Big Hole National Battlefield Administrative History

Chapter Three:
Transfer to the National Park Service

On July 28, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 6228, transferring jurisdiction of the five-acre national monument from the War Department to the National Park Service. The executive order placed a total of 48 national monuments, battlefields, and military parks in the national park system. Most of these sites related to the Revolutionary and Civil wars and were located in the East. Only one site – Big Hole Battlefield National Monument – commemorated a battle fought in the West. It would be joined by a second, the National Cemetery of Custer's Battlefield Reservation, seven years later. Both of these battlefields of the Indian Wars were relatively inaccessible in the 1930s, and of the two Big Hole was the less renown. [48]

Following the usual procedure when a national monument was proclaimed in a remote location, the NPS assigned the area to a "coordinating superintendent" in the nearest national park. This was Yellowstone Superintendent Roger W. Toll, whose headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs was a day's drive from the battlefield. It seems that Toll had but one opportunity to visit Big Hole Battlefield National Monument before his tragic death in an automobile accident in New Mexico in February 1936. Toll sent Ranger Maynerd Barrows to inspect the national monument in August 1935 – two years after the transfer. His report on Barrows' inspection to Forest Supervisor E. D. Sandvig, dated August 8, 1935, is the earliest known document by an NPS official concerning the Big Hole battlefield. [49]

Superintendent Toll's memorandum offered the first clues as to changes of management that the Forest Service could expect following the transfer of the five-acre national monument. Toll provided an itemized list of recommendations:

1. The dead trees in and around the national monument should be cut at ground level, sawed in 15-inch lengths, and split in four blocks. Sections containing bullet marks should be preserved for museum pieces.

2. Any historic trees still standing should be left if they had a good chance of remaining upright for a number of years.

3. The two old latrines just outside the national monument should be removed, since adequate toilet facilities were provided in the Forest Service campground.

4. The bridge near the entrance to the national monument should be repaired.

5. The NPS would try to employ a summer caretaker, who would be quartered in the Forest Service caretaker's house. [50]

Toll's memorandum indicated that the NPS was interested in the land surrounding the five-acre site. It shared the Forest Service's interest in providing visitor facilities. Clearly, on the basis of Toll's memorandum, the Forest Service had to redefine its role in managing the area around the national monument.

Local Forest Service officials, meanwhile, were impatient for the NPS to do more – or at least they wanted the two agencies to negotiate what kind of presence the Forest Service would maintain there. The general appearance of the place had declined since the abandonment of the ranger station in 1929. The recreational plan completed in 1932 had never been implemented. By 1935, the ranger residence and outbuildings were partially dismantled and the structures that remained were supposed to be burned down. Forest Supervisor Sandvig described the "deplorable condition" of the station to the regional forester: "It now has the appearance of an abandoned dryland farmers' abode and presents a despicable picture to all who view it." [51] From the standpoint of local Forest Service officials, it was an awkward time to find the battlefield in limbo between two agencies.

After receiving Superintendent Toll's memorandum, Forest Supervisor Sandvig consulted with the regional forester on the prospect of an NPS employee occupying the caretaker residence. He had no objection other than the fact that he had wanted to replace the cabin with a log building farther away from the national monument. Now it seemed necessary to coordinate with the NPS before proceeding further with his improvement plan. [52]

Superintendent Toll also expressed the need for coordinated planning. In a second letter to Sandvig on August 17, 1935, Toll noted the Forest Service's longstanding effort to work for the preservation of the area even though it was not under the direct jurisdiction of the Forest Service. "We appreciate deeply the fact that you are continuing this same service now that the jurisdiction of the area has been transferred to the National Park Service," he wrote, "although our Service has as yet been unable to take any active part in administering the area." [53]

At the same time that Toll and Sandvig were establishing a connection between their two agencies, the Forest Service was moving a crew of Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees into the battlefield area to "do a general cleanup job." Toll urged Sandvig to make sure that any artifacts discovered during the cleanup were turned over to the government. "It is suggested that relics be adequately labelled together with the name of the man by whom it was found and turned in," Toll wrote. [54]

In the following months, Forest Service officials sensed that it was a propitious time to suggest boundary changes for the national monument. Ranger Ramsey advised his superior that he would be in favor of extending the boundaries of the national monument to the north, south, and west – all within the national forest. He pointed out the importance of the Nez Perce Encampment Area but noted that the land currently belonged to the Huntley Cattle Company and would have to be purchased. The landowner had cut hay in this area for a number of years and had used it for pasture since 1932. [55]

Assistant Forester V. T. Linthacum offered his views on the boundaries after inspecting the site with Ramsey in September 1935. Like Ramsey, he was in favor of transferring national forest land to the national monument so that the NPS would be responsible for all recreational development associated with the battlefield. "It all forms a single natural unit," he explained. "National Forest recreation should be found elsewhere." As for including the Nez Perce Encampment Area, Linthacum advised that that should be left up to the NPS. [56]

Linthacum offered more pointed remarks in a second memorandum. He believed the Forest Service should completely withdraw from the old Gibbon's Battlefield Administrative Site so that the two agencies would not be in each other's way. "The present monument area is entirely too restricted, both for the purpose intended and as an inducement to the Park Service to make something out of it and give it proper administration," he wrote. "If the Park Service will propose to make this a National Monument that we can all be proud of let's help things along in every possible way which does not involve or seriously inconvenience our Forest administration." [57] Forest Service actions after 1935 followed in this spirit – the following spring, Forest Supervisor Sandvig directed Ranger Ramsey to remove remaining improvements and Forest Service signs as rapidly as possible. [58]

As Forest Service involvement in the site waned, National Park Service development did not take place the way Forest Service officials had hoped and anticipated it would. Despite an enlargement of the site in 1939, Big Hole Battlefield National Monument would acquire the dubious honor of becoming a backwater unit in the national park system, a "sleepy hollow" in the words of a later superintendent. [59] That disappointment notwithstanding, the transfer of Big Hole National Monument to the Park Service was a model of interagency cooperation. In contrast to the larger scheme of Park Service-Forest Service competition in this era, Beaverhead National Forest officials hastened to facilitate a turnover of land, improvements, and visitor services to the other agency. NPS intentions for the site, and the factors that would make Big Hole of low priority in the national park system, are detailed in Chapter Four.