The Bureau of Livestock and Motorcycles: Measuring Leisure in the Bureau of Land Management’s Off-Road Era

This article examines the rise of off-road motorcycling in California and argues that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) became, in effect, the “Bureau of Livestock and Motorcycles” in the late 1960s. As the activity gained popularity in the early 1960s, motorcyclists were banned from popular US Forest and Park Service lands and pushed onto the marginal rangelands and deserts of the BLM. The BLM was, in turn, forced to contend with motorcyclists as recreational users. BLM records of the time, including the earliest scientific surveys of motorcycling impact, show that the agency understood motorcycles through the lens of grazing. In short, the BLM treated motorcyclists as cowboys and motorcycles as cattle. When the BLM realized that they had to manage not only land but also people, they also forged new relationships between work and leisure on public lands.