Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Saturday, July 5, 2025
Monday, December 16, 2024
Secretary Haaland Designates 19 New National Historic Landmarks
Secretary Haaland Designates 19 New National
Historic Landmarks
New designations recognize nationally significant sites for many historically marginalized communities across 15
states, territories, and DC
WASHINGTON — Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland
today announced the designations
of 19
new National Historic Landmarks (NHLs), reflecting
the importance of the sites in sharing America’s diverse history.
The
new NHLs are nationally significant properties for lesbian,
gay,
bisexual,
transgender and queer Americans,
African Americans, Asian American Pacific Islanders, and women’s history in addition to
moments important in development of American technology, landscape design, and
art.
“As America’s storyteller, it is our privilege at the Department
of the Interior, through the National Park Service, to tell our nation’s
history and honor the many historical chapters and heroic communities that
brought us to where we all are today,” said Secretary Haaland. “These newly designated historic
landmarks join a list of the
nation’s premier historic and cultural places, all
of which were nominated through voluntary and locally
led stewardship.”
An NHL designation is the highest federal
recognition of a property’s historical, architectural or archeological significance, and a
testament to the dedicated stewardship of many private and public property
owners who seek this designation. While the National Park Service (NPS) maintains
NHL listings, most are privately owned.
The new
NHLs join a select group of over 2,600 nationally significant places that have
exceptional value in illustrating the history and culture of the United States.
NHL theme
studies supported many of these nominations and
designations.
“The National Park Service is committed to helping preserve and
share a fuller and more inclusive account of our nation's history, a history
that is not complete until all stories are represented. These 19 newly
designated landmarks help do just that,” National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said. “We are proud to recognize these nationally
significant places representing the diversity of the American experience and
our country’s collective heritage.”
In addition to the new designations, the NPS has updated
documentation for 14 current NHLs and has withdrawn designation of three NHLs
because of demolition or destruction. View these
changes on the NHL website.
For more information about these landmarks and the National
Historic Landmarks Program, please visit https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Wednesday, October 15, 1924. Airship and a proclamation.
Proclamation, October 15, 1924
Purpose: To declare historic landmarks on military reservations as national monuments
CASTLE PINCKNEY, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
The entire area comprising 18.09 acres situated in the city of Saint Augustine, Florida.
Calvin Coolidge.
The German built dirigible USS Los Angeles arrived at Lakehurst Naval Station. It took 81 hours for the airship to travel there from Germany.
The Prince of Wales traveled from Detroit to Toronto and participated in a fox hunt.
Toronto was a very English town at the time.
Last edition:
Tuesday, October 14, 1924. The 1924 Wyoming Special Election takes sides.
Sunday, August 25, 2024
National Park Service Day.
Commorating the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, whereby the NPS relieved the United States Army, which was pretty busy with other things, of the duty of patrolling the parks (the Park Service campaign hat recalls the Army's M1911 campaign hat.
The Park Service and the parks themselves are one of the great things about the United States. If you have nothing on the plate today, and have a park nearby, go check it out if you can, unless of course you live in Utah, in which case you can sit in side your hovel and imagine a future in your state in which all the lands have been sold to big money.
Related thread:
Today In Wyoming's History: August 25, 1916. National Park Service formed.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Thursday, October 25, 1923. Carlsbad Caverns.
