Concerns about protecting mostly prehistoric Native American ruins and artifacts, collectively known as antiquities, on western federal lands prompted the legislation, which allowed the president to quickly preserve public land without waiting for legislation to pass through an unconcerned Congress. The ultimate goal was to protect all historic and prehistoric sites on U.S. federal lands,[2] and it has resulted in designation of a wide variety of ecological, cultural and historical sites.
President Theodore Roosevelt established the first national monument, Devils Tower in Wyoming, on September 24, 1906.[3] He established 18 national monuments, although only nine still retain that designation.[4] Eighteen presidents have created national monuments under the Antiquities Act since the program began; only Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush did not.[5][6]Bill Clinton created 19 and expanded three others.
Jimmy Carter protected vast parts of Alaska, proclaiming 15 national monuments, 7 of which were later promoted to national parks. President Barack Obama created or expanded 34 national monuments by proclamation, the most of any president, with over half a billion acres of public land and water protected.[7][8][5]
National monuments are located in 33 states, Washington, D.C., the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Minor Outlying Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Arizona has the most national monuments, with 19, followed by California with 18 and New Mexico with 13. At least seventy-seven national monuments protect places of natural significance, including nineteen primarily for their geological features, eight marine sites, and eight volcanic sites (two of which are designated "National Volcanic Monuments"). At least sixty-six national monuments primarily protect historic sites, including twenty-eight associated with Native Americans, eleven relating to African American history, and eleven forts. Four have been designated World Heritage Sites. With the variety of resource types there is significant variation in the size of national monuments; the median size is roughly 3,500 acres (14km2). The five largest national monuments are all oceanic marine sites that protect waters and submerged lands where commercial fishing is prohibited.
Many former national monuments have been redesignated as national parks or another status by Congress, while others have been transferred to state control or disbanded.
Nine federal agencies in five departments manage the 136 current U.S. national monuments. Of these, 119 monuments are managed by a single agency, while 17 are co-managed by two agencies. Two of the NPS's national monuments, Grand Canyon–Parashant and Avi Kwa Ame, are not official units because they overlap with Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Management practices vary across agencies and sites according to their missions, the size or type of protected place, and legal authorization. Generally, hunting, fishing, and extraction of resources are prohibited.
Monuments and memorials that were not designated by the U.S. government, such as the USS Maine National Monument, are not listed here.
Occupying most of Admiralty Island, the 7th largest in the United States, this monument is part of Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. The monument protects the densest known population of brown bear on Earth, along with habitat for the Sitka black-tailed deer. Most of the monument has been designated as the Kootznoowoo Wilderness, restricting future development.[15]
Re-discovered in 1991 during excavations for a new federal building, this former burial ground that contains the remains of more than 400 free and enslaved Africans buried during the 17th and 18thcenturies was designated a National Historic Landmark memorial in 1993.[16]
Located around the canyon of the Agua Fria River, it contains more than 450distinct Native American structures, including large pueblos with more than 100rooms.[18]
Mount Aniakchak, which erupted 3,500years ago, and the surrounding region make up one of the least visited NPS sites. Surprise Lake, within the volcano's 6-mile (9.7km) wide, 2,500-foot (760m) deep caldera, is the source of the Aniakchak River.[22]
The Bears Ears are a pair of buttes that rise above sandstone canyons and mesas. Other points of geologic interest include the twin Six Shooter dome-shaped peaks, striated sandstone pinnacles, and natural arches. The wider region has tens of thousands of archaeological sites including rock art, ancient cliff dwellings, and ceremonial kivas. Part is in Manti–La Sal National Forest[31][32][33]
