Cite as: 521 U. S. 1 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
serve the submerged lands beneath those waters. Alaska Exceptions Brief 62. In support of this proposition, Alaska points primarily to our decisions in Montana, supra, at 554, and Utah Div. of State Lands, 482 U. S., at 202.
In Montana, the United States, as trustee for the Crow Tribe, sought a declaratory judgment that it owned the riverbed of the Big Horn River and had conveyed a beneficial interest in the submerged lands to the Tribe. The river was located inside the boundaries of the Crow Reservation established by treaty in 1868, but the treaty did not expressly refer to the riverbed. 450 U. S., at 548, 554. Applying the "strong presumption against conveyance by the United States" to defeat a State's title, id., at 552, we concluded that the "mere fact that the bed of a navigable water lies within the boundaries described in the treaty does not make the riverbed part of the conveyed land, especially when there is no express reference to the riverbed that might overcome the presumption against its conveyance," id., at 554. Even though creation of an Indian reservation could be an "appropriate public purpose" justifying a conveyance of submerged lands, a conveyance of submerged lands beneath the river would not have been necessary for the Government's purpose, because fishing was not important to the Crow Tribe's way of life. Id., at 556.
In Utah Div. of State Lands, the Court found that the United States had not prevented the bed of Utah Lake from passing to Utah at statehood. The Sundry Appropriations Act of 1888, 25 Stat. 505, authorized the United States Geological Survey to select "sites for reservoirs and other hydraulic works necessary for the storage and utilization of water for irrigation and the prevention of floods and over-flows." Id., at 526. The Survey selected Utah Lake as a reservoir site. 482 U. S., at 199. In 1890, when Congress repealed the 1888 Act, it provided "that reservoir sites heretofore located or selected shall remain segregated and re-
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