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Show 92 Bureau would find her a summer job each year u n t i l she graduated. Then, after she received her degree in Range Management, she would be guaranteed a permanent job with the BLM. Like most other Americans, Jan wasn't too sure just what the Bureau of Land Management did. Yet she vias f l a t t e r e d that they vianted her, and she was anxious to be hired by an agency vihere she could learn more about her future profession while earning money during the summers. The Bureau of Land Management is one of the newer federal agencies, established in 1946 as a custodian of public lands. These lands, one fifth of the n a t i o n ' s t o t a l acreage, are vihat vias l e f t over a f t e r private individuals, corporations, s t a t e and l o c a l governments and other federal agencies claimed the more d e s i r a b l e parts of the country. BLM t e r r i t o ry is sometimes called "the land nobody vianted." The 17k million acres in eleven viestern s t a t e s and an additional 224 million acres in Alaska are the " l e f t o v e r s " - too cold and barren, or too dry for farming, or too rugged for s e t t l i n g , and hard to get to because the few roads vihich reach them are often impassable in viinter. In pioneer times s c a t t e r e d ranchers grazed c a t t l e and sheep on them, and miners searched for gold or s i l v e r , but for the most part they were bypassed. They have always belonged to the federal government, acquired by the Louisiana Purchase, Indian t r e a t i e s , and the War with Mexico. As described in a Department of I n t e r i o r publication, "BLM lands s t r e t ch from the border of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. They include desert and tundra, sagebrush and r a i n f o r e s t s , mountain meadows and dry lakebeds "hose aquatic l i f e l i e s dormant, waiting for r a i n . " And nobody vianted them. Until recently. |