The desperate situation of the times was expressed well in a letter dated September 2, 1935, from a local rancher’s wife who wrote:
After 6 years [of] crop failures on the so called submarginal land of Western South Dakota we are facing financial disaster unless we sell our land to the government.[133]
Figure 18 CEDAR PASS WINTER WONDERLAND
During the same month, the average price being offered per acre was $2.85.[134]
To gain Congressional approval for the boundary extension of the proposed Badlands National Monument, the proponents secured the attachment of a rider to the Taylor Grazing Bill revision authorizing the enlargement. The grazing bill was vetoed in 1935 although there was no opposition to the rider.[135]
The bill was reintroduced the following year and was passed. Approved June 26, 1936 (49 Stat. 1979), the law authorized the President to round out the authorized national monument boundary by proclamation within five years and stipulated that the entire area could not exceed 250,000 acres. Lands to be included must be “adjacent or contiguous thereto, ... including, but not being restricted to, lands designated as submarginal by the Resettlement Administration....”[136] This law gave the NPS sufficient flexibility in fixing a suitable boundary.
Norbeck worked tirelessly in promoting every aspect of the area’s development until his death in December 1936. He actively participated in securing aid from various governmental relief agencies for the land acquisition program of the area, and for building roads, erecting buildings, and other purposes.[137]
As early as February 1935 Governor Tom Berry of South Dakota urged Secretary Ickes to establish the national monument formally through a presidential proclamation. He pointed out that the basic conditions of Public Law 1021 had been met: (1) a 30-mile highway, built at a cost of approximately $320,000, starting at Interior and going over Big Foot Pass and on to Sage Creek, was completed in 1935 by the state and approved by the NPS; (2) the state had acquired such privately owned lands within the area as were required by the Secretary of the Interior.[138]
However, NPS Director Cammerer deferred making such a recommendation until some 9,780 acres of state lands, located within the authorized national monument boundary, had been transferred to the Service.[139]