Federal Facilities: Further Review of Hawthorne Army Depot Land Management Proposals Needed

This report responds to your request regarding federal land near Hawthorne, Nevada, that was set aside for exclusive use by the Department of Defense as an ammunition depot. Lands set aside in this manner are referred to as withdrawn, indicating the lands are withheld from public use and activities within them are limited by restrictions on settlement, sale, or entry. Four executive orders signed between October 1926 and February 1935 withdrew about 173,000 acres from the General Land Office, the predecessor office of the Bureau of Land Management, to be used for depot purposes. Today, the withdrawn land totals about 113,000 acres because about 60,000 acres has been returned to the Bureau and to Mineral County, Nevada, where the land is located. The withdrawn land in question has been under Army control since 1977 and includes the Hawthorne Army Depot. At the depot, the Army receives, renovates, stores, and ships usable conventional ammunition such as bombs and land mines, and it removes the explosives from and disposes of unserviceable, obsolete, and surplus ammunition.