Grand Canyon Becomes National Monument -- January 11, 1908
On January 11, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon in northwest Arizona a national monument. Roosevelt used the American Antiquities Act of 1906 to create 18 national monuments during his presidency. The Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919.
Roosevelt was the nation's first conservationist President. Everywhere he went, he preached the need to preserve woodlands and mountain ranges as places of refuge and retreat. He used his presidential authority to issue executive orders to create 150 new national forests, increasing the amount of protected land from 42 million acres to 172 million acres. Along with the 18 national monuments, the President also created 5 national parks and 51 wildlife refuges during his tenure.
Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot heavily influenced President Roosevelt and encouraged him to make conservation a major portion of his political agenda. Pinchot, the nation's first professional forester, and Roosevelt, an avid outdoorsman, teamed up during Roosevelt's second term to push their shared progressive vision for wilderness conservation.
Conservation to these progressives, however, did not mean simply placing land off limits to development and industry. Pinchot believed that the science of forestry could make forests more productive and valuable to industry; scientific expertise could improve upon nature. Like Roosevelt, Pinchot also believed that conservation was at its core an issue of equality of opportunity, as conservation allowed for public access to land that would otherwise wastefully bring profit to a few. The pair wanted all Americans to be able to use parklands.
Pinchot was a strong advocate for more federal power to protect wilderness in the United States, particularly in the West. With his prodding, President Roosevelt secured the Transfer Act in 1905, which shifted the responsibility of managing federal forests from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture and the Division of Forestry, later remained the Forest Service. As head of the Forest Service, Pinchot staffed it with scientists, not bureaucrats, and Pinchot and his team added millions of acres of western land to federal holdings.
During the early 1900s, conservation became a new and increasingly popular agenda for the federal government, due to President Roosevelt's energetic promotion of the issue.
For more information, please visit the Theodore Roosevelt home page or go to more Events in Presidential History.
