The Antiquities Act (1906) and National Monements Hal Rothman The Antiquities Act and National Monuments A Progressive Conservation Legacy T he Antiquities Act of June 8, only that national monuments should "be con- 1906, may be the most impor- fined to the smallest area compatible with the tant piece of preservation legisla- proper care and management of the objects to be tion ever enacted by the United protected." (As noted in the articles by States government. Although its title suggests a McManamon and Browning, p. 19, and limited focus on archeological matters, in practice Mackintosh, p. 41, the act also outlawed unautho- the law became a cornerstone of preservation in rized disturbance or removal of cultural features the federal system. By allowing Presidents extra- on federal lands and set penalties for offenders.) ordinary power to preserve cultural and "scien- The first 10 national monuments, pro- tific" features on public land, it created a mecha- claimed by President Theodore Roosevelt nism for rapid decisionmaking concerning the between September 1906 and January 1908, were disposition of federal lands. The category of park largely compatible with congressional expecta- areas established under its auspices, the national tions. Only Petrified Forest National Monument monuments, became the most diverse and varied in Arizona topped 15,000 acres; most were far collection under federal administration. At times smaller. But after 1907, when Congress curtailed the monument category seemed a storehouse of the President's power under similar legislation to President places with a chance at eventual national park Theodore status, other places with significant attributes but Roosevelt in lacking the spectacular qualities associated with Yellowstone national parks, and a number of curiosities added National Park, 1903. Roosevelt to the park system as a result of political porkbar- signed the reling. Antiquities Act The passage of the Act in 1906 answered an and ran with it. National Park important need in a culture trying to define itself. Service photo. At the beginning of the 20th century, European Americans retained a self-induced cultural inferi- ority from their relatively short history. Natural wonders and prehistoric ruins testified to a longer American past and afforded a heritage that could be compared to that of Europe with its ancient castles and temples. Amid this cultural national- ism and the contemporary pillaging of archeolog- ical remains in the Southwest, it became vital to protect such features from depredation and exploitation. Hence the Antiquities Act. No piece of legislation invested more power in the presidency than the Antiquities Act. Its vaguely defined scope, encompassing "objects of historic or scientific interest," made it an unparal- leled tool. Its congressional advocates anticipated that it would not be used to reserve more than 160-acre quarter-sections surrounding archeolog- ical remains on public lands, but the act stated 16 CRM No 4-1999 later act to incorporate both of these large national monuments in even larger national parks, a pattern that followed with many other monuments over the years. Roosevelt's expansive, precedent-setting application of a vague law helped make it the most effective conservation tool ever enacted by Congress. National monuments became the cate- gory of choice in numerous situations: when a threat to public land loomed large; when Congress refused to act or opposed a conserva- tion measure; when land clearly would be valu- able to the nation in the future but little reason to reserve it existed in the present. With the Antiquities Act, a President had tremendous dis- cretion. Congress could not hold the chief execu- tive hostage in conservation matters, could not force a compromise on an unwilling President, and could not prevent a President from imple- President Bill proclaim national forests, Roosevelt reacted by menting an agenda on public land (except by Clinton's 1996 more broadly defining the Antiquities Act's lan- withholding funds). proclamation of Grand guage regarding "objects of scientific interest" The Antiquities Act embodied all things Staircase- and the extent of the reservations necessary to Progressive. It centralized power in the hands of a Escalante protect them. responsible few to act in the public interest. It National Monument in On January 11, 1908, Roosevelt proclaimed represented a shared vision of American society- Utah triggered 806,400 acres of the Grand Canyon as a national the name "national monument" clearly reflected a local opposition monument. With a stroke of his pen, he reserved vision of the progressive nation. And it relied on and congres- an area far exceeding the expectations of even the experts to make determinations that had once sional efforts (so far unsuccessful) most avid supporters of the Antiquities Act. been made by laymen. If the law and those who to curtail the Roosevelt responded to the threat that a local enacted and implemented it seemed arrogant, it executive man planned to build a tramway from the rim to was because they reflected the wholehearted con- authority granted by the the bottom of the canyon. The rim was dotted fidence of the time: they knew best and they only Antiquities Act. with mining claims, which served as bases for pri- sought the best for all. Controversial vate tourist development. At the height of the The Antiquities Act became the initial legal national monu- ment proclama- Progressive Era, when many favored public over authority for the majority of park areas estab- tions in private solutions, an icon sacred to turn-of-the- lished before 1933. The monuments proclaimed Wyoming and century Americans faced