June 6, 2020

Proposed National Monuments

By roadsrus

According to Wikipedia, there are 16 proposed new national monuments, but their prospects are fluid.  Sometimes National Monuments become National Parks, like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.  The path to a new national monument or park requires executive and/or legislative pushing.   Barak Obama was a pusher but got into trouble for backing Bears Ears, 2 buttes in Utah.  This area might be designated untouchably Native American and left alone, remain a National Monument, or be incorporated into Canyonlands National Park.  All but one of the 16 proposed are in The West.  The one that is not, West Virginia’s “Birthplace of Rivers”,  might skip national monument status and automatically become a National Park.  Stay tuned.

The Trump Administration has already proposed 3 new national monuments in Montana, Kentucky, and Mississippi, and two of them have been declared National Monuments.  Actually, 27 new sites are under review and 10 existing ones face modification, like the million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante area of Utah that is already a controversial National Monument.  News about this doesn’t usually get national attention until some concrete action is pending.   I knew that Barak Obama was active in this regard but did not know that Donald Trump is also.  The National Monument in northwest Montana that is being considered is called Badger-Two Medicine.  This is in Blackfoot territory and tied to their creation story.  Will it become a new National Monument?  Civil Rights icon Medgar Ever’s home in Jackson, MS became a National Historic Landmark in February, 2017.  On 3/12/19 it became a National Monument.  Camp Nelson in Nicholasville, KY was the scene of a Union Army Hospital during the Civil War.  This seems like a natural National Monument kind of place and was declared so on 10/26/18.

The one I am personally most excited about is in the Bodie Hills.   In California near Mono Lake, the proposed Range of Light National Monument named in honor of John Muir, would be near Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park.

Hank

PS  The bottom 2 photos were taken in South Dakota’s Badlands and the top one in Big Bend National Park in Texas, the only NP with its own complete mountain range inside it.  I’ll probably use National Monument photos in the final NP blog tomorrow.

About roadsrus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roadsrus
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2020 at 9:30 pm and posted in National Parks and Monuments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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