Less than 100 miles (160km) from the San Francisco Bay Area, Berryessa Snow Mountain protects part of the California Coast Range, one of the most biodiverse regions in the state, home to elk, osprey, river otters, half the state's dragonfly species, and California's second-largest population of wintering bald eagles. Part is in Mendocino National Forest.[28][37][38]
This preserves portions of the 207-acre (0.84km2)tobacco farm on which educator and civil rights leader Booker T. Washington was born into slavery on April 5, 1856. The site contains replicas of the house Washington was born in, a smokehouse, a blacksmith shed, a tobacco barn, and a horse barn.[42]
Steep granite cliffs and colorful rock outcroppings overlook the Arkansas River, where visitors can go whitewater rafting. Prehistoric campsites and shelters date back 11,000 years, while sites from gold mining remain from the late 1800s. About half is in San Isabel National Forest.[43][44]
Most of this monument is underwater, containing a large elkhorn coral barrier reef that provides cover for a great variety of reef fish, sea turtles and least terns. It is based around Buck Island, an uninhabited 176-acre (0.71km2) island.[45]
This monument commemorates the landing of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo at San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, which was the first European expedition to what later became the West Coast of the U.S. The monument includes a statue of Cabrillo, a rocky intertidal zone, and 20th-century coastal artillery batteries built to protect the harbor of San Diego from enemy warships.[46]
This monument ensures the protection of all of the more than 20,000 islets, reefs and rock outcroppings from the coast of California to a distance of 12 nautical miles (22km), along the entire 840-mile (1,350km) long California coastline.[47]
Established in 1863 as a depot for the Union Army during the Civil War, Camp Nelson became a large recruitment center for African American Union soldiers: a key site of emancipation for those soldiers and a refugee camp for their families.[49]
Located within the Navajo Nation, it preserves the valleys and rims of Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, and Monument Canyon. Several Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings are built into the canyon walls.[50]
Co-located with the NHLD Cape Krusenstern Archeological District, this coastal plain contains large lagoons and rolling hills of limestone. The bluffs record thousands of years of change in the shorelines of the Chukchi Sea, as well as evidence of some 9,000years of human habitation.[52]
Capulin is an extinct cinder conevolcano that is approximately 59,000years old and part of the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field. The crater is 400 feet (120m) deep and its rim is more than 1,500 feet (460m) in diameter.[53]
The United States Indian Industrial School (better known as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School) was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from its founding in 1879 through 1918, serving as an important symbol of efforts to culturally assimilate Native Americans by the federal government.[54]
This monument preserves a group of structures surrounded by a compound wall in the Gila Valley that were built in the early 13thcentury. They were inhabited by the Hohokam people until they were abandoned in the mid-15th century.[56]
This Spanish fort near St. Augustine, called Fort Marion when first protected, served for 205years under four different flags. Built in 1672, it was involved in sieges with the British while under Spanish command, the American Revolution under Britain, the Civil War under the Confederacy, and the Seminole Wars and the Spanish–American War under the United States.[58]
The Castle Mountains sit in the Mojave Desert between the Nevada state line and Mojave National Preserve. It protects desert grasslands home to Joshua tree forests, wildlife including golden eagles and bighorn sheep, and historic Native American sites.[60][61]
This portion of the Franklin Mountains of west Texas's Chihuahuan Desert includes 41 archaeological sites that show evidence of human presence dating to 6,000 BC. The site was used as a weapons testing range for Fort Bliss for 40 years and is still undergoing remediation of munitions. Castner Range is the only land conservation national monument within the Department of Defense.[62][63]
This monument commemorates the life and work of labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez. Called La Paz, the site was Chavez's home for about 20 years, and his gravesite is on the premises. It is also the location of the headquarters of United Farm Workers, which was founded by Chavez.[65][66]
Charles Young was the first African American to reach the rank of colonel in the US Army. He was also the first national park superintendent, of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, and a professor at Wilberforce University. His home at Wilberforce is a museum commemorating his life.[67][68]
