Part 4

The bill was reintroduced the following year and was passed. Approved June 26, 1936 (49 Stat. 1979), the law authorized the President to round out the authorized national monument boundary by proclamation within five years and stipulated that the entire area could not exceed 250,000 acres. Lands to be included must be “adjacent or contiguous thereto, ... including, but not being restricted to, lands designated as submarginal by the Resettlement Administration....”[136] This law gave the NPS sufficient flexibility in fixing a suitable boundary.

Norbeck worked tirelessly in promoting every aspect of the area’s development until his death in December 1936. He actively participated in securing aid from various governmental relief agencies for the land acquisition program of the area, and for building roads, erecting buildings, and other purposes.[137]

As early as February 1935 Governor Tom Berry of South Dakota urged Secretary Ickes to establish the national monument formally through a presidential proclamation. He pointed out that the basic conditions of Public Law 1021 had been met: (1) a 30-mile highway, built at a cost of approximately $320,000, starting at Interior and going over Big Foot Pass and on to Sage Creek, was completed in 1935 by the state and approved by the NPS; (2) the state had acquired such privately owned lands within the area as were required by the Secretary of the Interior.[138]

However, NPS Director Cammerer deferred making such a recommendation until some 9,780 acres of state lands, located within the authorized national monument boundary, had been transferred to the Service.[139]

Also, it was not until three years later, in 1938, that the United States formally accepted title to 1,395.79 acres of land donated by the trustees of the Custer State Park board who acted as purchasing agents for the State of South Dakota. Senator Norbeck had been a member of this board. The land was purchased from private owners with funds authorized by the state legislature for the expressed purpose of fulfilling partial requirements of Public Law 1021. Cost to the state was approximately $12,000 for 1,280 acres of this donated land.[141]

By early July 1938 Director Cammerer considered that South Dakota had met all the conditions of Public Law 1021. Under this act the federal government had acquired title to about 48,000 acres of the 50,830 authorized. Within the extension authorized by the act of June 26, 1936, the NPS included an additional 97,976 acres. In all, the boundary recommended by the Service included some 148,806 acres (later revised to 150,103.41, and still later revised again to 154,119.46 acres for the same amount of land[142]) of which the government owned 113,578.59 acres. Director Cammerer therefore asked the Secretary of the Interior to approve the establishment of the national monument and that a proclamation be submitted to the President for final approval.[143] On January 25, 1939, President Roosevelt formally proclaimed the establishment of Badlands National Monument.[144] It became the 77th national monument and the 151st area in the federal park system which is administered by the National Park Service.[145]

The complicated land-ownership pattern in the national monument along with grazing would plague the NPS for years. When the area was proclaimed in 1939, the NPS administered substantial tracts of land outside the national monument’s boundary. These tracts were located in the land utilization projects of the Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service. On the other hand, the SCS had land utilization tracts under its jurisdiction within the boundary.[146]

EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL MONUMENT

Under the general direction of the NPS, various relief agencies such as the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA), the Resettlement Administration, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worked on development projects in the area. Only a few scattered reports are now available on the work of these agencies. About 150 persons were employed at the area in January 1937 on such projects as resurfacing, backsloping, ditching, and grading roads.[147] This included major reconstruction of the Sheep Mountain Canyon road, completed the same year.[148]

One project of interest completed June 30, 1940 by ERA labor, under the Public Roads Administration, was the obliteration of two tunnels along the Pinnacles-Cedar Pass road. They were constructed during the first half of the 1930’s (see Figure 19) when the road was built by the State of South Dakota; the road was completed in 1935. The tunnels proved to be impractical because of inadequate width and maintenance problems.[149]

In July 1940 the ERA project in the area was discontinued. Among the types of work accomplished since July 1, 1938, when the project was initiated, were the construction of five project headquarters buildings, prospecting for water on the national monument, the development of a well near the site of the old Pinnacles Checking Station, and ten road jobs which included road construction, widening, graveling, building culverts, and banksloping. The construction of parking overlooks, and the obliteration of buildings and clearing of 16 farmstead tracts, also took place during that time.[150]

During the 12 months between July 1939 and July 1940, the ERA project employed an average of 150 relief workers.[151]