privatization. Roosevelt, by Presidents under it included large natural Alaska earlier led armed with the Antiquities Act, stood in the way. areas, prehistoric ruins, geologic features, historic Congress to restrict the Act's The Grand Canyon proclamation revealed sites, and other features of general interest. The use in those the breadth of this seemingly innocuous legisla- flexibility built into the law remained an asset: as states. Bureau tion. While national parks had to be established accepted ideas about what constituted important of Land Management by individual acts of Congress, the Antiquities parts of America's cultural and natural heritage photo. Act allowed the President to circumvent the fun- changed, the Antiquities Act remained a mal- damentally languid nature of congressional delib- leable tool to fulfill new objectives. erations and instantaneously achieve results he Even after its application declined in the believed were in the public interest. By taking full 1940s as a result of controversial uses, the advantage of the Act, Roosevelt set important Antiquities Act remained the best way to quickly precedents for his successors. On March 2, 1909, reserve threatened public lands. In 1978, faced two days before leaving office, he gave his con- with the collapse of negotiations seeking to deter- gressional opponents one final twist by reserving mine which Alaskan lands would be included in more than 630,000 acres of the Olympic federal protective systems and a firm deadline Peninsula in Washington State as Mount after which the process would have to begin Olympus National Monument. Congress did again, President Jimmy Carter resorted to the CRM No 4-1999 17 Antiquities Act. He used it to proclaim 15 new Park Service. A few were transferred earlier; national monuments and make substantial addi- Grand Canyon came to Interior in 1919 when it tions to two others. In 1980, Carter signed the became a national park, for example. Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Since 1933 the Interior Department has Act, which converted most of these monuments overseen virtually all national monuments. Today to national parks and preserves. Comprising it has 74 areas bearing this designation: 73 more than 47 million acres, these additions to the administered by the National Park Service, and national park system more than doubled its size. the newest one-Grand Staircase-Escalante in Two of the new Alaska monuments were assigned Utah, proclaimed by President Clinton in to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and were 1996-administered by the Bureau of Land converted to national wildlife refuges. Management. Not all of them resulted from pres- Despite its custody of the public domain, idential proclamations under the Antiquities Act; the Department of the Interior was not initially some were directly established by Congress. But responsible for all national monuments. Some, the designation remains closely associated with including Grand Canyon and Mount Olympus, this powerful conservation tool of the Progressive were proclaimed on lands previously reserved as Era, whose legacy to Interior and the American national forests and assigned to the Department people has been vast. of Agriculture. Others were proclaimed on mili- tary reservations administered by the War Hal Rothman is a professor of history at the University of Department. Most of these monuments Nevada, Las Vegas, and editor of Environmental History. His books include America's National Monuments: The remained under those departments until 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred Politics of Preservation (University Press of Kansas, 1994) and Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth Century them by executive order to Interior's National American West (University Press of Kansas, 1998). Anthropological Connections P laces defined as national patrimony do not stop being local patrimony. In the National Park Service, mounting anthropological evidence demonstrates the connections that persist between present-day peoples and the resources their ancestors used, manufactured, and valued. Although now incorporated into parks and catego- rized as sites, structures, objects and landscapes, these "national" resources are also crucial markers of a people's own ethnic history and identity. Even the meanings local people assign to ostensibly identical resources can reflect diversity. The resources at Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana, for example, offer special opportunities to explore relation- ships between plantation systems and people in different cultural and political niches. Two plantations are included there, one with a complex of farm outbuildings and the worker quarters that were occupied by enslaved black people from about the mid-1800s until abolition, and then by black laborers until the mid-1900s. The other has a "Big House" and the Quarters that black former enslaved laborers and sharecrop- pers occupied. Ethnographic interviewing of the white French- creole heirs of each plantation highlighted their strong sense of ethnic history, culture, lineage, and the pride they invested in the Big Houses and economically viable enterprises. Former laborers and sharecroppers emphasized pride in their hard work in the Quarters at Cane River Creole National Historical Park. Photo by the author. fields or behind the Big Houses and in their kitchens. There was conviction about their own contributions to the plantations' eco- nomic successes. They associated specific families with cabins in the Quarters, and stressed the neighborly coopera- tion and celebrations that enriched their lives and created a community. Thus, systematic ethnographic attention