The jewel of San Juan National Forest, the site was once home to the ancestors of the modern Pueblos. Roughly 1,000 years ago, the Ancestral Pueblo People built more than 200 homes and ceremonial buildings high above the valley floor.[69]
These pillars of rhyolite tuff are the eroded remains of an immense volcanic eruption that shook the region some 27 million years ago. It was called the Land of the Standing-Up Rocks by the Apache.[70]
Monument Canyon runs the width of the park and includes rock formations formed by erosion. The monument covers semi-desert land high on the Colorado Plateau and has a wide range of wildlife including pinyon pines, juniper trees, ravens, jays, desert bighorn sheep, and coyotes as well as a range of recreational activities.[71]
One of the best preserved flood basalt areas in the continental U.S. contains three lava fields along the Great Rift of Idaho. Among the volcanic cinder cones, lava tubes, and fissures created 15,000 to 2,000 years ago is the world's deepest open rift crack. The adjoining National Preserve protects an additional 410,000 acres.[72][73]
Once part of Yosemite National Park, this monument is a dark cliff of columnar basalt created by a lava flow at least 100,000years ago. It also has the 101-foot (31m)-high Rainbow Falls.[74]
The tower is a monolithicigneousintrusion of volcanic neck rising dramatically 1,267 feet (386m) above the surrounding terrain. Proclaimed by Theodore Roosevelt, this was the first national monument.[3]
This monument preserves three prehistoric sites with 206 prehistoric mounds, notable for 31 unusual mounds in the shape of mammals, birds, or reptiles.[76]
An extremely rough, rugged lava flow covers much of the park, filling a large basin rimmed by higher sandstone that forms large, wind-carved bluffs. It has lava tube caves that stretch over 17 miles (27km) and the Cebolla Wilderness, a forested rimrock area that features prehistoric rock art and the Zuni-Acoma Trail, an ancient Pueblo trade route.[77]
On the site of an ancient east–west trail is a great sandstone promontory with a pool of water at its base. There are inscriptions from the 17thcentury as well as older petroglyphs made by the Ancestral Puebloans.[78]
Three sites honor the memory of Emmett Till, an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store.[79] The Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, Bronzeville, Chicago, Illinois was the site of Till's memorial service in September 1955, hosted by his mother Mamie Till.[79] Graball Landing on the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi is believed to be where Till's body was retrieved from the river and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner was where the trial of and acquittal of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam for Till's murder took place.[80][81]
Huge petrified redwoods and incredibly detailed fossils of ancient insects and plants reveal a very different landscape in Colorado of almost 35 million years ago in the Eocene age.[82]
Built by James Oglethorpe between 1736 and 1748, these remnants of a fort and town protected the southern boundary of the British colony of Georgia from Spanish raids. It was a few miles from the site of the Battle of Bloody Marsh.[83]
The six-sided star fort spans the American story from the 17th to the 21st centuries: Captain John Smith's journeys, a haven of freedom for the enslaved during the Civil War, and a bastion of defense for the Chesapeake Bay.[86]
In 1862 during the American Civil War, the Union Army successfully tested a rifledcannon against the defending Confederates, rendering brick fortifications obsolete. Fort Pulaski was also used as a prisoner-of-war camp during the war. The national monument includes most of Cockspur Island (containing the fort) and all of adjacent McQueens Island.[88]
A frontier military post and supply depot in the late 19thcentury, it sat at the intersection of the Mountain and Cimarron Branches of the old Santa Fe Trail.[90]
Fossil Butte preserves the 50-million-year-old Green River lake beds, the best paleontological record of tertiary aquatic communities in North America. Fossils including fish, alligators, bats, turtles, dog-sized horses, insects, and many other species of plants and animals suggest that the region was a low, subtropical, freshwater basin when the sediments accumulated, over about a 2-million-year period.[91]
Frances Perkins became the first female cabinet member when appointed Secretary of Labor in 1933. Serving until 1945, Perkins remains the longest-serving Secretary of Labor and longest-serving female cabinet member in United States history. Perkins lived at the site as a child as well as intermittently throughout her life.