Since the national monument is located a relatively short distance from Wind Cave National Park, the older area co-ordinated the business of Badlands during its early years. On August 11, 1939, Chief Ranger Howard B. Stricklin of Wind Cave became acting custodian of the newly designated area and was later placed in charge of the local ERA and CCC projects.[152] Although the ERA project was terminated in July 1940, the CCC work continued until June 1942.[153]

When Stricklin arrived to take charge, there were no living quarters of any kind in the area. He lived at the CCC camp at Quinn Table while his family remained at Wind Cave. Temporary offices were established in Wall pending a decision regarding the location of permanent headquarters.[154]

Considerable thought was given to the selection of a headquarters site. For a time the Pinnacles area was considered.[155] However, in late 1939 it was finally decided to locate the center of operations at Cedar Pass.[156] This decision was due, in part, to the offer by Mr. Ben H. Millard, owner of Cedar Pass Lodge,

to donate approximately 28 acres of strategically located land in the Cedar Pass area to the Service to be used as a headquarters area.[157]

The Department of the Interior accepted Millard’s donation in May 1941.[158]

The decision to develop the Cedar Pass area for headquarters greatly altered development plans. The CCC enrollees numbering 207 in February 1940 were encamped at Quinn Table some 35 miles west of Cedar Pass. Since much of the development was taking place at Cedar Pass, it was necessary to drive them between these two points each day.[160]

One of the great handicaps of Cedar Pass as a headquarters area was the lack of water. To develop a satisfactory supply, the NPS found it necessary to go to the White River, three miles south. One of the major projects undertaken soon after selecting the headquarters site was to dig a trench and lay pipe to the river. Since this stream is intermittent above ground, but has a dependable subsurface flow, water was collected in perforated pipes laid on hard clay and shale about eight feet below the river bed. The pipe brought water to a sump on the river bank where it was pumped to a 100,000-gallon storage tank above the headquarters area.[161] Work was begun on this reservoir in April 1940 and completed by the CCC in September 1941. At the same time the CCC also erected a checking station at Pinnacles which Stricklin and his family occupied from November 15, 1940, until about May 15, 1943.[162]

Handicapped by the location of the original CCC camp at Quinn Table, a new camp was authorized at Cedar Pass and work on it began in June 1941. Five months later the new camp was occupied.[164]

At that time the only visitor-contact point in the Cedar Pass area was at Cedar Pass Lodge. During the summer season Mr. Millard lectured nightly to lodge guests on the geologic history of the Badlands, thereby initiating interpretive programs. He also showed movies of the Badlands and other scenic areas. A temporary park ranger, who checked travel in the Cedar Pass area during the day, took part in the evening programs.[165]

The problem of stock grazing in the national monument grew increasingly worse during the 1940’s. The acting custodian complained early in 1940:

Until the boundary is fenced and we are in a better position to know what is private and what is monument land, there appears to be very little that can be done to prevent this.[166]

In December 1941 he wrote in a similar vein:

During past winters it has been the practice of local stockmen to allow herds of horses and cattle to drift into the monument area to graze unrestrictedly over public as well as private lands and along the monument highways. There is such a large amount of private and county-owned land within the monument boundaries (31,000 acres out of a total of 150,000) that it is difficult to restrain stock from grazing on National Park Service land as well as on the land that is owned or leased by private individuals.[167]

It soon became obvious that Badlands National Monument would be a popular attraction because of its location near U.S. Highways 14 and 16, both well-known national highways going through the Black Hills. In 1941 there were 70.02 miles of road in the national monument. Of this, 61.52 miles were constructed by the state and 8.5 miles by the federal government; 29.87 miles were graveled and 40.15 were dirt roads.[168]

Although the roads through the area were only partially developed, thousands of travelers turned off the through highways to view the scenic Badlands.

Stricklin reported in September 1941:

More than a quarter of a million visitors had passed through Badlands National Monument by the close of the travel season on September 30, representing an increase of approximately 30 percent over the previous year, for the period during which an actual count was made.[169]

The entrance of the United States into World War II in December 1941 had a great impact on the area and its operations. Since many of the CCC enrollees would be absorbed into the armed forces, the project work soon came to an end. The acting custodian reported in the spring of 1942, “On March 25, after two years and five months of productive work in Badlands National Monument, CCC Camp Badlands, NP-3 [located at Cedar Pass], was abandoned.”[170] Work was continued on several projects undertaken at Camp Badlands by a CCC side camp with the view toward completing the projects or leaving them “in such condition that the facilities involved may be used, and the materials, all of which have been on hand for some time, may be protected against deterioration and loss.”[171] However, the side camp was also closed in the following June, leaving practically all of the construction projects in various states of completion.[172] In December 1942 most of the CCC buildings at Cedar Pass were dismantled and removed by the armed services.[173]

