Chapter 1, www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/history.

16 Robert M. Utley and Barry Mackintosh, "Department of Everything Else: Highlights of Interior History," Department of the Interior, 1989, www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/utley-mackintosh.

1993 The President convened the Northwest Forest Plan Summit and released the "Forest Plan for a Sustainable Economy and Sustainable Environment."

20 For a discussion of shortcomings in federal land management, see Robert H. Nelson, Public Lands and Private Rights (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995).

24 Leslie E. Bennett, "One Lesson From History: Appointment of the Special Counsel and the Investigation of the Teapot Dome Scandal," Brookings Institution, 1999, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/teapotdome.htm.

2001 Gale A. Norton is nominated the first woman to serve as Secretary of the Interior.

Available online at: 〈http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/utley-mackintosh/interiora.htm〉 (accessed March 17, 2006).

And see Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, "Investigative Report of Gregory W. Smith," August 7, 2008.

2010 Secretary Ken Salazar signs order 3302, renaming the Minerals Management Service as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement.

2011 The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement is replaced by the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and Office of Natural Resources Revenue.