Representative of 18th-century Virginia tobacco farms, this site is the birthplace and boyhood environment of George Washington. The entrance includes a Memorial Shaft obelisk of Vermont marble that is a one-tenth scale replica of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Also within the monument are the historic birthplace home area, a kitchen house, and the Washington family burial ground.[95]
The site preserves Moses Carver's farm, which was the boyhood home of George Washington Carver, a scientist and educator who developed many uses for peanuts. It was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and first to a non-president.[96]
Located within the Gila Wilderness, the people of the Mogollon culture lived in these cliff dwellings180 feet (55m) above the canyon floor from the 1280s through the early 14thcentury. They lived in five caves with 46rooms.[98]
This Mojave Desert landscape of dramatic red sandstone and canyons has forested mountains, ancient rock art, rock shelters, and a mining ghost town. It is an important habitat of the Mojave Desert tortoise.[31][100]
Located on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon on the Shivwits Plateau, this diverse landscape includes geologic resources including millennia of eroded formations forming canyons, cliffs and buttes; abundant fossils of ancient marine invertebrates; and desert volcanic peaks. Archaeological sites preserve artifacts of the Ancestral Puebloans, while abandoned ranches and mills were left behind by early pioneers. A fifth of the monument is also within Lake Mead National Recreation Area; Grand Canyon-Parashant is not considered an official unit of the park system. There are no paved roads or visitor services but offroad vehicles can reach scenic viewpoints.[102][103]
The Grand Portage itself is an 8.5-mile (13.7km) footpath which bypasses a set of waterfalls on the Pigeon River near Lake Superior. The region was a vital trade route and center of fur trade activity as well as an Anishinaabeg Ojibwe heritage site.[104]
This monument contains the largest concentration of Hagerman horse fossils in North America. It protects the world's richest known fossil deposits from the late Pliocene epoch, 3.5million years ago. These plants and animals represent the last glimpse of time that existed before the Ice Age, and the earliest appearances of modern flora and fauna.[106]
Created from what used to be the security buffer surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, this area has been untouched by development or agriculture since 1943. The area is part of the Columbia River Plateau, formed by basalt lava flows and water erosion, and is named after the Hanford Reach, the last free flowing section of the Columbia River.[107]
Harriet Tubman was a famed conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading dozens of slaves to freedom. This monument includes sites relating to Tubman's life, including the slave-built Stewart's Canal and the home of Jacob Jackson.[67] The areas within the national monument that are managed by the NPS have been redesignated as a National Historical Park (NHP), and the FWS lands are in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.[108]
Hohokam Pima is part of the Gila River Indian Community and not open to the public. The monument includes the site of the Snaketown settlement, archeological remains of the Hohokam culture, which lived in the area until 1200. Excavations of pit houses, fields, and irrigation canals were refilled in the 1960s, leaving nothing above ground.[109]
Hovenweep contains six clusters of Native American ruins. Holly Canyon, Hackberry Canyon, Cutthroat Castle and Goodman Point are in Colorado and Square Tower and Cajon are in Utah. Ancestral Puebloans lived in the Hovenweep area from 1150 to 1350.[110]
Located within the Sonoran Desert, significant concentrations of ironwood (Olneya tesota) trees and two endangered animal and plant species are found within the monument. More than 200Hohokam and Paleoindian archeological sites have been identified from between 600 and 1450 AD[111]
Jewel Cave is the third longest cave in the world, with more than 215 miles (346km) of mapped passageways beneath the Black Hills of South Dakota.[112] The entrance was discovered by miners in 1900 and was named for its calcite crystals.[113]
Located within the John Day River Basin, the Fossil Beds have a well-preserved, complete record of fossil plants and animals from more than 40 of the 65million years of the Cenozoic Era. The monument is divided into three units: Painted Hills, named for its delicately colored stratifications; Sheep Rock; and Clarno. Blue Basin near Sheep Rock is a volcanic ash bowl transformed into claystone by eons of erosion, colored pastel blue by minerals.[114]
More than 12,000 bones from at least 74 dinosaurs have been found at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry so far, making it the paleontological site with the greatest concentration of bones from the Jurassic period. The bones come from a variety of mostly carnivorous species (more than half Allosaurus) and it is unknown why they are mixed together.[19][115][116]
Kasha-Katuwe is known for its geology of layers of volcanic rock and ash deposited by a volcanic explosion. Over time, weathering and erosion of these layers has created canyons and tent rocks. The tent rocks themselves are cones of soft pumice and tuff beneath harder caprocks.[117]