Another result of the nation’s entrance into the war was a sharp drop in visitors to the Badlands. Stricklin wrote in June 1942 that “Most of these visitors appeared to be genuine vacationists ... [who] had a vacation coming, and were trying to get it in before gas rationing became nation-wide.”[174] He estimated that travel in March 1943 was 87 percent under that for March 1942, and that “All foreign [out-of-state] visitor cars stopping for information were headed for defense jobs, or were military personnel, changing their headquarters from one part of the country to another.”[175] The effect of the war on travel to the national monument is reflected in the travel figures of the area for the years from 1941 to 1945. (See Appendix A.)

Efforts at the national monument during the war were devoted largely to preventive maintenance. Changing his headquarters from Pinnacles to Cedar Pass in June 1943, Stricklin was able to give closer attention to the headquarters area.[176] Such routine tasks as filling washouts, cleaning ditches, reclaiming gravel, cutting roadside weeds, repairing guard rails, cleaning up debris, and temporary patching of roads occupied most of the staff’s time. Other tasks, such as repairing water lines, painting signs, keeping the buildings in repair, and servicing and repairing the area equipment also required much attention.[177] The cottage that the custodian and his family rented from Millard at Cedar Pass was destroyed by fire on November 27, 1943.[178]

During the ten years following the end of World War II, there was slow progress in the area’s development. Work on the custodian’s residence at Cedar Pass, begun in 1941, was completed in 1946.[179] Early in 1953 two additional houses, both prefabricated, were completed.[180] In January 1948 commercial power was brought to Cedar Pass and Interior with the completion of a single-phase power line by the Rural Electrification Administration.[181] The Northwestern Bell Telephone Company extended telephone service to the national monument headquarters in September 1952.[182] (This service was officially taken over by the Golden West Telephone Cooperative, Inc., in October 1960.)[183]

During the travel seasons of 1946 and 1947 there was much adverse criticism of the national monument roads. The maintenance equipment was in poor condition and usually undergoing repairs when most needed.[184] In the summer of 1948 about 4 miles of road was black-topped between the Cedar Pass junction and Norbeck Pass; this represented the first paving of U.S. Route 16A in the national monument.[185] The present northeast entrance road, about 3½ miles long, was completed in October 1951. It opened up a new area of the Badlands known as the Window Section.[186] This road was made possible by the donation in 1946 of a 160-acre, strategically located land parcel by Mr. Ben Millard who had purchased it from Jackson County in March 1941 for this purpose.[187]

During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s buildings constructed as temporary structures in the ERA and CCC period were remodeled and continued in use for headquarters and utility purposes.[188]

Both the grazing and the land ownership problems at the national monument were compounded by the war. With increased rainfall in the region during the decade of the 1940’s and the rising price of beef, the situation of the ranchers greatly improved. Under a plan suggested by Congressman Case in January 1943 to help in the “Beef for Victory Program,” the Service authorized for the first time in April the issuance of grazing permits on federally owned grasslands within the national monument. Under this program, the lands were divided into seven grazing units. An orderly grazing plan was established with the cooperation of the Soil Conservation Service.[190] Stricklin was able to identify and locate all cattle and sheep outfits that claimed to be using the national monument lands in conjunction with their SCS allotments.[191] Following the war authorized grazing remained one of the area’s major management problems for over a decade.

Stricklin wrote about an interesting sidelight of the grazing problem:

The roundup and disposal of several hundred head of unclaimed and so-called wild horses in the Sage Creek basin was a source of much concern on the part of both ranchers and the Custodian, the ranchers claiming the wild stallions were enticing away their mares. The Custodian’s concern was partly because of the damage these herds were doing to the range, but largely because it was practically the only program of any kind on which the National Park Service and the ranchers could even remotely agree. Several roundups were collaborated in, during which the herds were drastically reduced. Airplanes were used on at least one of the roundups to flush horses out of the canyons and keep them from breaking back on their route to Scenic and the loading chutes. Jack and Mamie Close, ranchers on Quinn Table, were the leaders among the ranchers in this work.[192]

