HSUMD General Meeting at the Historic USO Building

In October,  the monthly meetings of the Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert will resume and will welcome host Eastern Sierra writer McKenzie Long, giving us her take on National Monuments. The meeting will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 21 at the Historic USO Building, 230 West Ridgecrest Blvd.

McKenzie long is the author of This Contested Land, The Storied Past and Contested Future of America’s National Monuments.  Long came to write the book as a result of a long-term passion for rock climbing in the Indian Creek area of Bears Ears, where she had the proverbial front-row seat to the proclamation of the Bears Ears National Monument in late 2016 by President Obama. She then witnessed the sharp reduction to its protected area by President Trump a year later, and finally, its restoration by President Biden still later.  Each of those moves was controversial to different local constituencies.  The controversies inspired her to research the history of National Monuments and explore both sides of the issues surrounding the more recently created monuments.

National Monuments were originally authorized by the Antiquities Act of 1906.  As the name implies, part of the impetus for the law was public anger over pot hunters shipping Native American relics to museums overseas and the law aimed to put a stop to that.  But it also had a clause to enable the president to declare a national monument on government land in order to protect “objects of historic or scientific interest.”  Teddy Roosevelt, the president at the time, interpreted this clause broadly and set a precedent by proclaiming Devil’s Tower in Wyoming as the first National Monument, noting that it was of great scientific interest as “an extraordinary example of the effect of erosion.”

Back in the present, Long resolved to get to know several of the National Monuments by visiting them and hiking or climbing them, and by talking to the people who live near the monuments.  She listened to those who were in favor of National Monument status to protect either the natural landscape and environment or the cultural values of the land, to those who opposed it because they felt it would prevent them from using the land in the way they wanted, and to those who opposed it because they feared it would lead to too many changes from overuse.  It makes for a fascinating book, and it will make for a fascinating presentation on meeting night!

McKenzie Long is a writer and graphic designer who lives in the eastern Sierra Nevada.  While working on This Contested Land McKenzie won first place in Nowhere Magazine‘s 2018 “This Land is…” contest, was named the 2019 Terry Tempest Williams Fellow for Land and Justice at Mesa Refuge. She was a two-time resident at Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and was selected for AWP’s 2020 Writer to Writer mentorship program where she worked with New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Aalto. Long has recently returned to AWP’s Writer to Writer program to serve in the role of mentor.  In her day job as a graphic designer, Long creates books and magazines for Wolverine Publishing, Mountaineers Books, and The American Avalanche Association.

The HSUMD meets on the third Tuesday of most months except July and August. Each meeting features a presentation on some topic of local interest.  Meetings are free, and all are welcome to attend. For more information on this or future meetings, call 760-375-8456 during Bookstore hours: Wednesday through Saturday from 11 am to 3 pm.