Opinion of the Court neath the territorial sea would be relevant only if the United States failed to satisfy the more stringent test. Report 394. Neither the Submerged Lands Act itself nor our case law supports the United States' approach. The Submerged Lands Act grants States submerged lands beneath a 3-mile belt of the territorial sea. The statute is a grant of federal property, and the scope of that grant must be construed strictly in the United States' favor. But that principle does not permit us to ignore the statute's terms, which provide that a State receives title to submerged lands beneath the territorial sea unless the United States "expressly retain[s]" them. 43 U.S. C. § 1313(a) (emphasis added). We cannot resolve "doubts" about whether the United States has withheld state title to submerged lands beneath the territorial sea in the United States' favor, for doing so would require us to find an "express" retention of submerged lands where none exists. The Submerged Lands Act does not call into question cases holding that the United States has paramount sovereign authority over submerged lands beneath the territorial sea. See California I, 332 U. S., at 35-36; United States v. Louisiana, 339 U. S. 699, 704 (1950); United States v. Texas, 339 U. S. 707, 719 (1950). But Congress has chosen to exercise that authority by presumptively granting those lands to the States, unless the United States has "expressly retained" submerged lands. Reinforcing this reading of the Act is the fact that the Act's terms reach lands governed by the equal footing doctrine as well as lands beneath the territorial sea. Under the terms of the statute, equal footing lands, like those beneath the territorial sea, pass to a State unless the United States "expressly retained" them. In passing the Act, Congress would have legislated against the backdrop of our early equal footing cases. See Montana, 450 U. S., at 552, n. 2. There is no indication that, in formulating the "expressly retained" standard, Congress intended to upset settled doctrine and to impose on the Federal Government a more or less demanding Opinion of the Court standard than the one reflected in those cases, see, e. g., Holt State Bank, supra, at 55 (holding that intent to defeat state title to submerged lands must be "definitely declared or otherwise made very plain"), and carried forward in Montana and Utah Div. of State Lands. Whether title to submerged lands rests with a State, of course, is ultimately a matter of federal intent. In construing a single federal instrument creating a reserve, we see no reason to apply the phrase "expressly retained" differently depending upon whether the lands in question would pass to a State by virtue of a statutory grant or by virtue of the equal footing doctrine, as confirmed by statute. Applying Montana and Utah Div. of State Lands, then, we must ask whether the United States intended to include submerged lands within the Reserve and to defeat Alaska's title to those lands. B President Harding created the National Petroleum Reserve by Executive Order in 1923. The order described a boundary following the Arctic "coast line," measured along "the ocean side of the sandspits and islands forming the barrier reefs and extending across small lagoons from point to point, where such barrier reefs are not over three miles off shore." Exec. Order No. 3797-A, in Presidential Executive Orders (1980) (microform, reel 6). Because the boundary follows the ocean side of the islands, the Reserve necessarily includes tidelands landward of the islands. The Reserve also contains coastal features, including "small lagoons" (to which the Order explicitly refers) and the mouths of rivers and bays (which the Master concluded were within the Reserve's boundary). Report 381. Alaska argues that the fact that the United States included certain water areas within the exterior boundaries of the Reserve does not necessarily mean that the United States clearly intended to re Opinion of the Court serve the submerged lands beneath those waters. Alaska Exceptions Brief 62. In support of this proposition, Alaska points primarily to our decisions in Montana, supra, at 554, and Utah Div. of State Lands, 482 U. S., at 202. In Montana, the United States, as trustee for the Crow Tribe, sought a declaratory judgment that it owned the riverbed of the Big Horn River and had conveyed a beneficial interest in the submerged lands to the Tribe. The river was located inside the boundaries of the Crow Reservation established by treaty in 1868, but the treaty did not expressly refer to the riverbed. 