Exploring the First Federal Register

[This post was written by OFR Intern Lissa Snyders]

The first document ever printed in the Federal Register was an Executive Order titled Enlarging Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge. In 1936, a banker from New York, Gayer Dominick, donated Bulls Island to the U.S. government. The Department of Agriculture conducted a land survey to determine the exact boundaries of the island. This Executive Order officially added Bulls Island to the Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge in South Carolina and the majority of the document lists the coordinates of the boundaries around the island.

After a series of reorganizations, the Department of Agriculture no longer manages wildlife reserves; it is now the responsibility of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The area has also been renamed the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge.

The text of the document is written in a formal style that may be difficult to read. (Thanks to the Plain Language Act, you won’t see the word “thence” used in a regulation today!) Despite the technical language, we can learn more about this document by examining its header and footer.

From the header, we learn the following:

1. This document was published in the first volume (Volume I) of the Federal Register. A volume includes all the documents published for an entire calendar year. Volume 1 covers all of 1936. This year (2015) is Volume 80.

2. It was published in the first issue (Number 1) of the Federal Register. Each daily issue is given a number but the page numbers are continuous throughout the year. For example, Federal Register Volume 1, Number 1 contains pages 1-16. Volume 1, Number 2 contains pages 16-29.

3. It was published on Saturday, March 14, 1936. The original publication scheduled for the Federal Register was Tuesday through Saturday. In 1973, this was changed to a Monday through Friday publication schedule. The Federal Register is published every federal business day (excluding federal holidays) and has never missed a publication deadline since it began in 1936.

4. The department that issued the document is the President of the United States. Today this is called the Executive Office of the President.

5. The kind of document is an Executive Order. The Federal Register also publishes other Presidential Documents like Proclamations and Administrative Orders. Also published in the Federal Register are Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices. Proposed Rules were not originally part of the rulemaking process, however. In 1946 the Administrative Procedure Act was passed, which requires agencies to publish Proposed Rules and give the public an opportunity to comment on it prior to publishing the Final Rule.

6. The title of the document is Enlarging Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge.

7. The relevant location is South Carolina.

The footer gives us even more clues about this document:

8. The Executive Order was issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

9. He signed the Executive Order on March 13, 1936. It was not published in the Federal Register until the following day. There is often a delay of several days between when a President issues the order and when it gets published to allow our office to receive the document and format it for publishing.

10. This is Executive Order 7316. Each Executive Order is numbered continuously throughout time. You can find Executive Orders from 1994 through today on our website.

11. Although this was the first document to appear in the Federal Register, “F.R. Doc. 4” tells us it was actually the fourth document submitted to the Office of the Federal Register. It was filed on March 13, 1936 at 12:47 pm.

By examining the footers of the subsequent documents in Federal Register Volume 1, Number 1, we can determine which document was the first to be submitted to the Office of the Federal Register.

As seen in the images above, the Federal Trade Commission submitted a document on “Trade Practice Rules for the Vegetable Ivory Button Manufacturing Industry” 1 hour and 51 minutes before President Roosevelt’s Executive Order about Cape Romain. This was the first document ever submitted to the Office of the Federal Register for publication.

Even today, Presidential Documents are always printed first in the Federal Register, followed by Rules, then Proposed Rules, and finally Notices.

You can view the full text of these two documents by clicking on the links below:

• Executive Order 7316: Enlarging Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge
• Trade Practice Rules for the Vegetable Ivory Button Manufacturing Industry

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