This diary will be the first diary published in the new Group Antiquities Act Defenders and Supporters. The Goal of the group is to debate the Act, its importance to the country and conservation, its current use and future, and to ensure the Act stays on the books permanently. Only by gaining control of Congress, and keeping the White House in Democratic hands can we be assured that the Act will remain in force. There is no guarantee the Act would survive a radical Republican trifecta, not with how radically anti-environment the Republicans have become since Gingrich.. Thus, once Democrats own all 3, it is imperative that action be taken to safeguard the Act permanently from those legislators who would try to overturn it. the purpose of this group, ultimately, is to make the Antiquities Act permanent and return its reach to all 50 states.
How did the Antiquities Act come to pass in the first place and why is it so important? For that We have to go back in time- prior to June 8, 1906- when the Act was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt. The first area conserved prior to the Antiquities Act was not Yellowstone, but Hot Springs Arkansas, which came into being in 1832 as Hot Springs Reservation.
Hot Springs was managed similar to how similar hot springs were managed in Europe- open for public use without special consideration for the protection of the springs or the land around it. It wasnt until 1922 that the springs were granted national park status by Congress. Hot Springs is one of the few national parks that were not monuments first and is the smallest park in the system at under 6000 acres.
the next area set aside was Yosemite in 1864 as a grant or reserve by President Lincoln. Yosemite was the first area specifically set aside for conservation, but it was not a national park at first, as it was entirely within the boundaries of California. it wasnt until Yellowstone was created in 1872 on land within 3 states- Idaho, Montana and Wyoming- that the first national park was created. the vast majority of the park's 2.2 million acres lie in Wyoming, slightly over 1000 acres apiece lie in Montana and Idaho . Yellowstone was the first national park anywhere in the world, and set precedent for other countries in creating their own national parks. National parks, therefore are a uniquely American idea- and the vast majority of future parks would owe their existence to the Antiquities Act. over the course of the next 34 years, several other parks were created- Sequoia(1890), Yosemite(1890), Mount Rainier(1899), Crater Lake(1902) and Wind Cave(1903)- and one- Mackinac Island(1875-95)- was abolished and returned to the state-Michigan- for conservation at the state level.
There was no National Park Service at the time - that would not come until 1916 under President Wilson- or Forest Service- that was created in 1905 thanks to Theodore Roosevelt's insistence. the Parks were managed by the Army and War Department, and laws preventing looting, logging hunting and other conduct by visitors did not exist. Thus, the parks were parks in name only for several years.
The Fish and Wildlife Service was then known as the US Fish Commission, and the Bureau of Land Management was known as the General Land Office. It was the GLO which would prove essential to ensuring that while the Act does have size limits- 'the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected'- there is no specific acreage limit e.g 10000 acres. Many western states wanted monuments to be small(320 or 640 acres- 0.5 to 1 sq mile) and specific- Indian ruins like those at Mesa Verde, which was made a national park three weeks after the Antiquities Act passed. The General Land Office wanted no limits on monument size at all.it was this debate over size and scope that delayed the passage of the Act or something similar to it for several years. The first consideration of a general law to protect what was collectively termed antiquities was in 1899, when Dr Thomas Wilson proposed a bill that would conserve objects of historic aesthetic or archeological value. For looting of places like Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were ongoing at a rapid degree that alarmed archeologists like Dr Wilson, and many representatives agreed that Congress should pass a law to stop these practices.
Wilson's bill was largely incorporated into a bill proposed by Iowa Congressman Johnathan Dolliver in 1900. Dollivers bill wasnt the only one competing for Congressional favor. Colorado Congressman John Shafroth introduced two other bills, the first of which would have simply made it a crime to remove artifacts from public land or cause damage to antiquities. his other bill would have created surveys of public lands in western states and territories (Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii were not states yet), allowed the Interior Secretary to set aside areas of up to 320 acres (0.5 sq mile) to protect ruins, and put those lands under the care of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology. All 3 bills went to the House Committee on Public lands, then chaired by Iowa Congressman John Lacey, who would go on to propose the Antiquities Act and steer it though both houses of Congress.
