Despite the objections of the Service to the Senator’s park proposal, Norbeck’s continued desire for a national park in the Badlands was stated in a letter written in November 1927 to Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior:
The Congressional delegation from this state will be united in an effort to create a Bad Lands National Park in South Dakota. If this is impossible they will desire to have certain areas set aside as national monuments.[92]
In April 1928 Norbeck wrote Representative Williamson asking him to help draft a bill for the park. The first part of the bill, Norbeck indicated, would “include the Badlands Wall proper, from a point about 4 miles east of Interior to a point 12 or 14 miles southwest of Wall.”[93] The establishment of the park would be contingent on the building of a road by the State through the proposed area and the State acquiring 90 percent of the privately owned lands within it. The second part of the bill would authorize a national monument which would include Sheep Mountain and the surrounding area, some six to seven miles southwest of Scenic. The authorization of this area would be conditional upon the construction of a highway from Scenic to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and acquisition of the lands within the proposed monument by the State of South Dakota. The third portion of the bill would authorize the abandonment of Wind Cave National Park![94]
The bills as finally presented to Congress by Norbeck and Williamson were somewhat different from the one which the Senator planned.
During the first session of the 70th Congress, Norbeck and Williamson introduced identical legislation in their respective houses on May 8, 1928, to set aside the Badlands as a national park. Norbeck introduced S. 4385, “A Bill To establish Teton National Park in the State of South Dakota....” The bill authorized the Secretary of the Interior, through negotiation, to exchange privately owned lands within the proposed park for public lands of equal value outside. The bill contained a provision that when 90 percent of the privately owned lands within the proposed area had been acquired without expense to the federal treasury and transferred to the government for park purposes, the park would be set aside for the people, “... Provided, That the State of South Dakota shall have first constructed” approximately 40 miles of suitable road to specified points inside and outside the proposed park.[95]
Figure 15 SENATOR PETER NORBECK (1870-1936)
Norbeck’s bill was referred to the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys. On May 19 the bill was reported out without amendment. The accompanying report (No. 1246) gave a strong endorsement to the proposal.[96] On May 23, the bill was considered as in Committee of the Whole and passed the Senate.[97]
However, in the House where Williamson had introduced an identical bill (H.R. 13618), the park proposal ran into trouble. In a circular letter dated November 7, 1928, the National Parks Association claimed that the proposed Teton National Park had not been examined for standards by the National Park Service before the Senate acted on the proposal and that the bill was hurried through that body. Asserting that the proposed area was reported below standard by the National Park Service, the association charged:
Neither of these Senators [Norbeck and Nye], nor the Public Lands Committee which reported the bill and resolution, nor the Senate sessions which carelessly passed them, discussed the national aspects of this legislation. They did not consider the plan and standards of the national system which Congress had been building unit by unit, each painstakingly chosen, since 1872. They ignored the half century Congressional custom of awaiting the report of the Interior Department, to which Congress had entrusted the System’s shaping from the beginning. They ignored the American people’s enthusiastic interest in the plan and purpose of this unique world-famous institution, and its insistence in recent years upon park selection by the expert National Park Service....
Thoughtlessness, apparently, but in practice this amounts to localism defying national aspirations. It seriously threatens national park standards.[98]