Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT: THE EARLY YEARS AND THE SELF-MANAGING MONUMENT

The formation of a resource management program can be seen, for the most part, in resource management planning and through the monument's various phases of administration, providing further context for specific issues discussed later.

Formal planning for a resource management program did not occur until Mission 66, yet the theme that the monument was self-sustaining pervades the development of the monument's resource management program. Horace Albright established this precedent in the fall of 1924. After visiting the lava region, he asserted that it was worthy of Park Service protection; however, he assumed that the reserve's remoteness and impenetrable landscape secured its resources from threats such as vandalism. Albright worried more about the quality of employee guarding the monument than he did about visitors stealing rocks. [7] Thus most management activity during this period centered primarily on the development of the physical plant. And while some improvements would help manage the resources, they were done with an eye toward visitor use.

The emergency work programs during the 1930s reflected resource management issues, even though they, too, were weighted on the side of developing tourist accommodations. Custodian Albert T. Bicknell, for instance, determined that the construction of better roads, trails, and visitor facilities would contribute to the alleviation or diminishment of resource management threats.

Because of the war, by the late 1940s planning efforts that addressed resource management in any form were static. Better public access and low visitation collectively caused little in the way of irreversible damage to resources, it was believed. Like Albright some twenty years before him, Region Four Director O. A. Tomlinson summed up the situation in 1943 by remarking that the very nature of the monument's primary resource protected it from significant impacts. The formidable barrier of lava prevented serious external threats from fire and humans. Since visitors circulated through the monument by way of the unpaved road system, little stress was inflicted on the resources. From Tomlinson's perspective, these factors, as with the monument's administration in general, caused the area's resource management program to continue its nearly self-operating manner. [8]