Lacey sent the 3 bills to Interior Secretary Ethan Hitchcock (no relation to legendary movie director Alfred) who then forwarded them over to GLO Commissioner Binger Hermann. While Hermann agreed with the general idea of the bills to protect archeological sites , he wanted a stronger general authority, similar to the authority then given to the president to create forest reserves. Hermann proposed a different bill which Lacey introduced in early 1900 That bill HR 11021 would have granted the President the power to conserve areas by executive order, that had scenic beauty, natural wonder or curiosity, or had scientific or historical importance. this bill with its proposed conservation of areas of historic and scientific interest, was a forerunner for what later would become the Antiquities Act. while the Act does not mention natural wonders or scenic areas as a specific criteria, later court rulings on monuments created under the Act would in essence add those qualities back into the law as qualifiers for monument status.
Given President Roosevelt's large scale creation of forest reserves, many western states were very reluctant to grant him general authority similar to that granted him under the General Revision Act in 1891- a law that was changed in 1907 to limit reserves in most of the West then repealed entirely by Congress in 1976 along with the vast majority of late 19th and early 20th century laws granting the President withdrawal authority. with one EXTREMELY important exception. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Roosevelt pushed hard from the beginning for this general authority, there were several sites- including Niagara Falls in western New York, and Wisconsin Dells in southern Wisconsin- that he wanted to grant national park or similar status to, but the Act was passed too late to give those areas monument status, if the Act had been passed in 1902 instead of 1906, both Niagara Falls and the Wisconsin Dells would either be national monuments or parks today. but by the time the Act was passed both of those areas were far too developed for Roosevelt's taste to grant them monument status.
there was some debate on what exactly to call the areas protected by legislation. Some congressmen wanted the areas to be known as reserves , like those in forests. Others wanted them called reservations. ultimately, the areas under the act were called ' monuments' in the final bill. the final push in early 1906 to grant general conservation authority to the President originated with Dr Edgar Lee Hewett, one of the country's leading experts on Indian ruins in the Southwest. Hewett had taken Lacey on a tour of archeological sites in the southwest in 1902 and was asked in 1904 by GLO Commissioner W A Richards to help draft legislation to protect artifacts on public lands. Richards , who was a former governor of Wyoming, did not share the virulent anti-federal sentiment that gripped many of the governors and congressman in the West- such as Ralph Cameron- both then and now. Richards was a strong proponent of granting general authority to the President, and it was his pushing for no specific limits in the authority which ultimately was included in the law and survived the rigors of Congressional debate. Lacey introduced the house version of the Antiquities Act in January 1906 as HR 11016. the Senate version, which was to identical the house version , was introduce by Colorado Senator Thomas Patterson as S 4698 in late February.
Contrary to what opponents of Presidential use of Act both then and now have claimed in regards to no Congressional involvement, Congress specifically debated on whether to have Congress co-sign on monument creation, but ultimately left it up solely to the president. Congress understood that it was not the vehicle for fast and decisive action, as it had only created 7 national parks since 1872 and had abolished one of them. While the intent of Congress in passing the Act was likely to set aside small areas, there was no specific limit in the act- save that monuments were to be confined to the smallest area necessary to conserve the antiquities to be protected. How broad this power would actually be construed and used by President Roosevelt remained to be seen. eventually it would be Roosevelts acting to conserve one of the world's greatest natural wonders that would see the Antiquities Act face its first day in court at the highest court of the land. But that, dear readers, is reserved for part 2 of this diary- First Monuments and Western Backlash.
This diary, and others like it, are meant to stir discussion and debate- is the Antiquities Act legal? How far should the Act cover? How big can monuments be?What exactly is abuse of the Act? and the like.
I look forward to comments by readers and the debate to follow. see you in the comments.