ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt did in 1906 what Congress was unwilling to do through legislation: He used his modern authority under the Antiquities Act to designate Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument.
Then came Antiquities Act protections for the Petrified Forest in Arizona, the Chaco Canyon and Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley in California, and what are now Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in Utah.
The list goes on, as all but three presidents have used the law to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.
President Joe Biden has created six monuments and either restored, expanded or changed the boundaries of a handful of other monuments. Native American tribes and conservation groups are pushing for more appointments before he leaves office.
The proposals range from an area dotted with palm trees and petroglyphs in Southern California to a site sacred to Native Americans in the high desert of Nevada, a historic black neighborhood in Oklahoma and a homestead in Maine that belonged to the family of Frances Perkins, the country’s first family female cabinet member.
Looting and destruction
Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act after a generation of lobbying by educators and scholars who wanted to protect sites from commercial looting of artifacts and the indiscriminate collection of artifacts by individuals. It was the first law in the United States to provide legal protection for cultural and natural resources of historical or scientific interest on federal lands.
For Roosevelt and others, there was science behind protecting Devils Tower. Scientists have long theorized about how molten lava once cooled and formed the massive columns that make up the geological wonder. Stories among Native American tribes that still perform ceremonies there describe its creation in detail.
Biden cited the spiritual, cultural and prehistoric heritage of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante areas of southern Utah as he restored their boundaries and protections through his first apply of the Antiquities Act in 2021.
The two monuments were among 29 created by President Barack Obama during his term in office. Amid fears that Obama was overstepping his authority and restricting energy development, President Donald Trump reduced its size and added a previously unprotected portion to Bears Ears.
Biden called Bears Ears — the first national monument created at the request of federally recognized tribes — a “place of healing.”
Save sacred places
Early designations often displaced tribes from their ancestral homelands.
In one of his final acts as president in 1933, Herbert Hoover used the Antiquities Act to designate Death Valley a national monument. Today it is one of the largest national parks – not to mention the hottest, driest and lowest national park.
While the creation of the monument marked an end to prospecting and the filing of modern mining claims in the area, it also meant that the Timbisha Shoshone were forced out of the last portion of their established territory. It took several decades for the tribe to reclaim some of the land.
Biden’s administration has made progress in working with some tribes to manage public lands and incorporating more indigenous knowledge into planning and policymaking.
The Avi Kwa Ame National Monument was Biden’s second designation. The location outside of Las Vegas is central to the origin stories of tribes with ties to the region.
Nevada’s Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo said at the time that the White House did not consult his administration before the 2023 appointment – and in fact blocked tidy energy projects and other developments in the state.
Similar resistance arose when Biden declared Arizona’s Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument a national monument just a few months later. This time it wasn’t the prospect of tidy energy projects in the desert, but uranium mining near the Grand Canyon that prompted tribes and environmentalists to push for protections.
Creation of nature conservation corridors
Biden certainly hasn’t broken any records in the number of monuments he has designated or the amount of land reserved. But conservationists say more strategic apply of the Antiquities Act’s powers will be beneficial in the future as developers look to build more solar and wind farms and mine lithium and other minerals needed for a green energy transition.
They are pushing for Biden to expand California’s Joshua Tree National Park in his final weeks and build a modern monument stretching from the Joshua Tree border to the Colorado River, where it separates California and Arizona. The proposed Chuckwalla National Monument has support from several tribes.
Such a designation would add a significant piece to one of the largest contiguous protected corridors in the U.S. — stretching thousands of square miles along the Colorado River from Canyonlands in Utah to the monuments already designated by Obama and Biden to the desert oases of Southern California.
“The concern out there is that so much land is being used for renewable energy and it is completely destroying the desert. And if we don’t more proactively protect these desert places, we could lose them forever,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.
More than huge landscapes
Biden’s designations extended beyond the canyons and plateaus of the West.
In May, he erected a national monument at the site of the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois. That appointment came as he sought to maintain his relevance in his final months in office and boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign while Trump narrowed Democrats’ historic lead among black voters.
In 2023, Biden established a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley at three locations in Illinois and Mississippi. Emmett Till was the black Chicago teenager who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of booing a white woman in Mississippi.
There is still a petition on the table to designate the Greenwood area in north Tulsa, Oklahoma – the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre – as a national monument. This also applies to the proposal to build a monument along the Maah Daah Hey Trail in the Badlands of North Dakota, where tribes want to change the narrative and include stories about the land’s indigenous people.
