Saved in Time: The Fight to Establish Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado

6. The National Park Service Steps In

79 Chapter Six The National Park Service Steps In  Herbert W. Meyer The National Park Service faced a variety of challenges when it came to developing the new monument. First, the land had to be purchased and brought under a single coherent plan for its management. This management needed to provide an educational experience for the growing number of visitors that were expected to arrive. The interpretive explanation of the fossil beds required credible, coherent science, and this could only be accomplished by supporting a paleontology research program. It took many years before some of these objectives were achieved, and some, even still, are but dreams. Buying the Land Even though Congress had passed the legislation to create Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and President Nixon had signed it into law, actually buying the land from the private property holders took several years to accomplish . Congress had appropriated $3.72 million for the purchase of 6,000 acres and for necessary development expenses. The monument’s size was defined by that original legislation and has not increased since (figure 6.1). In total, eighteen tracts of land, including a variety of buildings, were acquired from fourteen owners to achieve the monument’s authorized maximum area (figure 6.2; table 6.1).1 Chapter six 80 The creation of a national monument out of privately owned land was unusual and it was not always easy to determine what the fair market value should be. The Wells family , whose land was located both inside and outside the monument’s planned boundaries, decided that the only way to determine fair value was to sell a parcel that lay outside the proposed boundary and use that sale as a guide to the value of their land inside the monument.2 Some landowners simply felt they were not adequately compensated by the price they received. The Singer family, for example, felt that their property had been undervalued though they were very much in favor of the monument. At times, more than simple compensation was at stake, and some landowners had difficulty accepting the idea of leaving their homes. As one property Figure 6.1. Map of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. (Map drafted by Lindsay Walker; courtesy of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.) Figure 6.2 Map showing tracts of private land that were acquired to form Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. The petrified forest properties were owned by the Baker (label 8) and Singer (label 4) families. See table 6.1 for a key and detailed description. Based on the National Park Service Division of Land Acquisition map of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, compiled in August 1969 from basic land ownership data of March 1967. (Map drafted by Christina Whitmore; courtesy of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.) The National Park Service Steps In 81 Table 6.1. Tracts of private land acquired to form Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument Map label in Figure 6.2 Tract number Owner Acreage Buildings Purchase price 1 01-115 Kenneth Fallis 15 $5,000 2 01-116 Park Land Company 15 * 3 01-117 A. W. Gregg 80.40 $20,000 4 01-102 A. R. Singer 864± A Singer bunkhouse (later developed by the NPS into the “Hornbek Homestead” theme attraction). B Colorado Petrified Forest Lodge (later demolished by the NPS). $475,000 5 01-114 Danford Barney 40.83 $10,000 6 01-112 Mary Kelly 160 $20,000 7 01-121 W. Nate Snare 440 ** 8 01-101 John Baker 73± C Pike Petrified Forest building (later developed into the NPS visitor center and demolished in 2011) $235,000 9 01-118 Park Land Company 1,630.09 D Cusack potato barn * 10 01-113 Max Ewald 40 $5,400 11 01-111 Delbert T. Wells 200 E Wells ’ cabin and outbuildings (some later moved for use at Hornbek theme attraction) $125,000 12 01-107 Ione Jones 80 F A -frame cabin (later developed as education facility and paleontology laboratory) *** 13 01-103 John Maytag 1,624± G Maytag barn (later used as an NPS maintenance center) $310,000 14 01-106 Ione Jones 120 *** 15 01-108 Mathilde Nelson 440 H Nelson log cabin (later moved off-site), “white house, ” and outbuildings $80,000 16 01-109 Walter Witcher 120 $54,000 17 01-100 W. Nate Snare 10 ** 18 01-105 W. Nate Snare 40 ** Source: Land data based...