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After President Biden's trip to designate Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado, momentum is building for more land and cultural protections across the country. President Biden on Tuesday signed a bill creating a national historic site at the Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas. The site was a segregated school for children of Mexican descent from 1906 to 1965, when schools were integrated.
Also this week, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla sent a letter to President Biden encouraging him to use the Antiquities Act to expand Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in California. The expansion would include the nearby "Walker Ridge," which stakeholders want to see renamed “Condor Ridge,” or “Molok Luyuk” in the Patwin language of local Indigenous tribes. The letter to President Biden was co-signed by eight more members of the California congressional delegation.
The effort to expand Berryessa Snow Mountain joins a growing list of potential new national monuments, including Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada and Castner Range in Texas.
The latest episode of CWP's podcast, The Landscape, is a deep dive into what makes national monuments special, and occasionally controversial. Aaron and Kate talk to author McKenzie Long about her new book, This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America’s National Monuments. Long traveled to 13 national monuments across the country to write the book.
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As a nation, we must face the wrongs of our past in order to build a more just and equitable future. The ugliness of the segregation era had many impacts that we have failed as a nation to adequately acknowledge. This new designation will help us tell a truer American story, and ensure this important and painful chapter in our nation’s history is preserved and remembered for the generations to come.”
