46
Opinion of the Court
exist beneath both submerged lands and uplands. Section 11(b) of the Alaska Statehood Act, which noted that the United States owned the Reserve and which included a statement of exclusive legislative jurisdiction under the Enclave Clause, reflects Congress' intent to ratify the inclusion of submerged lands within the Reserve and to defeat the State's title to those lands.
V
The United States excepts to the Master's conclusion that submerged lands within a federal reservation in northeastern Alaska, now known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, passed to Alaska upon its admission to the Union in 1959. In November 1957, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife submitted an application to the Secretary of the Interior for withdrawal of 8.9 million acres of land "to establish an Arctic Wildlife Range within all or such portion of the described lands as may be finally determined to be necessary for the preservation of the wildlife and wilderness resources of that region of northeastern Alaska." Alaska Exh. 81 (Application for Withdrawal by Public Land Order, p. 1). This application was still pending in July 1958, when Congress passed the Alaska Statehood Act, and in January 1959, when Alaska was formally admitted to the Union. On December 6, 1960, the Secretary of the Interior issued Public Land Order 2214, which "reserved" the area "for use of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as the Arctic National Wildlife Range." 25 Fed. Reg. 12598. In 1980, Congress expanded the Range to include an additional 9.2 million acres and renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Pub. L. 96-487, § 303(2)(A), 94 Stat. 2390.
Before the Master, the parties disputed whether the 1957 Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife application for withdrawal and creation of the Range—filed before but granted after Alaska's admission to the Union—could prevent title to submerged lands within the Range from passing to Alaska at
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