"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres (1,001,000 km2) of public lands in the United States which constitutes one-eighth of the landmass of the country.[2] President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies: the General Land Office and the Grazing Service.[3] The agency manages the federal government's nearly 700 million acres (2,800,000 km2) of subsurface mineral estate located beneath federal, state and private lands severed from their surface rights by the Homestead Act of 1862.[3] Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.[4]"
A lot of this land is in Oregon. My son Jeff knows this because he had to get permits to have his bicycle tours go through BLM territory. We saw a lot of this land today as we rode the route for Day 2 of Via Cycling Tours Oregon Coast and Crater Lake tour. The ride started in Cottage Grove and ended in Reedsport. We cut out the first 40 miles of this 90 mile ride by shuttling to the top of the last steep hill.
As you can see in the photo above, the route was bordered by a dense forest. One side of the road was BLM land while the other side was National Forest land. The road itself was maintained by the county. It was smooth to rough chip seal.
We followed the Smith River for almost the entire ride. The weather was sunny and the temperature was in the 70s and low 80s. As you can see from the photo below, Smokey had us on alert for fire danger. Until we reached the outskirts of Reedsport, we had about 20 cars passing us in each direction.
Posted with Blogsy
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