This is the site of the largest concentration of lava tubecaves in North America. It also includes Petroglyph Point, one of the largest panels of Native American rock art. The monument lies on the northeast flank of the Medicine Lake Volcano, the largest volcano in the Cascade Range.[119]
This marine monument includes the waters and submerged lands of the three northernmost islands of the Mariana Archipelago, the submerged lands of 21designated volcanic features, and the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth.[121][122][123][124]
Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist who served as a field secretary for the NAACP to end segregation and promote voting rights in Mississippi. He was assassinated outside his home in Jackson by a white supremacist in 1963. His wife Myrlie moved away but owned the home until 1993 and later served as chairwoman of the NAACP.[125][126]
Called The Yosemite of the North for its similar geology, the monument has widespread light-colored granite, about 50 to 70million years old (Eocene Epoch to Cretaceous Period), that has been sculpted by glaciers that gouged deep U-shaped troughs. Mountain goats live in the higher elevations, while brown and black bear are also common. Part of Tongass National Forest.[129]
The Mojave Trails National Monument includes several rugged mountain ranges, ancient lava flows at the Amboy Crater, and the Cadiz Dunes. Human features are Native American trading routes, World War II-era training camps, and an undeveloped segment of Route 66.[130][131]
Montezuma Castle features cliff dwellings built by the Pre-ColumbianSinagua people between 1100 and 1400 AD. The site's name is a misnomer as is it has no connection to Montezuma. However, some modern day native tribes that do have connections to the site include the Yavapai, Hopi, and Zuni. The monument also includes Montezuma Well, which has been used for irrigation since the 8th century.[132]
Located at the junction of White Canyon and Armstrong Canyon, it is part of the Colorado River drainage. It features the second- and third-largest natural bridges in the western hemisphere, carved from the white Triassic sandstone of the Cedar Mesa Formation that gives White Canyon its name.[136]
This monument preserves three of the most intact cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system on the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona.[137]
The monument protects four underwater seamounts and three very deep canyons in the continental shelf 100 miles (160km) off the coast of Massachusetts, home to deep-water corals, endangered whales, and migratory fish and birds.[140][141][142]
The marine monument consists of ocean waters and 10islands and atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands including Midway Atoll. The monument was created in 2006 with 139,797 square miles (362,070km2), and its boundaries were expanded on August 26, 2016, more than quadrupling in size to be the largest protected area on Earth, almost as large as the Gulf of Mexico.[147] The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands archipelago "is the planet's largest seabird gathering site, with more than 14 million birds from 22 species, and is home to nearly all Laysan albatrosses and the remaining endangered Hawaiian monk seals."[148] It was declared a World Heritage Site in 2010.[149][150]
This monument protects a variety of cultural and natural resources, including five volcanic cones, hundreds of archeological sites and an estimated 25,000images carved by native peoples and early Spanish settlers. It lies on West Mesa, a volcanicbasaltescarpment.[151]
Rich with Native American, early explorer, and Mormon pioneer history, this site shows Ancestral Puebloans and Kaibab Paiute Indian and pioneer life in the Old West, including the cabin where explorer John Wesley Powell's survey crew stayed in 1871. The water of Pipe Spring, discovered in 1858, made it possible for plants, animals, and people to live in this dry desert region.[152]
This monument preserves traditional catlinitequarries used to make ceremonial pipes, vitally important to traditional Plains Indian culture. The quarries are sacred to the Sioux and Lakota people and are historically neutral territory where enrolled citizens of all tribes can quarry the stone.[153]
Poverty Point is a prehistoric archeological site that dates from between 1650 and 700BC and consisting of six earthen rings and seven mounds. The diameter of the outside ridge is 0.75 miles (1.21km), and the largest mound rises 51 feet (16m).[156] It was declared a World Heritage Site in 2014.[157]
Prehistoric Trackways contains fossilized footprints of numerous Paleozoic amphibians, reptiles, and insects, as well as fossilized plants and petrified wood dating back approximately 280 million years.[158]
President Abraham Lincoln and his family resided seasonally on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home, which was founded in 1851 for homeless and disabled war veterans. The national monument and visitor center are preserved and operated by President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home on behalf of the Armed Forces Retirement Home.[160]
Rainbow Bridge is one of the world's largest natural bridges. It stands 290 feet (88m) tall and spans 275 feet (84m) wide; the top of the bridge is 42 feet (13m) thick and 33 feet (10m) wide. It was made from sandstone formed during the Triassic and the Jurassic periods.[161]
This site includes part of the Rio Grande Gorge and extinct volcanoes of the Taos Plateau volcanic field. There are a variety of archaeological and historical artifacts including petroglyphs and Hispanic settlement sites. It is home to an assortment of wildlife and recreation opportunities.[67][162]