Feral horses were eventually eliminated through roundups and returned to their owners. The last roundup took place in the national monument in 1963.[193]

With the improvement of their lot, many ranchers who had been destitute only a few years earlier were in a position to purchase county lands within the national monument boundary. The custodian reported in April 1943 that practically all such land within the boundary was leased for grazing and that much of it was recently bought by sheep and cattle ranchers.[194] In 1946 Stricklin reported a considerable change in land ownership where much of the land formerly controlled by Pennington County had passed into private ownership.[195] Later the same year Jackson County auctioned all of its 3,000 acres of land within the boundary to private individuals. Practically all of the 14,000 acres which was owned by the two counties two years earlier had passed into private ownership.[196]

The location of the boundary had been a subject of discussion since the national monument was established in 1939. The area contained a large acreage of grassland which the Soil Conservation Service believed should be released for grazing purposes. There was also overlapping jurisdiction between the two federal agencies.[197]

After several years of study, the NPS and the SCS arrived at an understanding on the national monument boundary and mutual land problems. In 1946 the two agencies signed an agreement known as Recommended Program of Procedure for boundary adjustment of Badlands National Monument. The NPS agreed:

(1) to transfer to the Soil Conservation Service NPS lands outside the existing national monument boundary in order to compensate for 1,220 acres the SCS had turned over for inclusion in the national monument prior to its establishment in 1939;

(2) to transfer to the SCS equivalent lands (computed on a livestock-carrying-capacity basis) for lands that were to be acquired from the SCS by the NPS as the result of revised boundary studies;

(3) to transfer to the SCS federal lands which the NPS planned to eliminate from the national monument to use in exchange for non-federal lands remaining in the national monument after the boundary changes were made.[198]

The plan made it possible to transfer, without legislation, 3,678.19 acres of NPS lands lying outside the park boundary to the SCS. This was done by order of the Secretary of the Interior in July 1949.[199] These lands were acquired under the Resettlement Administration program and, in 1936 were transferred to the NPS. When Badlands National Monument was established in 1939, these lands were not within the boundary.[200]

In order to carry out the main objectives of the plan, Congressional action was necessary. In 1950 bills (H.R. 7342 and S. 3081) were introduced in the 81st Congress by Representative Case and Senator Chandler Gurney to implement the proposed land exchange. H.R. 7342 was passed by the House without amendment, but later the bill died in the Senate. The senate bill (S. 3081) was not considered.

In 1951 Senator Francis H. Case, who had just been elected to that office, and Congressman E.Y. Berry introduced identical bills (S. 896 and HR. 3540) in the 82nd Congress. These were similar to the ones proposed a year earlier. Berry’s bill passed the House on July 2, 1951, without amendment. The House Act was referred to the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, which recommended that section five of H.R. 3540 be dropped. This section would have provided authority to include 4,000 acres of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Sheep Mountain area provided certain conditions were met. The committee believed “that a satisfactory solution should be worked out with the Tribal Council of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Indians, and any others interested, before legislation with regard to these lands is enacted.”[201] The bill in its amended form, including another minor change recommended by the committee, passed the Senate on January 24, 1952.[202]

Area authorized in 1929 (dashed line) 50,830.40 acres Area upon establishment in 1939 154,119.46 acres Area after changes of 1952 122,642.52 acres Area after changes of 1957 (heavy line) 111,529.82 acres

Acreage figures are latest available and may be different from figures which were current during each of the four times the park boundary has been redesignated. Because of these acreage revisions, additions to and deletions from the park do not total correctly.

Badlands National Monument South Dakota

One section (1 mile square—640 acres) Eliminated in 1952 31,442.52 acres Added in 1952 4,449.29 acres Eliminated in 1957 11,234.09 acres Added in 1957 241.39 acres

Shortly afterwards on February 8, telegrams were sent to Congressmen Berry, Senator Case, and Senator Karl Mundt by the executive committee of the tribal council of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The messages urged the congressmen to do their best to get Section 5 restored so it would be possible for the tribe to negotiate with the federal government for exchange of the land in the Sheep Mountain area for other lands.[204] The House, however, did not heed this resolution but voted instead to concur with the Senate’s amended version. The bill became Public Law 328 after being signed by President Harry S Truman on May 7, 1952.[205]