OUR VISION
Chuckwalla National Monument
Chuckwalla National Monument reaches from the Coachella Valley region in the west to near the Colorado River in the east. It protects more than 624,000 acres of public lands located south of Joshua Tree National Park. The designation honors Tribal sovereignty, boosts the local economy, protects places where people hike, camp, and drive off-highway vehicles, and honors the area’s military history. The monument boundaries were also specifically drawn to avoid areas identified as suitable for renewable energy development, and the proposal garnered support from the renewable energy industry.
Widespread Support
The effort to designate Chuckwalla National Monument received overwhelming local support. The Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, the Cahuilla Band of Indians, the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, and the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians led the call to establish the monument.
A bipartisan group of local elected officials, the cities of Banning, Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, Indio, La Quinta, Palm Desert, and Palm Springs, over 300 businesses, business organizations, and Chambers of Commerce, and residents of the eastern Coachella Valley and neighboring areas added their voices in support. The California Legislature also passed a bipartisan resolution in support of the monument.
The Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act was used to designate Chuckwalla National Monument in the California desert. The Antiquities Act is a 1906 law that grants U.S. Presidents the ability to designate federal public lands, waters, and cultural and historical sites as national monuments with a Presidential Proclamation. Since President Theodore Roosevelt first signed the Antiquities Act into law, 18 Presidents – 9 Republicans and 9 Democrats – have used the authority granted by the act to designate monuments of widely varying sizes and safeguard public lands, oceans, and historic sites for future generations. For example, the original Grand Canyon National Monument was first designated by Republican President Teddy Roosevelt in 1908 at over 818,000 acres.
