ABSTRACT
NATIONAL MONUMENTS Albright was able to get a number of national monuments of scenic distinction. In March 1929 it was Congress, however, that provided for the establishment of the Badlands National Monument, in South Dakota, a large area of weirdly eroded and sculptured hills, fossil-bearing in places. There had been a number of efforts in Congress to establish the Badlands as a na· tiona] park. Senator Peter Norbeck of South Dakota was much interested in the project, and it was largely through his efforts that
the monument was established. His Senate bill proposed a national park, the "Teton" national park, but in a conference committee the name was changed to "Badlands" and the status was reduced to national monument. The bill as passed provided that when the privately owned lands should be acquired free of cost to the government, and when the state of South Dakota should have built thirty miles of road through the area, the President might proclaim it as a national monument. These conditions were met in about ten years, and on January 25, 1939, the monument was proclaimed.l
Two years after Badlands, in February 1931, Congress again moved at Albright's and Wilbur's recommendation, to establish the Canyon de Chelly National Monument, in northeastern Arizona, with the consent of the Navajos who owned the land. This spectacular red-rock canyon-really three canyons, de Chelly, del Muerto, and Monument-up to 1,000 feet deep, has some 500 ancient cliff ruins, some of them small, and a tragic modern history, for in the Canyon del Muerto, in 1805-6, a hundred women, children, and old men were massacred by Spanish troops while the Navajo warriors were away. Canyon de Chelly was a most worthy national monument.2 About this time Congress authorized the exchange of lands in Chaco Canyon, Craters of the Moon, and Petrified Forest, to eliminate private holdings.
