Meanwhile, President Roosevelt, by a series of executive orders, created the Resettlement Administration, an independent agency, and transferred to it the land and related activities of the FERA. The Resettlement Administration operated until the end of 1936 when its powers, functions, and duties were transferred to the Secretary of Agriculture. Later, the name “Resettlement Administration” was changed to the Farm Security Administration.[129] The work of appraising, securing options on, and purchasing private lands, begun under the submarginal land program of the FERA, continued under the Resettlement Administration. In a 1935 letter to Assistant NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth, Senator Norbeck pointed out some of the problems and drawbacks of the land acquisition program by writing: The land varies a great deal in quality, and the poor lands are being obtained for the scheduled price, but the good lands are not. He went on to say that A very large percentage of this land, maybe thirty to fifty per cent, is on the tax delinquency list, with about four years of taxes. The price offered is less than the taxes held against the land, and the owner is not anxious to sell if he cannot get a nickel out of it.... Considerable of these lands, however, have already been abandoned by the owner on account of the amount of taxes due.[130] Counties were reluctant to sell land to the federal government because this would mean withdrawal from the tax lists, thus reducing the counties’ incomes. Norbeck recommended that the federal government pay more for the land by a “boost of one dollar an acre....”[131] Meetings were being held in various parts of the region to protest the low prices being offered.[132] The desperate situation of the times was expressed well in a letter dated September 2, 1935, from a local rancher’s wife who wrote: After 6 years [of] crop failures on the so called submarginal land of Western South Dakota we are facing financial disaster unless we sell our land to the government.[133] [Illustration: Figure 18 CEDAR PASS WINTER WONDERLAND] During the same month, the average price being offered per acre was $2.85.[134] To gain Congressional approval for the boundary extension of the proposed Badlands National Monument, the proponents secured the attachment of a rider to the Taylor Grazing Bill revision authorizing the enlargement. The grazing bill was vetoed in 1935 although there was no opposition to the rider.[135]