450 U. S., at 548, 554. Applying the "strong presumption against conveyance by the United States" to defeat a State's title, id., at 552, we concluded that the "mere fact that the bed of a navigable water lies within the boundaries described in the treaty does not make the riverbed part of the conveyed land, especially when there is no express reference to the riverbed that might overcome the presumption against its conveyance," id., at 554. Even though creation of an Indian reservation could be an "appropriate public purpose" justifying a conveyance of submerged lands, a conveyance of submerged lands beneath the river would not have been necessary for the Government's purpose, because fishing was not important to the Crow Tribe's way of life. Id., at 556. In Utah Div. of State Lands, the Court found that the United States had not prevented the bed of Utah Lake from passing to Utah at statehood. The Sundry Appropriations Act of 1888, 25 Stat. 505, authorized the United States Geological Survey to select "sites for reservoirs and other hydraulic works necessary for the storage and utilization of water for irrigation and the prevention of floods and overflows." Id., at 526. The Survey selected Utah Lake as a reservoir site. 482 U. S., at 199. In 1890, when Congress repealed the 1888 Act, it provided "that reservoir sites heretofore located or selected shall remain segregated and re Opinion of the Court served from entry or settlement as provided by [the 1888 Act]." Sundry Appropriations Act of 1890, 26 Stat. 391. In concluding that the 1888 Act did not reflect a clear intent to include submerged lands within lands reserved for reservoir sites, the Court focused in part on the fact that the Act was motivated by concerns that settlers would claim lands suitable for reservoir sites or other reclamation efforts. 482 U. S., at 198, 203. These concerns of "monopolization and speculation" "had nothing to do with the beds of navigable rivers and lakes." Id., at 203. Moreover, the Government's ability to control and develop navigable waters would not be impaired if the land beneath the navigable waters passed to the State. Id., at 202; see also Arizona v. California, 373 U. S. 546, 597-598 (1963); Arizona v. California, 283 U.S. 423, 451-452, 457 (1931). We also considered whether certain references to the bed of Utah Lake in reports by the Geological Survey, coupled with the 1890 Act's requirement that selected sites remain segregated, accomplished a reservation of the lake bed. We concluded that the references to the lake bed in the Survey documents, when placed in proper context, did not indicate that the bed was included within the reservation. Utah Div. of State Lands, supra, at 206. Finally, we held that even if the 1888 or 1890 Acts reflected a clear intent to include submerged lands within a reservation, there was no evidence that the United States intended to defeat future States' entitlement to any land reserved. Again, our analysis focused on the fact that the transfer of title to the lake bed would not prevent the Government from developing a reservoir or water reclamation project at the lake. Id., at 208. Montana and Utah Div. of State Lands establish that the fact that navigable waters are within the boundaries of a conveyance or reservation does not in itself mean that submerged lands beneath those waters were conveyed or reserved. But Alaska's reliance on these cases is misplaced for two reasons. First, the Executive Order of 1923 does Opinion of the Court not merely define a boundary that encloses a body of navigable water. Rather, in describing a boundary following the ocean side of offshore islands and reefs, the Order created a Reserve that necessarily embraced certain submerged lands-specifically, tidelands shoreward of the barrier islands.1 Second, Montana and Utah Div. of State Lands establish that the purpose of a conveyance or reservation is a critical factor in determining federal intent. See also Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States, 248 U. S. 78, 87-89 (1918) (reservation of "body of lands" in southeastern Alaska for Metlakahtla Indians included adjacent waters and submerged lands, because fishing was necessary for Indians' subsistence). The Executive Order of 1923 sought to retain federal ownership of land containing oil deposits. The Order recited that "there are large seepages of petroleum along the Arctic Coast of Alaska and conditions favorable to the occurrence of valuable petroleum fields on the Arctic Coast," and described the goal of securing a supply of oil for the Navy as "at all times a matter of national concern." Petroleum resources exist in subsurface formations necessarily extending beneath submerged lands and uplands. The purpose of reserving in federal ownership all oil and gas deposits within the Reserve's boundaries would have been undermined if those deposits underlying lagoons and other tidally influenced waters had been excluded. It is simply 1 In light of the fact that the Order necessarily encompasses tidelands, the partial dissent's conclusion that the United States owns no submerged lands within the Reserve is puzzling. The dissent suggests that the United States retains submerged lands only if the relevant instrument "in terms embraces the land under the waters."" Post, at 66 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (quoting Packer v. Bird, 137 U. S. 661, 672 (1891)). By its terms, the Executive Order of 1923 certainly embraces all tidelands landward of the barrier islands. Accordingly, even if the dissent were correct that a federal intent to retain submerged lands can never be inferred, no inference is required for the conclusion that, at the very least, the United States retained the tidelands within the Reserve. |