The History of Badlands National Monument and the White River (Big) Badlands of South DakotaMattison, Ray H.
History
The History of Badlands National Monument and the White River (Big) Badlands of South Dakota
Mattison, Ray H.
Badlands National Park (S.D.) -- History
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]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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