to local groups and differences among them indicates that seemingly identical cultural resources, despite fixed bound- aries and objective measures, are valued in different ways by different traditional users. Indeed, identifying diverse perspectives wherever Native Americans, African Americans, and others are associated with park resources has guided the applied ethnography program since its start in 1981. Muriel "Miki" Crespi Chief Ethnographer, NPS 18 CRM No 4-1999 National Park Service History: History of the National Park Service Page 1 of 2 History Links to the Past Search National Park Service Home National Park Preservine Nature 8333 Service Motions Parks History History of the National Park Service Online Books A History of Mission 66 (pdf) A Public Face for Science: A. Starker Leopold and the Leopold Historical Report (pdf) Themes Antiquities Act and National Monuments (pdf) Birthdays of the National Park Service Brief History of the National Park Service Maritime Brief History of Mapping the National Parks History Chief Historians of the National Park Service Congress Debates Hetch Hetchy Directors of the National Park Service Research Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 and Education Exit Interview with Barry Mackintosh (pdf) Former National Park System Units: An Analysis Glance Back in Time (MWAC History) Oral Historic Listings of National Park Service Officials History History of National Park Service Museums History of the U.S. Department of the Interior Interpreting Women's History in the National Park Service (pdf) List of National Park Administrative History Reports National Forests vs. National Parks, 1914-1925 The National Park Service Act of 1916: A Contradictory Mandate National Parks and Education: The First Twenty Years National Park Service Program of Conservation for Areas and Structures of National Historical Significance National Park System Timeline National Park System Timeline (Annotated) http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/NPShistory.htm 5/3/2004 V Mr. Dorr's address at the Building of rts on August 22, 1916, in celebration of the estsblishment of the Sieur de Monts National Monument. He was presented by President Eliot, who, with others also spoke. Mr. Dorr 1/ Mr. Chairman: My thought turns forward, rather, to the great opportunity that springs from what is now achieved, than back toward the past, save for the memory of those I would were here to be glad with us at this first stage attained. It is an opportunity of singular interest, so to devel op and preserve the wild charm and beauty of a spot thus honored by the Nation that future generations may rejoice in them yet more than we; and so to conserve, and where there is need restore, the wild life whose native haunt it is that all may find delight in it, and men of science a uniquely interesting field for study. "For both purposes we need more land, as anyone may see by studying the Park and Reservation bounds on Dr. Abbe's wonderfully illiminating relief map. We have begun an important work; we have succeeded until the Nation itself has taken cognizance of it and joined with us for its advancement; let us not stop short of its fulfillment in essential points. Adequate approaches to the National Monument, which men and women from the country over will henceforth come to see, should be secured. The areas adjoining it that are fertile in wild life- exceptional forest tracts, wild orchid meadows and natural wild-flower: areas of other type, the pools haunted by W ter-loving birds, and the deep, well-wooded and well-watered valleys that lie between the mountains -- are necessary to include in order to make the Park what it should be, a sanctuary 2. and protecting home for the whole region's plant and animal life, and for the birds that ask its hospitality upon their long migrations. Make it this, and naturalists will seek it from the whole world over, and from it other men will learn similarly to cherish wild life in other places. "The influence of such work, beneficent in every aspect, travels far; and many, beholding it, will go hence as missionaries to extend it. We have a wonderful landscape, to deepen the impression, and, now that the Government has set its seal of high approval on it, wide publicity will be given to all that we accomplish. "By taking the opportunity given us by the richly varied topography of the Island, by its situatio. on the border between land and sea, by the magnificent beginning made, and the Government's co-operation, we can do something now whose influence will be widely felt. And here I wish to say a word which falls in singularly well with the thought of the far-reaching influence this work may have. Charles Eliot, Dr. Eliot's older son, was a landscape architect of rare ability and enthusiasm. Moved by a public spirit that he derived alike from his own nature and the home influences that helped to form him, he initiated in Massachusetts the sustem of Public Reser- vations on which our own was modelled. To him Mount Desert owes that debt of leadership, while he, in turn, might never have been awakened to the value and importance of such work had it not been for the inspiration, the love of nature and the quickened consciousness of beauty, drawn from boyhood summers passed upon it. During the early summer, when I was at Washington working on this matter of the Park's establishment and was plunged for weeks together in its oppresive heat, it struck me what a splendid and useful thing it would be if we could provide down here, in a spot SO full of biologic interest and unsolved biologic problems, so rich in various beauty and locked around by a cool norhhern sea, a summer camp -- some simple summer home -- for men of science orking in the Government Bureaus, in the musuems and universities. They would come down to work, as Henry Chapman and Charles Sedgwick Ninot used to do, on a fresh field of life, bird or plant or animal, and then go back invigorated, ready to do more valuable work the whole winter through in consequence of this climatic boon and stimulating change. 