Donated by the National Geographic Society, the cave's exceptionally large main entrance was used as a shelter by prehistoric Indians from the earliest known human settlement in the southeastern United States. The rock from which Russell Cave was formed originated in sediments deposited over 300million years ago at the bottom of an inland sea that covered the region.[166]
The St. Francis Dam was a 700ft (210m)-wide dam that supported a reservoir for Los Angeles's water supply. It catastrophically failed in 1928 and the flood killed at least 431 people. The site now has ruins of the dam's concrete base in a forested valley. Part of Angeles National Forest.[19][116]
Formerly known as Gran Quivira National Monument, it is where Native American trade communities of Tiwa- and Tompiro-speaking Puebloans lived when Spanish Franciscan missionaries made contact in the 17thcentury. What remains are the ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira, and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas.[167]
The rugged landscapes of the San Juan Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Northwest, are a habitat for orcas, eagles, and seals and provide opportunities for kayaking, birdwatching, and other activities. The monument protects numerous small rocks, islands, and points, including the Cattle Point Light.[170][67]
Scotts Bluff is an important 19thcentury geologic formation and landmark on the Oregon Trail and Mormon Trail. It contains multiple bluffs on the south side of the North Platte River, but it is named after a prominent bluff called Scotts Bluff which rises more than 830 feet (250m) above the plains at its highest point. The monument is composed of five rock formations named Crown Rock, Dome Rock, Eagle Rock, Saddle Rock, and Sentinel Rock.[175]
In 1908 a mob of 5,000 white residents attacked the Black community of Springfield, Illinois, destroyed several blocks of residences and business, and lynched two Black Americans. The mass racial violence was one of many such events of brutality and intimidation in that era, leading to the establishment of the NAACP. The monument includes the excavated foundations of several of the destroyed homes in the segregated neighborhood.[176][177]
This monument protects a small portion of the Sonoran Desert. It is home to several federally listed endangered species and also has three wilderness areas, many significant archeological and historic sites, and remnants of several important historic trails.[178]
This iconic statue, built in 1886 on Liberty Island and 151 feet (46m) tall, commemorates the centennial of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence and is a gesture of friendship from France to the U.S. Liberty Enlightening the World is a symbol of welcoming immigrants to the U.S. and is listed as a World Heritage Site. Ellis Island, where 12million immigrants entering the U.S. passed through, is included in the monument.[179]
Sunset Crater is the youngest in a string of volcanoes in the San Francisco volcanic field that is related to the nearby San Francisco Peaks. Final volcanic activity in the 13thcentury painted the upper portion of the cone with bright red and orange rocks, giving the volcano its name. Hikers can walk through a black lava flow and on a second cinder crater.[182]
Lying on the northeastern edge of the Sonoran Desert along the Salt River, Tonto preserves two cliff dwellings that were occupied by the Salado culture during the 13th to 15thcenturies. The monument is surrounded by Tonto National Forest.[184]
A major archaeological site north of Las Vegas where thousands of prehistoric fossils, including mammoth, lion, and camel, have been found in an area that was once a wetland.[187]
Tuzigoot preserves a two- to three-story pueblo ruin on the summit of a limestone and sandstone ridge in the Verde Valley. It was built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400.[188]
A series of badland areas characterized by rock outcroppings, steep bluffs and grassy plains along the 149-mile (240km)Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River in central Montana, The Breaks is home to at least 60 mammal species and hundreds of bird species. Charles Marion Russell often painted here, and Lewis and Clark traveled on this pathway.[189]
Steep eroded escarpments consisting primarily of sandstone, siltstone, limestone and shale rise as much as 3,000 feet (910m) above their base. These sedimentary rocks have been deeply eroded for millions of years, exposing hundreds of layers of richly colored rock strata along Paria Canyon. The Coyote Buttes, across the Paria Plateau from the Canyon and Vermilion Cliffs, include undulating slopes like The Wave.[190]
The Waco Mammoth National Monument is a paleontological site and museum in Waco, Texas, where fossils of twenty-four Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) and other mammals from the Pleistocene Epoch have been uncovered. The site is the largest known concentration of a single herd of mammoths dying from the same event, which is believed to have been a flash flood.[28][192]
Walnut Canyon protects dozens ofcliff dwelling rooms constructed around the 12th century by the Sinagua people, who navigated the challenging cliffs to access sparse water. It lies on the Colorado Plateau and cuts through the PermianKaibab Limestone, which exposes the Toroweap Formation and Coconino Sandstone.[193]
