The U.S. Department of the Interior was founded by an Act of Congress on March 3, 1849. A wide variety of functions were assigned to the "Home Department" as it was called at the time, including administration of the General Land Office which passed large tracts of western lands to homesteaders (294 million acres/119 million ha), to railroads (94 million acres/38 million ha), and to colleges and universities. In the twentieth-first century, the Department of the Interior has become the custodian of public lands and natural resources, and is now America's primary governmental conservation agency. The National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Geological Survey, Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement, and Bureau of Mines are part of the Department. In addition the Department is responsible for American Indian reservation communities and for...