3. /This is one opportunity. Another, which is urgent, is to secure now, while it may be done, tracts of special biologic interest not yet secured, irreplaceable if lost in private ownership or through destruction of their natural conditions, as well as adequate approaches to the National Park, con- venient and scenically worthy of the national possession to which they lead. Bot of these are essentially important at this time. No one who h ad not made the study of it which I have can realize howtruly wonderful the opportunities are which the creation of this Park has opened, alike in wild life ways and splendid scenery. To lose by want of action now what will be SO precious to the future, whether for the delight of men or as a means to study, would be no less than tragic. Do not, therefore, look on w hat has been accomplished as other than a first step attained upon a longer way, which whould be dollowed only the more keenly for the national co-operation that has been secured, the national recognition won. # Mr. Dorr's dictation, April 18, referring to Buildin of Arts and the meeting in celebration of the establishment of the Monument, at Buildin of Arts, on August 22, 1916. When the meeting was over and we had some ut upon the lawn, Mrs. Delano Hitch came to me and said: "What is there that I might do to help? I would like to do something." And I, with my Wild Gardens plan still in mind, said: "If you would really like to do some thing, the thing I most would like would be to take one of my Wild Garden areas and develop it in a way to tell what I have in mind." And she replied that she would be glad to do it. After some study of the possibilities then within my reach, and with the thought of making Sieur de Monts Spring the center of a Wild Gardens group, I chose the valley that the brock from the Tarn has washed out from the glacial gravel deposit left by the melting ice sheet across the outlet to the Gorge between the steep-cliffed through forming the Gorge mountainsbetweon which, XXXXX the ice had torn its seaward way. 2. This forms an exceedingly picturesque valley, just suited to the purpose, between the open Tarn above and the Sieur de Monts Spring below I described it to Mrs Hitch, who could walk but little and her brother, Mr. Frederick Delano, who was with her at Bar Harbor, went out with me and looked it over. We decided it might take $5,000 in constructive work to shape it for my plan and make a bottom for it of good loam, ready for my Wild Gardens planting, and Mr. Delano said he would not advise his sister to undertake it without putting aside at least as much in endowment for its planting and aftercare. They left so on afterwards and Mrs. Hitch sent me her her check for two thousand dollars which was all I felt I could wisely accept at the time to commence work on it, which I gradually expended in the years that followed. But new problems relating to the future ownership of the land of which it, the Tarn and the Spring all formed a part, arose and confronted me with difficulties which it took lon to solve with confidence as to 1/2 he future. 3. While this was the condition still and I was stru ling with the problems that the development of the National Park created, she died and I received a letter some time afterward frowMr. Delano, asking if his sister ha made any commitment involving any completion of the plan. I wrote him that there had been no legal commitment at any time, that the delay had been unavoi dable, caused by matters beyond my control but that all had been done that his sister's interest had made possible and that I had added as much more to it myself; that time had only and added to the interest and distinction of it/should he wish as her executor to continue the plan in accor ance with the original design, I should be glad. To this Mr. Delano made no reply. And I have never heard fro him since. There the matter has rested so far & as the Delano family is concerned. The vally, which I with difficulty protected from road invasion and other use, makes, even in its present state, a beautiful feature at an increasingly important point within the Park, visited annually by many thousands who come to the Spring and some day what is needed to carry out the original plan will be done by the Government if I and my plans have influence to brie it about. Steorder Monts Notomal Note: This appears tob the messing Monument by G.B.DORR "Histrical Assoe "achidein SMP The Sieur do Monts National Monument on the coast of Maine is the only tional park, other than battle-site memorial, in the eastern portion of our country It was formed by the gift of oitizens and accepted by the President for its historic interests.no less than for its unique and struking coastal landscape. Its deeply divided range of granite mountains, bare-topped with darkly no oded bases, was the first feature noted by Champlain In his exploration of our coast, made - in September, 1604 - from Do Monta' first colony at the mouth of the present Saint Croix River - named for it - in the Wounding of Acadia; and Mount Desert Island, the 'island of the wild and solitary mountains!, was the first land he touched within the present bounds of the United States. Nine years later, in 1613, the Island became the chosen cite of the first French missionary colony planted on the American Con- tinent, settlement being made