Quick Fact

Huge amounts of taxpayer money will be wasted creating this un-needed monument.

What the Bill Says
Section 6 states:

There are authorized to be appropriated such sums as are necessary to carry out this Act.

Why is another National Monument being created when we can not
properly fund and maintain the ones we have?

Dinosaur National Monument

An article in the May 25, 2006 Las Cruces Sun News talks about the sad plight of the Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal Utah.  This article describes the deteriorating conditions of the visitors center. In spite of the fact that the Monument receives over 300,000 visitors per year, it cannot pay what it would take to stabilize the building.

On July 14, 2006, this message was posted on the Dinosaur National Monument web site"

 PLEASE NOTE: DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT
THE DINOSAUR QUARRY VISITOR CENTER IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

This is the Dinosaur Fossil Bone Quarry Near Vernal & Jensen Utah.
The Quarry Visitor Center in Dinosaur National Monument will close beginning Wednesday, July 12 for structural repairs according to Superintendent Mary Risser. The building will remain closed indefinitely until significant life, health, and safety issues are addressed.

The visitors center, which is the core of the Dinosaur National Monument, remains closed as of March 10, 2007. Visitors are given an opportunity to take a "virtual" tour.

Fossil Cycad National Monument

In 1922, the 320 acre Fossil Cycad National Monument was established by President Warren G. Harding. Scientists recognized that the fossil locality preserved a significant exposure of a Cretaceous cycadeoid forest. Hundreds of fossilized cycad specimens, one of the world's greatest concentrations, were exposed at the surface. Proponents of the monument had used the same rhetoric that current monument proponents are using: "The area is … one of the most …… and is known …the world over,"

The big difference between the Cycad and Trackways lands, is that there were still exposed specimens of Cycads when the monument was created. They were later removed. On the other hand, the trackways specimens have already been removed before monument designation.

By the 1930s, most of the fossilized specimens had been removed by unauthorized fossil collecting and unchallenged research collecting and erosion was not bringing more specimens to the surface naturally. If fact when the monument had been considered, there were reports that all the specimens were gone, but it was designated anyway, thinking that erosion would unearth more. That never happened.

In the early 1950s, it had become apparent that there was nothing on the surface to show of scientific importance and that extensive development of the monument would benefit only a limited group of people. It was also apparent that vast sums of money would be required to build a visitors center and develop exposed displays.  It was also realized that the subject of fossil cycads does not have a broad appeal and the area did not have other outstanding attractions or scenery.

Fossil Cycad National Monument was never officially open to the public and never had a visitor center or public programs.

This is exactly what will happen with this proposed national monument.

Yucca House National Monument

Yucca House was proclaimed a national monument by President Woodrow Wilson on December 19, 1919, to preserve antiquities and provide insight into the Ancestral Puebloan culture.

What began as a 9-acre monument has been expanded to approximately 34 acres. The monument has been expanded to incorporate a large Ancestral Puebloan surface site that may have been a major trade center of the pre-Columbian Native Americans.

The Yucca House National Monument has shown that national monument designation does not automatically guarantee that the money tree showers money. Yucca House National Monument was set aside specifically for research in 1919 and has sat behind a fence for almost a hundred years waiting for money.

Despite early interest in the ruins, the lack of funding, low public interest,
and difficult access have prevented the ruins at Yucca House from being excavated.

The American tax payers would have to pay for this disaster. With everything else going on in the world and our country, it is inconceivable to even think that you or any of our other elected officials would even consider taking money from victims of natural disasters or from securing our borders to fund this pork barrel.

The Prehistoric Trackways National Monument may get a hundred or so visitors the first year, but none after the word gets out that the monument is a hoax. Who pays for that then?