President Coolidge proclaimed Carlsbad Caverns a National Monument. It is now a National Park. The proclamation stated:
WHEREAS, there is located in section thirty-one, township twenty-four south, range twenty-five east, and section thirty-six, township twenty-four south, range twenty-four east of the New Mexico Principal Meridian, in southeastern New Mexico, near the town of Carlsbad, a limestone cavern known as the Carlsbad Cave, of extraordinary proportions and of unusual beauty and variety of natural decoration; and
WHEREAS, beyond the spacious chambers that have been explored, other vast chambers of unknown character and dimensions exist; and
WHEREAS, the several chambers contain stalactites, stalagmites, and other formations in such unusual number, size, beauty of form, and variety of figure as to make this a cavern equal, if not superior, in both scientific and popular interest to the better known caves; and
WHEREAS, it appears that the public interest would be promoted by reserving this natural wonder as a National Monument, together with as much land as may be needed for the protection, not only of the known entrance, but such other entrances as may be found.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States of America, by authority of the power in me vested by section two of the act of Congress entitled, “An Act for the preservation of American antiquities,” approved June eighth, nineteen hundred and six (34 Stat., 225) do proclaim that there is hereby reserved from all forms of appropriation under the public land laws, subject to all valid existing claims, and set apart as a National Monument to be known as the Carlsbad Cave National Monument all that piece or parcel of land in the County of Eddy, State of New Mexico, shown upon the diagram hereto annexed and made a part hereof, and more particularly described as follows: lots one and two, section thirty-one, township twenty-four south, range twenty-five east, and section thirty-six, township twenty-four south, range twenty-four east of the New Mexico Principal Meridian.
Warning is hereby expressly given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy or remove any feature of this Monument and not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.
The Director of the National Park Service, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, shall have the supervision, management, and control of this Monument as provided in the act of Congress entitled, “An Act to establish a National Park Service and for other purposes,” approved August twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and sixteen (39 Stat., 535) and Acts additional thereto or amendatory thereof.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done in the City of Washington this 25th day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-eighth.
The Bulgarian air force's only aircraft, the limit of the size of that force under the Treaty of Neuilly, crashed.
In the US, aviation was going better.
25 October 1923: First Lieutenant Lowell Herbert Smith and First Lieutenant John P. Richter, Air Service, United States Army, flew a DH-4B from Sumas, Washington, to Tijuana, Mexico, non-stop.
This Day In Aviation.
A major medical advance was recognized:
October 25, 1923: Banting and Best Win the Nobel Prize For the Discovery of Insulin
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Poster Saturday. Bears are dangerous.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Monday, March 15, 1943 A Wyoming Federal Reservation, Germans retake Kharkiv
The effect of this bill would be to deprive the people of the United States of the benefits of an area of national significance from the standpoint of naturalistic, historic, scientific, and recreational values,
Thursday, June 16, 2022
Yellowstone. A really radical idea.
A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.
There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer. Here's a National Park Service item on it:
Updates
- Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
- Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
- The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
- To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
- All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
- There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
- The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
- Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
- At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding.
- Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
- The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
- Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.
Here's an idea.
Don't rebuild the roads.
For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become. A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that. For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.
Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.
Well, nothing now, so to speak.
Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park. It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now. Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn. There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.
Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority. Things are much different today than they were then.
Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar. To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area. To others, it's a sort of theme park.
The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood. The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do. Early camping parties travelled there. People fished there, and still do. Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else. This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.
Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite. Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie. All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.
But they don't all have the same value.
Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness. Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it. And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.
A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.
Don't rebuilt the roads.
That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly. And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general. And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.
But that's exactly what should be done.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Ask a Ranger: First Thing First! How do you tie your ranger hat (...
Friday, August 28, 2020
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
February 26, 1919. Grand Canyon and Acadia National Parks established, Soldiers and Sailors Club finds home in Casper, Mexican Federal Troops take positions up in Juarez, Dry Frontier Days
On this day in 1919, President Wilson passed legislation creating the Grand Canyon and Lafayette National Parks. Lafayette National Park in Maine would be renamed Acadia National Park a decade later.
A Park Service item on the act and parks:
Unlikely SiblingsAcadia National Park, Grand Canyon National Park
Lots of strife was reported on in the Casper paper, but we've added this one to note the formation of the Soldiers and Sailors Club with temporary housing in the Oil Exchange Building.
That building, renamed the Consolidated Royalty Building, is still a prominent downtown Casper office building. It was a new building at that time, having been built in 1917.
In Cheyenne, Frontier Days was announced to be "Dry" for 1919.
Mexican Federal troops were reported to be taking up positions to guard American interests around Juarez.
And in Cheyenne Carey was signing new legislation as the Wyoming State Tribune was making fun of human nature and the occupation of Germany.