Federal land ownership by state
Congressional Research Service compilation of federal land acreage by state and administering agency, drawn from each agency's own land records, plus each state's total acreage from the GSA Federal Real Property Profile.
Figures
| Measure | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Federal land share2018 | 61.9% | 2018 |
| Total land area2004 | 52.93 million acres | 2004 |
Pages built on this dataset
Publisher
- Organization
- Congressional Research Service
- Publisher’s dataset
- Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data, Report R42346
- File or API used
- https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R42346/R42346.18.pdf
- Methodology
- https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42346
Coverage
- Geography
- Nation and states (50 states plus the District of Columbia)
- Time coverage
- 2004, 2018
- Update frequency
- Irregular; CRS reissues this report every few years
- Published
- February 21, 2020
- Retrieved
- September 9, 2026
- License of the records
- U.S. federal government work; CRS products are in the public domain.
- Rows
- 364 observations, 2004-2018
Measures
| Measure | What it measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Federal land | Land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, or Department of Defense, as of September 30, 2018 (September 30, 2017 for the Department of Defense). | acres |
| Federal land share | Federal acreage administered by the five agencies CRS tabulates, as a percent of the state's total land area, as of September 30, 2018. | percent |
| Total land area | Total land area of the state, from the GSA Federal Real Property Profile as of September 30, 2004, the denominator CRS uses for the federal land share. | acres |
Caveats
- Total state acreage is the 2004 GSA Federal Real Property Profile figure, fourteen years before the 2018 federal acreage it is paired with to compute the land share.
- Federal acreage covers only the five agencies CRS tabulates (Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Department of Defense); other agencies' federal land is excluded.
- Covers the 50 states and the District of Columbia only; U.S. territories, overseas land, and submerged Outer Continental Shelf lands are excluded.
- This is CRS report R42346's newest edition, version 18 (February 21, 2020); no later edition has been issued.
How to cite
Understand Idaho, “Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data, Report R42346”, compiled from Congressional Research Service, Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data, Report R42346. Retrieved September 9, 2026. https://understandidaho.com/data/crs-federal-land/.
Cite Congressional Research Service directly for the figures themselves.
This page was last updated .