The Antiquities Act
What the POTUS can use the Antiquities Act for:
- Claim areas as national monuments
- Change monument boundaries
- Direct resources toward monument management
- Re-designate monuments as national parks
Many Presidents have used this act for various reasons. The Act itself was created in 1906. Sixteen Presidents have used this act to designate national monuments and since its creation only three presidents haven’t used it, including Nixon, Reagan, And George H.W. Bush.
Not only can the POTUS claim national monuments, but congress as well.
“The Antiquities Act was the first United States law to provide general protection for any general kind of cultural or natural resource. It established the first national historic preservation policy for the United States “It took 25 years of work to enact the Antiquities Act. Though the 19th century interest in the archeological remains of the United States grew, much of the interest in American archeological sites was focused on the Southwest.One of the most important success of the Antiquities Act was the setting aside of Casa Grande Ruin as the first national archeological reservation in 1892. American archeology grew to be more popular and this was joined by a commercial demand for authentic prehistoric antiquities which lead to a rise in the looting of the valuable archeological sites. Efforts to protect specific archeological grew to become more frequent. At once these efforts culminated in President Theodore Roosevelt signing the Antiquities Act into law on June 8, 1906."
For this website we are going to go over the importance and the value of the Antiquities act. Along with that were are going to go into depth about the The Antiquities Act was created in order to to reserve power to the president of the united statutes to claim public lands or other archeological site as monuments or state/national parks. Ever since it's creation in the year of 1906 by Teddy Roosevelt the Act had with out a doubt done it's just and been able to have fulfilled its purpose in protecting the lands of the United States of America. The creation of this law became detrimental just around the end of the 1980's when the rising of archeological scavenging had just began to start rising at an increasingly rapid speed. Many of citizens and people of the United States began to gain interest in these study and with that archeology in the United States had began to because, to somewhat of a degree, commercialized. This incessant demand for these special antiques and other things that were gather from the sites started to become highly sought after by many people. This demand lead to some very unpleasant news for the sites. Many had began to plunder and vandalisms the sites in order to the get items they desired to either have for themselves or that they would steal and then going and sell the objects for a personal profit. These lootings put the sites in grave danger, thought Teddy Rosevelt knew just how to fix it! He created the Antiquities Act in the 1906 in order to order to give himself, the president of the United States of America, all following presidents, and congress the power to claim archeological sites and national monuments in order to protect the from being harmed.