Gosar bill would expand Yuma Proving Ground by 22,000 acres

Rep. Paul Gosar’s bill would add about 22,000 acres to Yuma Proving Ground, a move that could strengthen one of Yuma County’s biggest economic engines while pulling more federal land west of Highway 95 into military use. Yuma Proving Ground already stands as the county’s top civilian employer, with more than 2,000 civilian personnel, and its testing range covers more than 838,000 acres, or about 1,300 square miles.

Gosar introduced H.R. 8686 in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 7, 2026. The measure is titled “To amend the Military Land Withdrawals Act of 2013 to withdraw and reserve certain public land in the vicinity of Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona,” and Gosar’s office said it would authorize the withdrawal and reservation of federal land in Yuma and La Paz counties to support the proving ground’s national-security mission.

The Army’s final environmental review said the proposed withdrawal would lie west of Highway 95, stretching from the highway to the current YPG boundary. That would add acreage to the existing installation and move more public land under military reservation, a change that carries obvious tradeoffs for neighboring land users, recreation, and land management in the desert corridor north and west of Yuma. The Army said the expansion would help accommodate current and emerging testing requirements, enhance mission readiness, and reduce potential public-safety concerns.

The proposal has been under federal review for years. The Army published a Draft Legislative Environmental Impact Statement on March 1, 2024, held two virtual public meetings during the review period, and then published the Final Legislative Environmental Impact Statement in the Federal Register on July 31, 2025. A related Army notice said the withdrawal would affect about 22,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land.

Yuma Proving Ground’s role in the region runs deep. The Army says the military presence in Yuma dates to 1850 with Fort Yuma, while the proving ground itself dates to the 1940s and marked its 80th anniversary in May 2023. If Congress advances Gosar’s bill, the result would be more land for testing, more certainty for the installation’s future, and a larger military footprint in a county where the proving ground already sits among the most significant employers and institutions.