My December 2024 Letter to the Editors of North Dakota newspapers

Yes, the president can designate a national monument with the stroke of a pen, using the Antiquities Act. Thank you, Theodore Roosevelt, for creating that act.

Famously, TR arrived on a train and lived and ranched in the North Dakota Badlands. (Later his wife, Edith, and his sister would arrive on the train, get off the train in Medora and ride a wagon to the Elkhorn Ranch). All this in what was to become the backyards of state Sens. Dale Patten and Greg Kessel, who criticized Jim Fuglie’s letter to the editor setting “the facts straight” on the Maah Daah Hey National Monument in their recent letter. But before the U.S. Army and the railroad and the others arrived — including my Slope County ancestors — the indigenous people lived on these lands. And I have listened to them tell the stories they heard from their elders who lived and prayed on the land. Elders who were forced to relocate when Garrison Dam was built, a federal project that flooded their homelands.

President Theodore Roosevelt realized that important places ought to be remembered and protected. After significant opposition, Congress created the national park in his name, the only national park named for a president. Three-quarters of a million people visit that park every year. Now, with the creation of the new national monument, some of the more adventuresome of those visitors can see some places in the Badlands that don’t have roads, visitor centers or port-a-potties. Just critters, including cattle, and wild lands — and night skies.

The senators write, “Such a massive land designation highlights the profound implications for land use, particularly for grazing and energy exploration. These industries are critical to the economy of western North Dakota and could face severe restrictions under a monument designation.”

Sorry, senators, you know that national monument status changes nothing about the land use in these parcels scattered throughout western North Dakota. Grazing continues. Mineral development is already prohibited on these parcels. But thanks to 21st century technology, horizontal drilling allows energy companies to get any oil they want from under these lands. Shame on you for misleading the public with your false statements.

President Roosevelt understood exactly what he was doing when he created the Antiquities Act. All but three of his successors have used the act to create nearly 150 national monuments, including Presidents Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Eisenhowe, and George W. Bush. Must have been a good idea