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]
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]
[Illustration: Figure 19 UPPER (PINNACLES)
TUNNEL, 1938
This 175-foot by 16-foot tunnel was located in the national monument
about two miles southeast of the present Pinnacles Ranger Station.
It and Lower (Norbeck) Tunnel, situated about three miles west of
Cedar Pass Lodge near the base of Norbeck Pass, were in use only
about four years before being obliterated.[140]]
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]