Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 3:
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

MONUMENT MOVEMENT

Positive perceptions of the volcanic landscape reflected a growing trend in American culture and the course of conservation history during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More Americans were becoming aware of their natural and cultural heritage. They invested monumental scenery with a sense of national identity and pride, and faced with the relentless disposal of the public domain, they rallied to save the most magnificent scenic sites as national parks, beginning with Yellowstone in 1872. As scientists related the significance of natural phenomena to the public, these sites as well as the previously unattractive landscapes attained a higher importance. Technological advances as well increased this aesthetic appreciation. As automobiles and roads replaced wagons and trails, more Americans spent their leisure time touring the great outdoors with greater ease and enjoyment. Soon individuals were extolling the strange beauty and scenic wonders of places like Craters of the Moon. And out of these changing perceptions evolved the concept of preserving the area as a national park. [19]

ROBERT W. LIMBERT'S VISION FOR CRATERS OF THE MOON

While interest in the lava fields was building, Robert W. Limbert looked beyond the immediate and envisioned Craters of the Moon as a national park. Limbert (1885-1933) was born in southern Minnesota and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. In his life, he was many things: explorer, naturalist, photographer, artist, writer, and entertainer. A flamboyant showman and gun aficionado, Limbert billed himself as "`Two-Gun Limbert,' Man from the Sawtooths." A taxidermist by trade, he moved to Boise in 1911 and worked for, and later bought out, Mrs. A.A. Austin, the city's most prominent taxidermist and furrier, in 1915. Of all his callings, however, Limbert was known best as a promoter of Idaho's natural wonders. [20]

In an era when the population of the nation's cities was expanding, he imagined Idaho's magnificent landscape as "a vacation refuge for America's urban masses." An accomplished photographer, he recorded some of Idaho's most pristine environments, including the Sawtooth Mountains and what is now Craters of the Moon National Monument between 1911 and 1933. He drew considerable attention to the state through his exhibits at San Francisco's World's Fair in 1915. Believing that tourism would replace logging and mining as the state's leading industry, Limbert modified the popular slogan "See American First" and added "Begin with Idaho." More importantly, his explorations and promotion of the Craters of the Moon region helped lead to its establishment as a national monument in 1924, thus making him perhaps the most important figure in the monument's history. [21]

Robert Limbert's advocacy for federal protection of Craters of the Moon began with his explorations of the region. With the eye of an artist, the flair of a booster, and the disposition of a latter-day explorer, Limbert was attracted to the undiscovered exotic places that would lure tourists to Idaho. And Craters of the Moon fit the bill. Tales of dwarf grizzly bears and "other strange things" existing in the "Valley of the Moon" whetted his interest and drew him to the unsurveyed lava district, a blank space in the map of southern Idaho labeled "rolling lava terrain." [22]

Limbert made two excursions in the lava country's upper reaches prior to 1920, mostly retracing I.C. Russell's routes. Convinced more peculiar phenomena awaited discovery across the entire region, he embarked on a third trip in early May of that year. Joined by Walter L. Cole of Boise, Limbert traversed the unsurveyed lava terrain on a seventeen-day exploration. Both men, accompanied by a dog, hiked north from Minidoka and trekked through eighty miles of hot, dry, and formidable volcanic plains, ending their trip at the Era Martin ranch. According to Limbert, he and Cole were the first white men to have made the rugged north-south journey. In places, they were guided across the lava beds by old Indian trails, and by doves to water in lava depressions collecting melted snow and ice. Along the way Limbert recorded sites with his camera and named prominent geological features that still bear his names: Echo Canyon, Yellow Jacket Water Hole, Blue Dragon Lava Flow, The Bridge of Tears, and Amphitheater Cave. As testimony to his feat, his trip remains, for the most part, unduplicated. [23]

This map depicts Robert Limbert's explorations of Craters of the Moon, as drawn from his 1924 National Geographic article.