The Shadow
Although President Barack Obama set aside the most acreage for National Parks and federal lands, President Theodore Roosevelt is credited with establishing more U.S. National Parks and Monuments in the lower 48 states.
Roosevelt, who served as President from 1901-1908, authorized 150 national forests, 51 bird reserves, four national game preserves, eight national monuments and five national parks.
He was instrumental in the passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906, and he designated 23 sites that would become part of the National Park Service that was created in 1916 during President Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
Roosevelt chose Crater Lake, Ore.; Wind Cave, S.D.; Sullys Hill, N.D.; Platt, Okla.; and Mesa Verde, Colo.; for five U.S. National Parks. Two of them have been re-designated as follows: Sullys Hill as a game preserve and Platt as part of the Chickasaw National Recreation Area.
Obama’s designations were mainly in Alaska, the largest of the 50 states, and he had Hawaii as well. Roosevelt did not have Alaska or Hawaii to deal with during his administration.
Crater Lake National Park features a six-mile-wide lake on the crest of the Cascade Range in Ore., and it has filled the caldera of a dormant volcano. The crystal clear lake measures 1,943’ at its deepest point where Mount Mazama once rose more than two miles high.
Wind Cave National Park features more than 140 miles of explored cave passageways and is filled with box-work calcite formations that have been measured as the sixth longest on Earth.
Roosevelt’s designation of Wind Cave National Park rendered it as the first national park in the world that was created to protect underground formations. The park was enlarged during The Great Depression to include an adjacent game preserve, and currently, elk, bison, black-footed-ferrets and pronghorn antelopes thrive there.
Platt National Park no longer exists because after Roosevelt’s years as President, the U.S. Government permitted the acreage to become part of the Chickasaw National Recreation Area.
Mesa Verde National Park became the first park to be designated because of man-made structures. The park protects nearly 5,000 archaeological sites that include 600 cliff dwellings dating back to 550 A.D. Ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs cut into the rocks are being protected.
Cliff Palace was once a city built into the sandstone cliffs there where 150 rooms were carved out of sandstone and a three-story tower inside a huge sandstone cavern still remains. Scientists believe that more than 100 Puebloans lived at Cliff Palace before it was abandoned for an unknown reason.
Three weeks after the Antiquities Act of 1906 passed, Roosevelt stopped the looting that was taking place. By designating the area as a National Park, the government was able to stop the removal of relics from the abandoned city.
While Alaska and Hawaii were not states during Roosevelt’s eight years in office, the two states were when President Barack Obama became the President. He leads all other Presidents by having designated 26 national monuments. President Bill Clinton edged out Roosevelt for second by designating 19 as national monuments compared to Roosevelt’s 18. Had Roosevelt had Alaska and Hawaii to consider as states, the number of national monuments he may have established in those two can never be known.
However, with the track record he established, he remains in third place as having designated the most national monuments, and Devils Tower in Wyoming became the first national monument to be designated as such by none other than Roosevelt. He did so on Sept. 24, 1906.
Thirty states and two U.S. territories have a total of 63 National Parks with Calif. having the most with 11 and Alaska close behind with eight. Hawaii has two. Therefore, Alaska and Hawaii account for 10 of the 63 national parks. Those in Alaska account for more than half of the total acreage of all national parks combined.
History remembers Roosevelt as the “Rough Rider,” and conservationists may remember him as the “father of America’s national parks” despite the fact that President Ulysses S. Grant established Yellowstone National Park as the first national park in 1872. Both were soldiers who served two terms each as President.
