The frantic pace of public land sales in the 19th century American West led to the idiomatic expression "land-office business", meaning a thriving or high-volume trade.

Reacting to public concerns about forest conservation, Congress in 1891 authorized the President to withdraw timber lands from disposal.

On July 16, 1946, the GLO was merged with the United States Grazing Service (established in 1934 under the Taylor Grazing Act) to become the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the Interior Department responsible for administering the remaining 264,000,000 acres (1,070,000 km2) of public lands still in federal ownership.

[4] An early commissioner was John McLean, later an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The GCDB data are available for download by the public in GIS shapefile format from the GeoCommunicator Land Survey Information System website.