The Antiquities Act, enacted in 1906, was the United States’ first federal law recognizing the importance and value of the places and objects that represent the country’s history and prehistory. The act provided for protection of archaeological and historic sites, and gave the President authority to establish national monuments to help preserve and protect these important areas. The 59th Congress passed the act, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law on June 8, 1906. As some of the first major archaeological sites where the need for protection and preservation was recognized, the cliff dwellings in southwest Colorado were a significant catalyst for the law’s passage.
Reasons for the Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act was born largely of the United States’ westward expansion in the nineteenth century. The public lands encompassing a significant part of this new territory contained an abundance of archaeological resources, previously unknown and untouched by the encroaching Anglo settlers. Archaeology as a scientific pursuit was still far in the future. A growing market for antiquities drove the plundering of archaeological sites to enrich collectors, stock museums, and line mantles with relics from the past. The American Southwest was hit especially hard once it was discovered that many of the area’s sheltered cliff dwellings, protected from the elements, preserved many perishable and fragile artifacts that would have otherwise disappeared long ago. The country’s attitude toward Native Americans did not help. White Americans perceived these sites and artifacts the same way they saw the Native Americans who occupied much of the western United States—as a hindrance to expansion and development.
This attitude began to change in the late 1800s, in part as a conservation ethic began to take hold, primarily in the newly “discovered” west. The establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 was part of this shift. Certain federal agencies as well as entities such as the Smithsonian Institution began to explore and document the exceptional and spectacular archaeological sites in the Southwest and elsewhere. Places such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were becoming known. The need to protect these places to foster an understanding of past cultures and the nation’s history began to take precedence over the idea that such places were simply a source of marketable artifacts.
In 1888, the Association for the Advancement of Science issued a call for federal protection of archaeological sites on federal land. This resulted in the designation of Casa Grande National Monument in what would eventually be Arizona. This step had little overall effect, as it protected only one site, but it was perhaps the tipping point in a momentum shift toward broader protection.
Over the next few decades, public exhibitions, university museums, and scientific and popular publications brought these archaeological resources further into the public eye. This publicity fed a hunger for artifacts and continued to exacerbate the problem of damage to sites. If these sites were to be protected, action at the federal level was becoming a critical need. The Antiquities Act of 1906 was the culmination of a desire to protect and preserve these places.
Sections of the Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act is quite short, consisting only of four brief sections, and has been amended once. Section 1 makes it illegal for anyone to “appropriate, excavate, injure, or destroy” an archaeological or historic site or “any other object of antiquity” and describes penalties for violating the act.
Section 2 gives the president of the United States the authority to create national monuments on federal land for the purpose of protecting “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.” The creation of a national monument is sometimes referred to as a “withdrawal” of public lands, meaning removal of some formerly allowed uses and application of greater protections.
Section 3 provides a means by which qualified institutions could be granted permits by federal agencies for the excavation of sites or the gathering of artifacts. Work done for the benefit of “reputable museums, universities, colleges, or other recognized scientific or educational institutions” had to be undertaken with the intent of increasing knowledge of history and prehistory. Finally, it provides that anything collected from these efforts be permanently stored at a public museum.
Section 4 grants the secretaries of the various federal departments the authority to make rules and regulations defining how they will carry out the provisions of the Act.
Two changes to the Antiquities Act have been enacted. Both place restrictions on the president’s power to create national monuments (Section 2) and followed politically divisive instances of presidential use of the act for this purpose. The first, by amendment of the Act in 1950, added a requirement for congressional approval of any creation or expansion of national monuments in Wyoming. The second, contained in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980), placed a requirement for congressional approval of any land withdrawals in Alaska in excess of 5,000 acres, including withdrawals under Section 2 of the act.
Presidents and Section 2
Though the Antiquities Act was the formal start of the United States’ effort to protect its historic and archaeological resources and was the progenitor of most of the laws currently used for that purpose, perhaps its most lasting and most visible legacy lies in the power granted to the president in Section 2. Sixteen of the nineteen presidents who have served since the enactment of the Antiquities Act have used it to either create or expand existing national monuments. Only Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush declined to exercise this power. The first president to do so was, not surprisingly, President Theodore Roosevelt, who waited less than four months after signing the law to establish Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. Roosevelt went on to establish seventeen more national monuments. President Jimmy Carter set aside the most area, about 56 million acres, primarily in Alaska. As of this writing, President Barack Obama has used Section 2 of the act to create or enlarge nineteen national monuments.
Colorado and the Antiquities Act
Late nineteenth-century events in Colorado, primarily in the Mesa Verde area, were instrumental in the passage of the Antiquities Act. Gustaf Nordenskiöld, a Swede with a family history of scientific interest and exploration, came to southwest Colorado, met up with rancher Richard Wetherill, and toured the area’s cliff dwellings. Unfortunately as a result of this, many artifacts were shipped overseas, ending up in the National Museum of Finland.
Local interest, in the form of the newly established Colorado Cliff Dwellers Association—a women’s organization—undertook the formidable task of moving the building stones of Ancestral Puebloan structures from Montezuma County to be reconstructed near Manitou Springs. Though this was done with the best intentions, the impact on this site from an archaeological perspective was tragic. On the other hand, lobbying by the leaders of the organization helped spur the passage of the Antiquities Act.
Colorado has had ten national monuments established under the Antiquities Act. Nine of these remain today as national monuments or national parks or preserves. Holy Cross National Monument is the only one that was subsequently abolished; those lands reverted to the US Forest Service and are now part of White River National Forest.
Table 1.
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National Monuments Established under the Antiquities Act in Colorado
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National Monument
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Year Established
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President
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Adjustments
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Colorado
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1911
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Taft
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Boundary enlarged or modified under Antiquities Act authority by Hoover (1933) and Eisenhower (1959)
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Dinosaur
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1915
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Wilson
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Yucca House
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1919
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Wilson
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Hovenweep
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1923
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Harding
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Boundary enlarged or modified under Antiquities Act authority by Truman (1951, 1952) and Eisenhower (1956)
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Holy Cross
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1929
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Hoover
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Abolished by Congress and land reverted to the US Forest Service in 1950
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Great Sand Dunes
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1932
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Hoover
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Boundary modified under Antiquities Act authority by Eisenhower (1956); redesignated a National Park and Preserve by Congress in 2000
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Black Canyon of the Gunnison
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1933
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Hoover
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Boundary enlarged or modified under Antiquities Act authority by F. Roosevelt (1938, 1939) and Eisenhower (1960); redesignated a National Park by Congress in 1999
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Canyons of the Ancients
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2000
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Clinton
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Chimney Rock
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2012
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Obama
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Browns Canyon
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2012
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Obama
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The Antiquities Act Today
The Antiquities Act today is used almost exclusively by presidents to set aside places as national monuments. Its role in legal protections for archaeological and historic sites waned considerably in the 1970s due to unfavorable court rulings in several cases where the federal government sought conviction of looters and vandals under the act. In these cases, the courts ruled that the act was too vague.
Since the Antiquities Act lacked teeth for robust legal protection of sites and artifacts, a second generation of laws was written to better protect cultural resources. These include, among others, the Historic Sites Act (1935), National Historic Preservation Act (1966), National Environmental Policy Act (1969), Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act (1974), Archaeological Resources Protection Act (1979), Abandoned Shipwrecks Act (1987), and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990). The Archaeological Resources Protection Act is probably the closest to restating the intention of Section 1 of the Antiquities Act: protecting America’s “antiquities” in all their forms.
