Just 24 years and a month separated Senator Hoar's petition to save Pecos and the passage of a law that protected the archaeological resources on "all lands owned or controlled by the United States.
The previous efforts of the General Land Office to provide temporary protection for ruins was ratified by Section Two of the new law, which authorized the establishment of national monuments. Richards had wanted the language of Section One of the act to include objects of "natural wonder" as well as those of antiquity, but the phrase "and other objects of historic and scientific interest" in Section Two resulted in an interpretation that amounted to about the same thing.
Although the law was titled the Antiquities Act, potential national monuments did not have to be exclusively archaeological to qualify Lee 74, p. For example, the first monument to be proclaimed was Devil's Tower in Montana and the fourth was Petrified Forest in Arizona, one of Lacey's favorite places Lubick It was one of the first areas given temporary protection by the General Land Office Hewett c: Let your members of Congress know that you care about the fate of this act.
Learn how you can help protect the Antiquities Act with our 10 Tips for Lobbying for Preservation toolkit. Learn more about places that matter and how you can play a role in saving them.
Sign up today. Antiquities Act Stories. Updates October 11, September 18, Its provisions have done much to foster the development of the professions of archeology, anthropology, and historic preservation in the United States. The Act was the first law to enable the creation of large-scale nature reserves for scientific rather than scenic or economic reasons.
In fact, over the past 30 years practically the only large-scale nature reserves to be created by the federal government have come as the result of monument declarations under the Antiquities Act. The Act established the power of the president to proactively preserve important cultural sites and natural areas up to and including large landscapes of ecological value that are threatened with degradation or outright destruction.
Enactment of the Antiquities Act followed a year effort to ensure protection of American archaeological sites and other historic, natural, and scientific resources. The act also stands as an important achievement in the progress of conservation and preservation efforts in the United States. Its passage involved. Although the Antiquities Act proved to be a means of overseeing and coordinating educational and scientific archeological investigations on federal and Indian lands, it did not effectively prevent or deter deliberate, criminal looting of archeological sites on those lands.
Problematic for many years, this situation became critical in the s when several attempts by federal land managing agencies and prosecutors in the southwest to convict looters using the Antiquities Act resulted in disastrous court decisions.
In two cases judges ruled that the terms of the act were unconstitutionally vague and therefore unenforceable Collins and Michel This situation led to a concerted effort by archeologists and preservationists, their allies in the law enforcement community and several essential supporters in Congress to strengthen the legal protection of archeological resources.
The eventual outcome was a new statute, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of , rather than an amendment of the Antiquities Act. Francis P. Its passage involved a whole generation of dedicated effort by scholars, citizens, and members of Congress More important, this generation, through its explorations, publications, exhibits, and other activities, awakened the American people to a lasting consciousness of the value of American antiquities, prehistoric and historic.
This public understanding, achieved only after persistent effort in the face of much ignorance, vandalism, and indifference, was a necessary foundation for many subsequent conservation achievements. Among them were several of great importance to the future National Park Service, including the establishment of many national monuments, development of a substantial educational program for visitors, and eventually the execution of a far-reaching nationwide program to salvage irreplaceable archaeological objects threatened with inundation or destruction by dams and other public works and their preservation for the American people Lee
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