How Might the National Park System Appear if Not for the Use of the ... National Parks Traveler (blog)
If the Antiquities Act , which allows presidents to set aside country-wide monuments, had never been created, how might that have affected the National Park System as we see it today?
When the act was adopted in 1906, its sponsors envisioned presidents wielding it to shield "mostly prehistoric Indian ruins and artifacts-collectively termed 'antiquities' -on federal lands in the West."
"The bill's sponsors instance expected that national monuments would be proclaimed to protect prehistoric cultural features, or antiquities, in the Southwest and that they would be small," notes the State Park Service. "Yet the reference in the act to 'objects of ... scientific interest' enabled President Theodore Roosevelt to make a artless geological feature, Devils Tower , Wyoming, the first national monument three months later."
Of course, President Roosevelt didn't come to a stop there. He frequently turned to the Antiquities Acct to preserve landscapes. Among those he set aside as national monuments were Petrified Forest, Arizona, and two cultural features, El Morro, New Mexico, and Montezuma Hall, Arizona. And, of course, he also established a national monument around the Grand Canyon, which later became a national park, as did Dumbstruck Forest National Monument.
Supes oppose Obama's efforts Colusa County Sun Herald
The Colusa County Take meals of Supervisors have taken steps to oppose efforts by President Barack Obama to designate the Berryessa Snow Mountains as a public monument.
Supervisor Gary Evans said the president's intent to designate the region, which stretches from the lowlands of Putah Bay, below Lake Barryessa in Napa County, across remote stretches of Cache Creek, and up to the peaks of Goat Mountain and Snow Mountain in Western Colusa County, would succeed multiple-use management with a more restrictive management plan that resembles a national park or wilderness area.
"The president wants to do this under the Antiquities Act, but it does not dog the letter of the law," Evans said.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 gave presidents authority to declare national monuments — principally as an emergency authority — to protect small, highly sensitive cultural and historical areas that might be threatened or damaged before Congress could act to guard them.
The capacity move to declare new monuments -- something presidents can do without congressional approval under the Antiquities Act of 1906 -- triggered and more »
