The Arizona State Land Department has set a Dec. 22 auction for about 4,754 acres of state trust land east of San Tan Valley, and land department records describe the buyer's intended use as a defense project that has picked up a code name: Project Paperclip.
The department's list of upcoming auctions shows a land sale of 4,753.757 acres in Pinal County at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 22, with a minimum bid of $46.5 million. The listing, under land department file number 53-127105, covers parts of 11 sections in townships 2 South and 3 South.
What is known about the plan
Records filed with the land department show the acreage being sought for a large defense project dubbed Project Paperclip, the Phoenix Business Journal reported in a story ABC15 republished Friday.
Real Estate Daily News, citing the Business Journal, reported that an April 9 land department letter lists Rose Law Group as applicant and says the proposed use is building and testing hypersonic missiles on a large scale. No company has said publicly that it is behind the project.
The site has a history. Last year, California-based Castelion, a hypersonic missile startup founded by former SpaceX employees, looked at roughly 1,000 acres of state land in the same part of Pinal County for a testing facility before choosing New Mexico, according to the Business Journal.
County supervisors had readied that land in October 2025 for what was then called Project Ranger, which is also the name of Castelion's New Mexico project.
