William Howard Taft: Proclamation - Navajo National Monument

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Proclamation - Navajo National Monument
March 20, 1909

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By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

WHEREAS, a number of prehistoric cliff dwellings and pueblo ruins, situated within the Navajo Indian Reservation, Arizona, and which are new to science and wholly unexplored, and because of their isolation and size are of the very greatest ethnological, scientific and educational interest, and it appears that the public interest would be promoted by reserving these extraordinary ruins of an unknown people, with as much land as may be necessary for the proper protection thereof:

Now, therefore, I, William H. Taft, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the power in me vested by Section two of the Act of Congress approved June 8, 1906, entitled, "An Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities," do hereby set aside as the Navajo National Monument all prehistoric cliff dwellings, pueblo and other ruins and relics of prehistoric peoples, situated upon the Navajo Indian Reservation, Arizona, between the parallels of latitude thirty-six degrees thirty minutes North, and thirty-seven degrees North, and between longitude one hundred and ten degrees West and one hundred and ten degrees forty-five minutes West from Greenwich, more particularly located along the arroyas, canyons and their tributaries, near the sources of and draining into Laguna Creek, embracing the Bubbling Spring group, along Navajo Creek and along Moonlight and Tsagt-at-sosa canyons, together with forty acres of land upon which each ruin is located, in square form, the side lines running north and south and east and west, equidistant from the respective centers of said ruins. The diagram hereto attached and made a part of this proclamation shows the approximate location of these ruins only.

Warning is hereby expressly given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, excavate, injure or destroy any of the ruins or relics hereby declared to be a National Monument, or to locate or settle upon any of the lands reserved and made a part of said Monument by this proclamation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this 20th day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nine, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and thirty-third.

WM H TAFT

By the President:

P C KNOX
Secretary of State.

Citation: John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=76608.

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