Big Hole National Battlefield Administrative History

Chapter Four:
Administration under Yellowstone National Park, Early Years (1936-1956)

In June and July of 1933, under authority vested by the Federal Reorganization Act of 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt consolidated all national parks, monuments, memorials, military parks, and eleven military cemeteries under Park Service jurisdiction. This consolidation almost doubled the number of areas in the national park system and marked a critical transition in Park Service history: the agency acquired a significant presence in the East, as well as the West, and assumed primary federal responsibility for the preservation and interpretation of America's cultural heritage. [1] Concurrently, New Deal emergency funding substantially in excess of regular appropriations allowed the Park Service to expand dramatically upon the infrastructure, staffing, and educational programs at many of the new sites. Through this concentrated and aggressive program of development, national monuments and other historic sites gained a degree of parity with the natural parks. As mandated and in a role that it embraced, the service turned to "history as well as scenery." [2]

The development of Big Hole Battlefield National Monument contradicts these general trends. The monument was western, isolated, and rarely visited. Increased funding and a heightened NPS presence offered little political advantage to an agency seeking to expand its appeal to a broad audience and its sources of funding to the eastern states. The monument was also thematically isolated from the Revolutionary War and Civil War sites that made up the vast majority of the 1933 acquisitions. Interpretation of eastern sites allowed the Park Service to take full advantage of public knowledge and interest, a rich body of literature, and the academic training and interests of those in the Historical Division of the Branch of Research and Education. In contrast, the Indian Wars remained poorly documented and poorly understood, not only by the general public but also by Park Service historians. [3]

At Big Hole, lack of knowledge of the details of the battle, the participants, and the larger war melded with discomfort with those facts that were known. Historian Hal Rothman argues that "the average American" easily understood the importance and recognized the value of Colonial Williamsburg, Gettysburg, the Statue of Liberty, and other popular eastern sites. In a process sped and underscored by Park Service focus on American achievement, these sites became "cultural validators," part of the "iconography of democracy." [4] In contrast, Big Hole Battlefield represented what Yellowstone Superintendent Roger Toll described as a discreditable chapter in American history, where even the bold drama and popular appeal of Manifest Destiny were unable to mask the tragedy of a pre-dawn assault on a sleeping village.

Other factors also conspired to check Park Service enthusiasm for Big Hole Battlefield. In order to protect the integrity of the park system from an onslaught of marginal properties, the Branch of Education defined three types of historic sites that properly belonged in the federal system: places that offered an outline of the major themes of American history; places with strong connections to the lives of famous Americans; and the locations of dramatic episodes in American history. [5] This question of significance and appropriate jurisdiction would greatly affect monument funding, interpretative efforts, and land acquisition during the early years of NPS tenure. In the absence of resolution, Big Hole would languish through the 1930s without a finalized master plan for comprehensive development and therefore without an effective claim to Depression-era emergency funding or to the labor force provided through the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) plan. [6]

As the Forest Service worked with Yellowstone personnel to facilitate the transfer of authority and to devise an immediate course of action for better site development and interpretation, Superintendent Toll reported to Director Arno Cammerer that "the first question to be determined is whether or not this battlefield is properly classified as a national monument." While Toll maintained that the site represented an important chapter in the United States' treatment of western tribes, he lacked "sufficient data to determine whether or not the Big Hole Battlefield is one of the two or three most important sites of the Indian wars" and deferred to the National Park Service Historical Division, Branch of Education, to evaluate its national significance. If NPS historians found the site representative of one of the outstanding events of American history, Toll averred, then the NPS had an obligation to appropriate "sufficient funds . . . to maintain the area in a creditable manner." Two immediate needs were an expanded land base that would include the Nez Perce camp site as well as sufficient land for camping and parking beyond the battlefield proper and a seasonal custodian/ranger to maintain it. [7] If the Historical Division declined to assign national significance to the site, then Toll recommended that arrangements be made with the State of Montana for establishment of a state park. [8]

Toll died in an automobile accident soon after his visit to Big Hole Battlefield National Monument. Upon his death, the historical evaluation of the battlefield and the initiation of active Park Service administration stalled. In June 1937 (nearly four years after the transfer of authority to the Park Service), Yellowstone Superintendent Edmund B. Rogers and Assistant Regional Landscape Architect Howard W. Baker inspected the battlefield with Ranger Marshall Ramsey. Baker filed a report to the Chief Architect.

