Cite as: 526 U. S. 865 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
of the coal content of each individual land tract, the Department of the Interior in classifying public lands had relied for the most part on the affidavits of entrymen. Watt v. Western Nuclear, Inc., 462 U. S. 36, 48, and n. 9 (1983). Railroads and other coal interests had exploited the system to avoid paying for coal lands and to evade acreage restrictions by convincing individuals to falsify affidavits, acquire lands for homesteading, and then turn the land over to them. C. Mayer & G. Riley, Public Domain, Private Dominion 117- 118 (1985).
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt responded to the perceived crisis by withdrawing 64 million acres of public land thought to contain coal from disposition under the public land laws. Western Nuclear, 462 U. S., at 48-49. As a result, even homesteaders who had entered and worked the land in good faith lost the opportunity to make it their own unless they could prove to the land office that the land was not valuable for coal.
President Roosevelt's order outraged homesteaders and western interests, and Congress struggled for the next three years to construct a compromise that would reconcile the competing interests of protecting settlers and managing federal coal lands for the public good. President Roosevelt and others urged Congress to begin issuing limited patents that would sever the surface and mineral estates and allow for separate disposal of each. See id., at 49 (quoting Special Message to Congress, Jan. 22, 1909, 15 Messages and Papers of the Presidents 7266). Although various bills were introduced in Congress that would have severed the estates— some of which would have reserved "natural gas" as well as "coal" to the United States—none was enacted. See 41 Cong. Rec. 630 (1907) (bill by Rep. Volstead "reserving coal, lignite, petroleum, and natural-gas deposits from disposal . . . under existing land laws"); id., at 1483-1484 (bill by Sen. La Follette providing for the sale of surface lands, but "reserving from entry and sale the mineral rights to coal and other
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