36
Opinion of the Court
standard than the one reflected in those cases, see, e. g., Holt State Bank, supra, at 55 (holding that intent to defeat state title to submerged lands must be "definitely declared or otherwise made very plain"), and carried forward in Montana and Utah Div. of State Lands. Whether title to submerged lands rests with a State, of course, is ultimately a matter of federal intent. In construing a single federal instrument creating a reserve, we see no reason to apply the phrase "expressly retained" differently depending upon whether the lands in question would pass to a State by virtue of a statutory grant or by virtue of the equal footing doctrine, as confirmed by statute.
Applying Montana and Utah Div. of State Lands, then, we must ask whether the United States intended to include submerged lands within the Reserve and to defeat Alaska's title to those lands.
B
1
President Harding created the National Petroleum Reserve by Executive Order in 1923. The order described a boundary following the Arctic "coast line," measured along "the ocean side of the sandspits and islands forming the barrier reefs and extending across small lagoons from point to point, where such barrier reefs are not over three miles off shore." Exec. Order No. 3797-A, in Presidential Executive Orders (1980) (microform, reel 6). Because the boundary follows the ocean side of the islands, the Reserve necessarily includes tidelands landward of the islands. The Reserve also contains coastal features, including "small lagoons" (to which the Order explicitly refers) and the mouths of rivers and bays (which the Master concluded were within the Reserve's boundary). Report 381. Alaska argues that the fact that the United States included certain water areas within the exterior boundaries of the Reserve does not necessarily mean that the United States clearly intended to re-
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