Baker was not surprised to find the area in considerable need of cleanup work. More dead trees had fallen and some of these deadfalls had destroyed sections of the wire and lodgepole picket fences that surrounded portions of the area. In contrast, the log museum and caretaker's cabin were in good condition. Ramsey reiterated the Forest Service's offer of the cabin to the NPS and Baker recommended that "these accommodations will serve very nicely for the present time." As for boundaries, Baker suggested that an NPS historian "familiar with Indian history" visit the area and make a recommendation. [9]

The following summer, Acting Regional Historian Edward A. Hummel visited the battlefield in company with Hugh Peyton, assistant chief ranger of Yellowstone National Park. (In 1938, Peyton served as Big Hole Battlefield National Monument's first seasonal ranger since the area's transfer to the national park system. [10]) Hummel and Peyton recommended boundaries for a minimum area of 200 acres and a maximum area that would include "practically all of the battlefield and all points of interest associated with the battle." Hummel and Peyton only hinted at the potential difficulty of acquiring private lands within the maximum area, stating that the minimum area was entirely within the national forest. [11]

During the winter of 1938-1939, NPS Director Arno Cammerer and his advisors determined that the battlefield lacked national significance and therefore recommended the more modest boundary expansion to the Secretary of the Interior. [12] As a result, on June 29, 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Presidential Proclamation No. 2339, expanding the monument boundaries from 5 acres to 200 acres, including "public lands within the Beaverhead National Forest . . . contiguous to the said national monument and . . . necessary for the proper care, management, and protection of the historic landmarks" (see Appendix A [13]). As defined by Cammerer and Hummel, the additional 195 acres provided the minimum acreage necessary for effective administration and incorporated "the major portion of the battlefield and a sufficient buffer strip to allow adequate protection and provide a site for utility buildings." The expanded acreage also included a spring within the east 495 feet of the northeast quarter of Section 23, providing an adequate water supply. [14] Counter to the Historical Division's recommendations for maximum land purchase, these 195 acres did not include the Nez Perce Encampment Area or a development site of sufficient size to support a new residential complex and headquarters building. Acting Secretary of Agriculture M. L. Wilson, on behalf of the Beaverhead National Forest, concurred in the transfer of land, noting that the proclamation would add "certain [if not all] essential historical features to the present Monument area." [15]

Despite Cammerer's decision, in a November 1939 report, Yellowstone National Park Resident Landscape Architect Sanford "Red" Hill (assisted by Yellowstone Chief Ranger Hugh Peyton and Yellowstone Assistant Naturalist W. E. Kearns) recommended that the newly defined 200-acre monument again be expanded to include an additional 200 acres of private land; these recommendations accorded generally with the original maximum boundary recommendations submitted to the Director by Regional Historian Hummel. [16] This acquisition would permit infrastructure development on a hillside south of the battlefield, allowing visitors a panoramic view of the battle scene and freeing the battleground "of all evidence of development." The land acquisition would also incorporate "the most important part of the battle," the Nez Perce Encampment Area, within the monument boundaries. Only through this inclusion, Hill argued, "could the real story be presented to the people." Failure to acquire the encampment and development sites and initiation of a development plan on the basis of the smaller 200-acre tract, Hill warned, would result "in a very poorly planned national monument" beneath the Service's standards of interpretation and development. [17]

Specifically, Hill had four recommendations. First, the government should purchase the Nez Perce Encampment Area and make it a focal point of interpretation. Second, the NPS should remove Forest Service structures from the area of retreat and retrenchment of the U.S. Army (the Siege Area); the past emphasis on this area, dating to the establishment of the soldiers' monument and continuing through the Forest Service's tenure, contributed to the false impression that the battle took place "on about an acre of land." Moreover, the Forest Service development threatened to "dominate the area" and afforded a poor view of the battlefield, hampering interpretive efforts. Third, the government should purchase the bluff overlooking the battle scene, south of the existing boundary, as a construction site for a headquarters building and residential complex. Finally, the NPS should reconstruct the Nez Perce village or encampment, based on careful research and first-hand information from Nez Perce veterans. Together these changes would "provide the complete story of the Big Hole battle in an interesting and logical manner [and] the necessary Government buildings and facilities needed to handle this area [would] become very insignificant to the whole picture." Former Yellowstone Park Historian Aubrey Haines reports that the owner of the Encampment Area facilitated implementation of the plan when it offered to donate the acreage to the National Park Service. [18]