at the entrance to Somes Sound, at the mountains' southern foot. This settlement, whose story is told at considerable length in the Jesuit Narratives by Father Biard, one of the loaders of the ex- pedition, was named by them, as the fog-cloud they arrived in lifted, disclosing the peaceful beauty of the soenes Saint Sauveur - in gratitude, as it is stated, for the Divine guidance which had load them across & dangerous and unchartered sea to a spot so fair. It was the later wreaking of this settlement, together with a succeeding attack upon the opposite Nova Sootian shore, by an armed vessel from Virginia commended by Samuel Argall, that commenced, according to Parkman, the century and a half of warfare between the French and English for the control of North America; and for & century of this, until the Peace of Utreaht in 1713, the broad, land-locked bay that bounds Mount Desert Island on the oastern side and is still known as Frenchman's Bay was the recognised gathering-place of Tessels for naval expeditions by the French against the English and rendez- vous for their return. Two generations later Mount Desert Island was dooded in fendal fashion by Louis XIV to Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a soldier of anoient family in France then serving in Acadia and later to become the founder of Detroit and Governor of Louisiana. He is recorded as living on the island with his wife in 1688, on the shore of Frenchman's Bay, in a memorandum drawn up in that year by Sir Edmand Andros for the English government, with reference to a descent on the Acadian coast. Ceded to England with the rest of Acadia save Cape Breton by the Peace of Utreaht, the Island ultimately passed into the possession of Nassaohnsetts, which whilo yet a provinoo gave it to its last Colonial Governor, Sir Francis Bernard, in reward for 2 securing to It that portion of Aoadia which now forms part of Maine, against the rival claims of Nova Sootia; and after confiscation of his property in the Revolution, returned its western half to his son, John Bernard, and gave its eastern half to the granddaughter of Cadillao and her husband, Monsieur and Madame do Gregoiro - French refugees, who came out to America bringing letters from Lafayette - who thereupon came down and lived, and died, on it, becoming oi tizons of the United States. From these two gifts of Thesachnsetts, both proceeding from earlier ones by the Crown's of France and England, it is that the titles to the land the government now holds, to both the eastward and the westward of Somes Sound, proceed. with these and other old historical associations linking the new Park with France, and with its own broad outlook over the 868.8 toward her, it is planned to make it serve a unique runotion among our national parks, and embody in its lands and mountains an enduring memory of France's old relation to the land and of our friend- ship and alliance, past and present, with her. In accordance with this plan, warmly supported by the present Secretary of the Interior, the Hon. Franklin K. Lane, Senator Halo of Maine has introduced & bill, already passed by the Senate and favorably acted on by the Public Lands Committee of the House, to change the Sieur de Monts National Monument, proclaimed by the President two years ago, into 3 & national park under the name of the Iafayotto National Park, chosen to express the broadth and inclusiveness of the commemorative inten- tion. And the United States Geographic Commission, whose practice is habitually most conservative, has revised in harmony with this plan the names of certain of the mountains in the Park and given them others related to the Islan's early history - Champlain, Cadillac, Aoadin, and Do Monts are all recorded in this www.while the mountain near whose foot the early Joquit settlement was made, has been named in momory of it Saint Sanvour Mountain. The site of this missionary settlement, still known as Jesuit Field locally, is a broad grassland sloping gently to the sea at the entrance to Somes Sound and looking, it would seem, not greatly different from what it did when the Jesuits and their colonists game sailing in. A fine harbor, noted as such by Governor Bornard in his still extant account, lies in front of it, sholtered by lesser islands, and the mountains make its background. There are few spots in the world of greater beauty in its northern type, and Low - apart from ofties - more certain to be widely visited in years to some. Nor could my be more fitly chosen to commemorate in a national way these early missionaries, the story of whose steadfastness and do- votion forms BO striking a chapter in that of the early French occupation of this Continent. In commemorating, accordingly, other features of the Island's early history, those who have the development of this first eastern 4 Kolanal Part in charge depire to Commemorate 1100 where it took place this first beginning of these missionary labors, and the sacrifice and hardship they involved. And that 10 warthilly and rightly done, respectfully invito the Benior Cardinal in this country of the Cathollo Church to ap- point a 8 Attoo of laymen from its ranics to cooperate with them in establishing on the dite described, on land now nationally owned and at the crowning point of beauty on our coast, a dignified and appropriate memorial, 1A harmony with others of historio character intended in the Park, and in with its Landscape setting. Before formally extending this invitation, as is now. done, desirence that such a step would be consonant with Not dnemon! views and wishes has been informally obtained, and has expressed in a personal interview his warm interest in the, plan. 5 note They page peoliar in its affort to involve