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him in California. The obituary in the New York Times noted that R.B.R. had been the famous author of The Game Fish of North America, The Game Birds of the North, Superior Fishing, Fish Hatching and Fish Catching, and Florida and Game Water Birds—all notable conservationist accomplishments. A funeral was scheduled, and the president came to say a proper good-bye. An era had ended, but all of R.B.R.’s conservationist aspirations—everything he had stood for, except his bohemian lifestyle and his philandering—lived on in his nephew in the White House.

Following the funeral, in July 1906, President Roosevelt started planning to save both Devils Tower and Petrified Forest in the fall. The paperwork was now in order. He dashed off a note of gratitude to Congressman Lacey for championing more knolls, buttes, spurs, ruins, and ravines than anybody else in America. It was Lacey who taught Roosevelt to look at petrified logs as gems or precious stones—they were that valuable. Believing that Lacey’s methodical approach to saving antiquities was good for the republic, Roosevelt told Lacey that “certain gentlemen” were filled with a “deep sense of obligation” for all his work. This rather dull and stern Iowan, a Civil War veteran of the Mississippi River campaign, who always wore a standard-issue gray suit, had done more for America’s environmental and cultural heritage during the progressive era than anybody else. He was a giant like Gifford Pinchot, Jane Addams, or John Muir. Roosevelt suggested that these “gentlemen” wanted to name a park, a monument, or a memorial in his honor for engineering the Antiquities Act of 1906: they wanted to honor him with a mountain, forest, or canyon. The modest Lacey was amused, and he demurred. Nevertheless, Roosevelt signed “An Act to Protect Birds and Their Eggs in Game and Bird Preserves” into law that June as a tribute to Lacey.41

Encouraged now that Mesa Verde had become a national park, Lacey urged Roosevelt to use the Antiquities Act to declare the Petrified Forest a national monument. Time was short. Couldn’t the Roosevelt administration somehow circumvent the slow, tedious process of obtaining congressional approval for a national park? The miles of petrified logs, the multihued badlands, the Painted Desert, the historic buildings, and the archaeological ruins would, if preserved, be Lacey’s legacy. Roosevelt had the Department of the Interior look into it at once. Meanwhile, as the logistics were worked out, Roosevelt wanted trespassers arrested for stealing prehistoric pottery fragments or for setting off a rock slide from a hill in the Petrified Forest. Wetherill was keeping Lacey informed about any syndicates stealing wagons of petrified wood—but the small-time thief was nearly impossible to apprehend.

V

After the success of the Antiquities Act, Roosevelt’s intensity in the West increased. On June 19 he signed a joint congressional resolution enlarging Yosemite National Park by 41.67 square miles (nearly 27,000 acres)—no small clump of trees. Suddenly two of California’s crown jewels, which Roosevelt had seen on his 1903 western trek with John Muir at his side—Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove—were acquired by the Department of the Interior. But instead of being elated, Roosevelt grew concerned. Lacey was right. If Congress was so slow to act on behalf of an already established national park like Yosemite, what would it do when he introduced the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, and Mount Olympus for consideration as national parks? Would the extractors be able to prevail over the protectors during the congressional process? For a national park designation, Roosevelt needed Congress; but designation as a national monument required only determination.

An ardent believer in statehood for the Territories, Roosevelt now indicated that admittance into the Union entailed a quid pro quo—turning over natural and archaeological wonders like the Grand Canyon, the Canyon de Chelly, and the Petrified Forest to the Department of the Interior to become national monuments). This horse-trading