Saturday, February 7, 2015

40th Anniversary Commentary on the 1975 Grand Canyon National Park Act

A couple of weeks after the 1975 Park Act was signed, I gathered my thoughts about the 2+ year (or really 10-year) effort to expand the Park so that its border more accurately would portray for the public and the world, the extents of the Grand Canyon (length, depth, width, complexity). I then wrote a 7-page letter to Superintendent Merle Stitt to set forth in a section-by-section analysis what I thought the law meant and was meant to accomplish.  

I summarize it here along with some current thoughts. For comparison, the actual text of the Act is reproduced at http://gcfutures.blogspot.com/2012/07/grand-canyon-national-park-enlargement.html .

Each of my comments has three parts:

What the section said, in paraphrase

My 1975 comment

Where we are with all of that 40 years later
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SECTION 1
It said:
The Act was titled "Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act"

I said:
"almost a mockery", indicating quite how depressed we were about losing to the hunters and the Havasupai.

40-year thoughts:
A truer title would be "The Grand Canyon National Park and Havasupai Reservation Enlargement Act".