Hill's recommendation that the Nez Perce village be re-created anticipated the NPS Interpretive Division's focus on reenactments and "living history dramatizations," both significant components of the system-wide interpretive program by the 1960s. It also represented the Park Service's early interest in memorializing Nez Perce participants in the battle, by encouraging and facilitating the predominantly non-Indian monument visitors' "imaginative entry" into the peaceful pre-attack Nez Perce camp site. [19]

By February 1940, the Branch of Plans and Design and the Historical Division developed a preliminary master plan based on Hill's recommendations. While Regional Director Allen agreed that the resulting plan was "the best . . . so far submitted" he reminded Thomas Vint, Chief Architect, Branch of Plans and Design, and Ronald F. Lee, Supervisor of Historic Sites, that their proposed Big Hole development plan ignored the plan of action approved by the Director, whereby the minimum acreage would be acquired in recognition of the site's limited significance. It also suggested a degree of development that would preclude eventual state management thereby compelling the NPS to assume "indefinite" responsibility for the battlefield. Despite an inclination simply to "remind the Region of the Director's instructions and plan of action and [request] that they comply with them without further elaboration," Allen instead deferred to Vint and Lee: "if either Mr. Vint or Mr. Lee consider the area of enough importance to follow the ideal plan of the technical representatives, the initiative must be taken by their Branches." [20]

If the Branch of Historic Sites or the Branch of Plans and Design assumed the initiative, they did so quietly and slowly. In his preliminary approval of the 1942 Master Plan for Big Hole Battlefield National Monument, Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Rogers confirmed that all development plans for the monument were to be "predicated on the decision to restrict all development within the existing boundaries of the area." Recommendations, however, "to extend the boundaries, as proposed by the Branch of Plans and Design and the Branch of Historic Sites to include the entire battlefield area" would remain a matter of record. [21]

Despite this apparent stalemate, debate over Big Hole Battlefield National Monument's boundaries continued to define all substantive discussions of monument development and interpretive efforts. In 1945, Region II Director Lawrence C. Merriam classified Big Hole Battlefield National Monument as a Class 2 area: "areas which need boundary revisions, and for which the information relating thereto is complete enough so that only minor field work, if any, is needed before recommendations can be prepared." Hummel and Hill's recommendations of six years earlier, Merriam argued, provided the information needed for expedient adjustment. Only a survey was "necessary in order to accurately establish the proposed boundary lines and ownership of the tracts involved." [22] Director Newton B. Drury, who had succeeded Cammerer in 1940, disagreed, citing the need for "studies necessary to thoroughly evaluate the historical significance of the area . . . before boundary studies could be resumed." Again the process stalled. [23]

The effects of this continued disagreement and continued study on Big Hole development were dramatic. The New Deal era was one of unprecedented growth of the national park system. Under the auspices of the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) plan, five federal programs provided an abundance of low-cost, skilled and unskilled laborers to federal land-management agencies. By 1940, emergency appropriations to the Park Service totaled $218 million, almost twice the $132 million in regular appropriations. NPS staffing increased accordingly, with a dramatically expanded cadre of historians, museum specialists, and landscape architects charged with developing a comprehensive vision for each unit and integrating that vision with specific plans and specifications for development. In the absence of a comprehensive development plan, Big Hole Battlefield National Monument was unable to capitalize on these opportunities. Seasonal ranger Warren L. Anderson alluded to this failure in 1952, when he complained that the primary directional sign to the monument appeared "homemade, crude . . . National Monuments generally have such signs finished in rustic and emplaced in cement and stone." The pattern of neglect continued through Service-wide World War II restrictions on construction materials, manpower, and visitation. In 1950 Yellowstone Superintendent Edmund Rogers reported that "since taking over the area in 1933 the Park Service has not been able to make any important developments and has relied on the Forest Service for many favors." [24]

A master plan for Big Hole Battlefield was not approved until 1962 and would not be implemented until 1963. In the interim and in the absence of clear directive, Yellowstone National Park provided a "seasonal ranger historian on a short-term basis" and miscellaneous technical support as needed. [25] To frequent requests from visitors for better signage, an expanded museum facility, improved site interpretation and curation, and increased protection of the Encampment and Twin Trees areas, the Park Service consistently replied: "at present there are not sufficient funds available to do anything in this area other than to keep it clear and in as good physical condition as possible. The National Park Service will continue to do all it can to prevent vandalism and protect the historical features of the area." [26] The impact of disagreement of the merits of the site and the inevitable impacts upon funding and physical development went unstated. This stop-gap response defined the first 20 years of NPS administration.