Marjorie Merriweather Post deeded Mar-a-Lago to the nation, and Congress handed it back in a Lake Tahoe land bill

Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir to the C. W. Post cereal fortune, built Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach from 1924 to 1927 with her husband E. F. Hutton. Wikipedia puts the cost at $7 million^†. She wanted it used by presidents and foreign guests. The Interior Department designated it a National Historic Site on 16 January 1969. Congress passed an act to run it on 21 October 1972, and Post signed the deed to the United States on 18 December 1972. She died on 12 September 1973. Presidents did not use it; Nixon preferred Key Biscayne^†. Her Washington house, Hillwood, went the same way: she left it to the Smithsonian with a $10 million endowment, the Smithsonian said the income of about $450,000 a year was too small, and the house went back to her foundation by April 1976. For Mar-a-Lago, Congress put the return into Section 4 of Public Law 96-586, an act about federal land in Nevada and the Lake Tahoe Basin, signed on 23 December 1980. It repealed the 1972 act, cancelled the historic site, made Mar-a-Lago a National Historic Landmark, and ordered Interior to transfer it to the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation within 120 days and return unspent donated funds. The foundation asked $20 million. In 1985 Donald Trump bought the house for about $7 million and a beach strip for $2 million^†. In 2026 it is his residence and a private club.