The Secretary of the Interior is authorized and empowered to lease for a period not exceeding twenty years, at an annual rental to be determined by him, to any person, corporation, or company he may authorize to transact business in the Yellowstone National Park, separate tracts of land, not exceeding twenty acres each, at such places not to exceed ten in number to any one person, corporation, or company, in said park as the comfort and convenience of visitors may require for the construction and maintenance of substantial hotel buildings and buildings for the protection of stage, stock, and equipment.
Such lease or leases shall not include any of the geysers or any objects of curiosity or interest in said park, or exclude the public from free and convenient approach thereto, or include any ground within one-eighth of a mile of any of the geysers of the Yellowstone Falls, the Grand Canyon, or the Yellowstone River, Mammoth Hot Springs, or any object of curiosity in the park; nor shall such lease convey either expressly or by implication any exclusive privilege within the park, except on the premises held thereunder and for the time therein granted. Every lease made for any property of said park shall require the lessee to observe and obey each and every provision in any Act of Congress, every rule, order, or regulation made or which shall hereafter be made and published by the Secretary of the Interior concerning the use, care, management, or government of the park, or any object or property therein under penalty of forfeiture of such lease, and shall be subject to the right of revocation and forfeiture, which shall therein be reserved by the Secretary of the Interior.
The provisions of this section are not to be construed as mandatory upon the Secretary of the Interior, but the authority herein given is to be exercised in his sound discretion.
(Aug. 3, 1894, ch. 198,
The first paragraph of this section is from act June 4, 1906, as amended by act Mar. 2, 1907, which changed the authorized term of leasing from ten years to twenty years as set out above. It superseded earlier provisions covering similar matter contained in the first sentence of act Aug. 3, 1894.
The second paragraph of the section is from act Aug. 3, 1894, which contained a further proviso that "persons or corporations now holding leases of ground in the park may, upon the surrender thereof, be granted new leases hereunder, and upon the terms and stipulations contained in their present leases, with such modifications, restrictions, and reservations as the Secretary of the Interior may prescribe" which has been omitted as temporary and executed.
A further provision that "so much of that portion of the act of March third, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, relating to the Yellowstone Park as conflict with the act, be and the same is hereby, repealed" and the portion of the act March 3, 1883, referred to in such provision, have been omitted from the Code, the last named portion having been superseded by the Acts cited to text.