The Magazine of The Sierra Club
Monumental Places
If you're grateful that the Grand Canyon, Glacier Bay, and the Olympic Peninsula have been preserved as national parks, consider that these icons were once national monuments. The Antiquities Act of 1906 allows the president to proclaim areas of "historical or scientific interest" as national monuments, using a signature alone. The first to receive the honor was Devils Tower in Wyoming, designated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. One of the most recent is Berryessa Snow Mountain (second slide), protected in 2015 by Barack Obama, who also protected Fort Ord (below) along the California coast in 2012, and New Mexico's Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks in 2014 (third slide). And the largest national monument is a marine sanctuary near Hawaii, established by George W. Bush in 2006. (Only three presidents since Roosevelt have not established a monument.)
Fort Ord: California
This national monument encompasses nearly 15,000 acres of rare oak and chaparral habitat that has been prized hiking, equestrian, and cycling turf since the U.S. Army's Fort Ord closed in 1994.
Photo by Melissa Farlow
Berryessa-Snow Mountain: California
Close to the San Francisco Bay Area, America's newest national monument is renowned for hiking, hunting, and fishing and is home to California's second largest population of wintering bald eagles.
Photo by Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times
Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks: New Mexico
Perhaps the most botanically diverse range in New Mexico, the Organ Mountains, near Las Cruces, feature ferns, lichens, cacti, and moss. Their cliffs, crevices, waterfalls, and rattlesnakes evoke the Wild West.
Photo by Charles Mann
Greater Canyonlands: Utah
Surrounding Canyonlands National Park, 1.4 million acres of stunning mesas and plateaus are frequented by hikers, climbers, and rafters but vulnerable to off-road vehicles and oil and gas development.
Photo by Clayhaus Photography
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge–Polar Bear Seas: Alaska
The Arctic Refuge sustains the Porcupine River caribou herd and the largest polar bear denning area in the country. Off Alaska's Arctic shore, the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas support walrus, seals, and whales.
Photo by Art Wolfe
