Left to Right: NPS Regional Director Howard Baker, Region Two (now Midwest Region); Conrad Wirth, NPS Director; Fred Seaton, Secretary of the Interior; Congressman E.Y. Berry; Mrs. George H. Sholly, widow of Badlands National Monument Superintendent; Mrs. Ralph Herseth; and Governor Ralph Herseth of South Dakota.
Concurrently with boundary adjustments, the NPS gave considerable thought to a grazing management plan for the area whereby grazing might be eliminated without serious hardship to the local ranchers. As a result the Service presented a plan in May 1948 to grazing permittees outlining a schedule for the gradual termination of grazing on federally owned national monument lands by December 31, 1961.[239]
MISSION 66 DEVELOPMENT
In 1956, the National Park Service launched a 10-year park conservation development program known as Mission 66. This was to have great impact on the national monument. Under the program an expenditure of nearly $5,000,000 for roads, trails, buildings, and utilities was planned. Among the major projects undertaken and completed between 1956 and 1960 were a realinement and oil surfacing of main roads, the development of the Conata Picnic Area and the Cedar Pass and Dillon Pass campgrounds, and the erection of utility and storage buildings, three multiple-housing units, five employee residences, and an amphitheater.[240]
In May 1955 the Millard family donated two tracts of land totaling 18.50 acres to the NPS. Of this total, 5.85 acres, located in front of Cedar Pass Lodge, were donated for the right-of-way of the relocated highway; the remaining 12.65 acres made possible the development of Cedar Pass Campground.[241]
The visitor center was completed in May 1959. This large structure houses the national monument headquarters, interpretive exhibits, and an audiovisual presentation of the Badlands story.[242]
The installation of exhibits in the visitor center was essentially completed by November 1960.[243] Some of the materials used in the exhibits were donated by a number of individuals and institutions. Mr. Herbert Millard, son of the late Ben Millard, gave a large mass of sand calcite crystals now in the Small Wonders Exhibit. Dr. Winter of the University of South Dakota at Vermillion donated the plant collection in the Great Plains Grasslands Exhibit. The mounted badger in the Wildlife of the Grassland Exhibit was a gift from Orville Sandall of Kadoka, South Dakota. The skull of an Audubon Bighorn, on display above the Breaks in the Grassland Exhibit, was donated by Willard Sharp of Interior, South Dakota. In the exhibit showing a number of Indian artifacts are casts of early-man points donated by the University of Nebraska State Museum.[244]
The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, South Dakota, donated both the lower jaw and the upper jaw, including skull, of a fossilized titanothere, which is in the Badlands Bones Exhibit. The materials for the articulated oreodont fossil in the same exhibit were also donated by the school. The oreodont fossil is of particular interest because it was found northwest of Imlay, South Dakota about 100 feet from where a famous fossilized oreodont with unborn twins was excavated. The latter fossil is on display at the Museum of Geology at the school (see [Figure 5]).[245]
The first full-time resident park naturalist for Badlands National Monument was assigned in June 1958 to aid with the local interpretive program.[246] For a number of years previously, a park naturalist who had been assigned to Black Hills areas of the NPS also served the national monument on an irregular basis.[247]