Several settlement sites built by the Sinagua, Cohonina, and Ancestral Puebloans are scattered throughout the monument, showing evidence of trade and agriculture from the 6th to 13th centuries. About 2,000Ancient Pueblo People moved here to farm after an 11thcentury eruption of Sunset Crater spread ash forming fertile soil.[194]
Designated a research national monument, it is a large unexcavated Ancestral Puebloanarcheological site. The site is one of many Ancestral Puebloan village sites in the Montezuma Valley occupied between 900 and 1300 CE.[195]
The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) is a United States national monument protecting the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante in southern Utah. It was established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton under the authority of the Antiquities Act with 1.7 million acres of land, later expanded to 1,880,461 acres (7,610 km2). In 2017, the monument's size was reduced by half in a succeeding presidential proclamation, and it was restored in 2021. The land is among the most remote in the country; it was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the president of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments protect a wide variety of natural and historic resources, including sites of geologic, marine, archaeological, and cultural importance. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents the power to proclaim national monuments by executive action. In contrast, national parks in the U.S. must be created by Congressional legislation. Some national monuments were first created by presidential action and later designated as national parks by congressional approval.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 is an act that was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. This law gives the president of the United States the authority to, by presidential proclamation, create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural, historic, or scientific features. The Act has been used more than a hundred times since its enactment to create a wide variety of protected areas.
The San Gorgonio Wilderness is located in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains, in San Bernardino County and into northern Riverside County, Southern California.
The Manti–La Sal National Forest covers more than 1.2 million acres (4,900 km2) and is located in the central and southeastern parts of the U.S. state of Utah and the extreme western part of Colorado. The forest is headquartered in Price, with ranger district offices in Price, Ferron, Ephraim, Moab and Monticello. The maximum elevation is Mount Peale in the La Sal Mountains, reaching 12,721 feet (3,877 m) above sea level. The La Sal Mountains are the second highest mountain range in Utah after the Uintas. Parts of the forest are included in the Bears Ears National Monument.
The California Coastal National Monument is located along the entire coastline of the U.S. state of California. This monument ensures the protection of all islets, reefs and rock outcroppings along the coast of California within 12 nautical miles (22 km) of shore along the entire 840-mile (1,350 km) long coastline. Conservative estimates are for at least 20,000 such outcroppings. The monument was created by Bill Clinton via Presidential proclamation on January 11, 2000, with the authority in section two of the Antiquities Act of 1906. As of 2014, the monument has expanded to 2,272 acres (919 ha). The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the monument, has developed gateways in cooperation with other agencies along the California coast to introduce the monument to the public. These include the Trinidad, Point Arena, Fort Bragg-Mendocino, Pigeon Point Lighthouse, Piedras Blancas State Marine Reserve and Marine Conservation Area, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Although being the most-viewed national monument in California, people are usually unaware that the entire coastline is a national monument.
The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) is a World Heritage listed U.S. National Monument encompassing 583,000 square miles (1,510,000 km2) of ocean waters, including ten islands and atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It was created in June 2006 with 140,000 square miles (360,000 km2) and expanded in August 2016 by moving its border to the limit of the exclusive economic zone, making it one of the world's largest protected areas. It is internationally known for its cultural and natural values as follows:
The area has deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture, as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world, and as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death. On two of the islands, Nihoa and Mokumanamana, there are archaeological remains relating to pre-European settlement and use. Much of the monument is made up of pelagic and deepwater habitats, with notable features such as seamounts and submerged banks, extensive coral reefs and lagoons.
The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 is a land management law passed in the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 30, 2009. The bill designates millions of acres in the US as protected and establishes a National Landscape Conservation System. It includes funding for programs, studies and other activities by the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, and in some cases bars further geothermal leasing, oil and gas leasing, and new mining patents on certain stretches of protected land.
