30 U.S.C. § 121
Section 121 · Agricultural entry or purchase of lands withdrawn or classified as containing phosphate, nitrate, potash, oil, or gas; reservations to United States; application
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case United States v. Union Pacific Railroad (1957)
Most recently applied in 885 F. Supp. 2d 1082 - Entek GRB, LLC v. Stull Ranches, LLC (August 2012)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Lands withdrawn or classified as phosphate, nitrate, potash, oil, gas, or asphaltic minerals, or which are valuable for those deposits, shall be subject to appropriation, location, selection, entry, or purchase, if otherwise available, under the nonmineral land laws of the United States, whenever such location, selection, entry, or purchase shall be made with a view of obtaining or passing title with a reservation to the United States of the deposits on account of which the lands were withdrawn or classified or reported as valuable, together with the right to prospect for, mine, and remove the same. All applications to locate, select, enter, or purchase under this section shall state that the same are made in accordance with and subject to the provisions and reservations of sections 121 to 123 of this title.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
1955—Act June 16, 1955, removed 160-acre limitation on desert entry.
Additional Desert-Land Entry
Increase of limitation with respect to desert entries to 320 acres, see note set out under section 83 of this title.