On this day in 2000, President Bill Clinton established through Presidential Proclamation 3 National Monuments to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management: Cascade-Siskiyou, Ironwood Forest, and Canyons of the Ancients.
Located at the crossroads of the Cascade, Klamath, and Siskiyou mountain ranges, scientists have long recognized the outstanding ecological values of Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The convergence of three geologically distinct mountain ranges resulted in an area with remarkable biological diversity and a tremendously varied landscape. Many archaeological and historical sites are also found throughout the Monument, providing clues to Native American use of the area and tracing portions of the historic Oregon/California Trail. Some of the best ways to explore this unique landscape include visiting the Hyatt Lake Recreation Complex and hiking on the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.
Taking its name from one of the longest living trees in the Arizona desert, the 129,000-acre Ironwood Forest National Monument is a true Sonoran Desert showcase. Keeping company with the ironwood trees are mesquite, palo verde, creosote, and saguaro, blanketing the monument floor beneath rugged mountain ranges named Silver Bell, Waterman and Sawtooth. In between, desert valleys lay quietly to complete the setting.
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado contains a huge number of archaeological sites— more than 6000 recorded so far, and up to 100 per square mile in some places— representing Ancestral Puebloan and other Native American cultures. Canyons of the Ancients is managed as an integral cultural landscape containing a wealth of historic and environmental resources. Many of artifacts from excavations in the Canyons of the Ancients are housed at the Anasazi Heritage Center, a museum that is as the visitor contact point for the Monument.
To learn more about our National Conservation Lands, visit http://blm.gov/nlcs