The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument is a United States National Monument managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which encompasses parts of the Angeles National Forest and the San Bernardino National Forest in California. On October 10, 2014, President Barack Obama used his authority under the Antiquities Act to create the new monument, protecting 346,177 acres of public lands in the San Gabriel Mountains of the Transverse Ranges. The effort to protect the San Gabriel Mountains began more than a century earlier, in 1891 with another U.S. President, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president, using a congressional act, to designate and delineate the first federal protection in the United States of forested lands, using the same mountain range name, as the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve. Two earlier California conservationists, Abbot Kinney and John Muir, influenced President Benjamin Harrison.
Browns Canyon National Monument is a 21,586 acres (87 km2) national monument in Chaffee County, Colorado, that was designated as such by President Barack Obama under the Antiquities Act on February 19, 2015. The site will be centered along the Arkansas River between Buena Vista and Salida. Browns Canyon is the most popular destination for whitewater rafting in the country, and is also known for its fishing and hiking. The monument will provide habitat protection for bighorn sheep, peregrine falcons, elk, and golden eagles.
Castle Mountains National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located in the eastern Mojave Desert and northeastern San Bernardino County, in the state of California.
Sand to Snow National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located in San Bernardino County and northern Riverside County, Southern California.
Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is a U.S. national monument spanning 87,563 acres (137 sq mi) of mountains and forestland in northern Penobscot County, Maine, including a section of the East Branch Penobscot River. The monument is located on the eastern border of Maine's Baxter State Park. Native animals include moose, bobcats, bald eagles, salmon, and Canada lynx.
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a marine national monument of the United States off the coast of New England, on the seaward edge of Georges Bank. It was created by President Barack Obama on September 15, 2016, as the first U.S. marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean.
Bears Ears National Monument is a United States national monument located in San Juan County in southeastern Utah, established by President Barack Obama by presidential proclamation on December 28, 2016. The monument protects 1,351,849 acres of public land surrounding the Bears Ears—a pair of buttes—and the Indian Creek corridor rock climbing area. The Native American names for the buttes have the same meaning in each of the languages represented in the region. The names are listed in the presidential proclamation as "Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa [sic], Kwiyaghatʉ Nükavachi/Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe"—all four mean "Bears Ears".
Gold Butte National Monument is a United States national monument located in Clark County, Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas and south of Mesquite and Bunkerville. The monument protects nearly 300,000 acres of desert landscapes featuring a wide array of natural and cultural resources, including rock art, sandstone towers, and important wildlife habitat for species including the Mojave Desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion. The area also protects historic ranching and mining sites such as the ghost town of Gold Butte, although little but mine openings, cement foundations, and a few pieces of rusting equipment remains. The monument is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument is a United States National Monument in Birmingham, Alabama established in 2017 to preserve and commemorate the work of the 1963 Birmingham campaign, its Children's Crusade, and other Civil Rights Movement events and actions. The monument is administered by the National Park Service. Civil rights protesters took to the streets of Birmingham, Alabama to fight in favor of Project C, a campaign against laws limiting African Americans freedoms. They were met with violent resistance from the police.
The marine policy of the Barack Obama administration comprises several significant environmental policy decisions for the oceans made during his two terms in office from 2009 to 2017. By executive action, US President Barack Obama increased fourfold the amount of protected marine space in waters under United States control, setting a major precedent for global ocean conservation. Using the U.S. president's authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, he expanded to 200 nautical miles the seaward limits of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument around the U.S. island possessions in the Central Pacific. In the Atlantic, Obama created the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the first marine monument in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Atlantic.
Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument is a United States national monument that protects over 900,000 acres (3,600 km2) surrounding the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. President Joe Biden established it as a monument under the authority of the Antiquities Act on August 8, 2023, to be managed by the United States Forest Service within Kaibab National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System. While the area was already protected from most development, the monument designation made permanent a 20-year moratorium on new uranium mining put in place in 2012. The name combines the Havasupai words for "where tribes roam" and Hopi words for "our ancestral footprints", and many sites are considered sacred to the peoples who have lived in the region since time immemorial.
References
↑ 16U.S.C.§431§432, and §433. U.S. Code collection. Cornell University Law School. Retrieved on February 11, 2009.
↑ "Public Land Statistics 2016"(PDF). U.S. Department of the Interior • Bureau of Land Management. May 2017. Retrieved February 3, 2018. Table 5-2. National Monuments within the National Landscape Conservation System as of September 30, 2016
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