Monday, March 15, 1943 A Wyoming Federal Reservation, Germans retake Kharkiv
Today In Wyoming's History: March 15: 1943 Franklin Roosevelt used executive authority to proclaim 221,000 acres as the Jackson Hole National Monument, the predecessor to today's Grand Teton National Park.
The history of the reservation dated back to 1924 when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. purchased a collection of ranches and amassed 37, 117 acres in the valley. The area was always spectacularly beautiful, but ranching conditions were generally poor. Rockefeller's intended purpose from the onset was to donate the land to the Federal Government, something which of course appealed to him but much less to locals who were scraping by in industries derived from the region's natural resources. In 1929 Rockefeller's initial donation of land went forward on a reduced basis, with only the Grand Teton National Park coming into existence. The donation was smaller as Wyoming's Congressional representation opposed the larger donation, leaving Rockefeller with 32,000 acres and an annual tax bill of $13,000.
In 1942 Rockefeller informed Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes that if the project did not go forwad, he would sell the land. This resulted in President Roosevelt's Federal reservation.
On March 19, Wyoming's Congressman Frank A. Barret introduced a bill to return the land to National Forest status. In Congress, he based his argument on preserving the grazing permits in the former Federal domain that was part of the reservation. Teton County Commissioner Clifford Hansen, who would later become Governor, and whose Mead family contributed a later Governor and other significant state politicians, also spoke against, although he was directly impacted, holding grazing permits in the area.
The bill passed both houses of Congress, but Roosevelt issued a pocket veto that contained a memorandum stating:
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,
Campaigning by conservationist deterred any further legal effort to abolish the reservation, and its being opened to grazing in 1945 due to wartime conditions somewhat allayed local fears. In 1950 the controversy was resolved through S. 3409 which merged the monument and neighboring national park, but also provided: no further extension or establishment of national parks or monuments in Wyoming may be undertaken except by express authorization of the Congress." This did not prevent later wilderness designations, which have continued to be opposed in ways that can be argued to be short-sighted.
