Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 5:
ADMINISTRATIVE EVOLUTION

OVERVIEW OF NPS HISTORY AND NATIONAL MONUMENTS

With its establishment on August 25, 1916, the National Park Service assumed administration of the twenty-one national monuments under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. As a new federal bureau, the Park Service faced a difficult task in managing monuments. Liberal interpretation of the Antiquities Act resulted in a conglomeration of sites ranging widely in geographical diversity and theme. Under these conditions, the role of national monuments within the newly formed park system remained ill-defined. Leaders of the young agency, Stephen T. Mather and Horace M. Albright, expended most of their energy and the majority of the Service's budget on promoting national parks. To a degree, monuments furthered this goal; those of high scenic caliber were promoted to park status, while others functioned as waysides for tourists en route to the parks. Underscoring monuments' subordinate position, Congress finally allocated funding specifically for the protection of national monuments--ten years after the Antiquities Act. Even then, the allotted budget was paltry. Interior Department monuments received $3,500 to be split among all the areas, barely enough to hire caretakers. [1]

Frequently left to fend for themselves, monuments depended on volunteer custodians to guard and maintain them as best as possible. Paid a stipend of $12 per year for their "labor of love," custodians agreed to build their own quarters, and were chosen because they resided nearby and held some general knowledge of or interest in the reserve. But the presence of these first managers was sporadic, since they held responsibilities elsewhere, and this fact, coupled with the limitations of the agency's mission and funding, caused monuments to suffer from a form of benign neglect. [2]

Changes in station for monuments arrived with changes to the National Park Service in the 1930s, when the federal reorganization of 1933 and the New Deal elevated national monuments from their "secondary status" [3] to a more mainstream position within the park system. By Executive Order No. 6166, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 10, 1933, national parks, monuments, military parks, cemeteries, and memorials were consolidated for the first time under one central agency, the Park Service. Consolidation broadened the bureau's management goals. Diversity, for example, modified the two-category system, to some extent alleviating the "higher or lower" distinction between parks and monuments. New Deal programs also proved to be critical to this outcome, for they added so greatly to the Service's budget that numerous monuments received more attention from the agency, some for the first time. For many Park Service properties, the Civilian Conservation Corps was the most significant of the New Deal programs, contributing essential staffing, planning, and developments necessary to catch up on sorely needed construction and repair work. [4]

Through New Deal support, the Park Service tried to fulfill its dual mandate of comprehensive resource protection and visitor accommodations. Unfortunately, the strides made during the 1930s halted with America's entrance into World War II. Military involvement not only ended New Deal programs but also cut the Service's operating budget from $21 million in 1940 to $5 million in 1943. In similar proportions, the number of full-time employees was reduced and visitation dropped sharply. Visitation briefly rose after 1945, yet the advent of the Korean Conflict led to more lean years for NPS appropriations. When visitation did rise from its nadir of 6 million in 1942 to 33 million in 1950 and then to 72 million in 1960, the NPS System faced new problems. [5]

The exponential rise in visitors found monuments and other areas unprepared for this surge in tourism. Backlogged maintenance and development projects during the war years marked just some of the issues facing Park Service units after years of neglect. Now the same rundown facilities, deemed inadequate in the 1940s, were servicing more than five times as many people. Overcrowding, worn out roads and trails, dilapidated buildings and insufficient funding threatened park resources and diminished the quality of the visit. Overall, a weakened park system was exposed to external threats such as the proposed dam at Dinosaur National Monument in the 1950s. This "crisis" was also symptomatic of the Service's poor relations with Congress. Setting out to strengthen the System's crumbling infrastructure, defend it against external attacks, and renew the agency's independence Director Conrad L. Wirth implemented Mission 66. The decade-long rehabilitation program strove to improve resource preservation, staffing, and physical development for all park units by 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the Park Service. The end product was a more homogeneous park system, one managed through uniformly high standards. [6]

Mission 66 looked not only to the present but also to the future needs of park areas. Although activities during the 1930s formed a crucial stage in bringing monuments into the mainstream of Park Service management, the execution of Mission 66 helped complete the trend, enabling more active rather than passive management to take the lead in their administration. Thus from rather inauspicious beginnings, monuments have maintained an integral role in the National Park System. [7]