President Teddy Roosevelt, who was 50 years old when he departed the White House in 1909, was a man known for his prolific writing and his significant impact on American landscapes. According to a January 5, 2017, report from Univision, Roosevelt wrote 42 books, including several popular works regarding his travels before he held the presidency. His literary success is noted as being similar to that of Barack Obama, who also achieved notoriety through his books.
Beyond his literary pursuits, Roosevelt played a pivotal role in the establishment of national protections for American lands. According to a July 16, 2026, article from the Center for Western Priorities, Roosevelt was the president who signed the Antiquities Act into law. This legislation granted presidents full discretion to determine the size of national monuments to protect objects of historic or scientific interest. Roosevelt utilized this power to protect vast areas of land. In 1908, he protected more than 800,000 acres at the Grand Canyon, declaring it an object of unusual scientific interest. One year later, in 1909, he set aside over 600,000 acres to establish the Mount Olympus National Monument. Both of these areas were eventually turned into national parks after Congress affirmed their boundaries.
Roosevelt's approach to land management, which favored large-scale protections, has been a subject of legal and political debate for over a century. As noted in the July 16, 2026, Center for Western Priorities report, the 1906 Antiquities Act was drafted by archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett. Hewett had mapped potential monuments across the Southwest two years prior to the Act's passage. One of the locations on his map was the "Bluff District" of southeast Utah, which serves as the heart of what is now the Bears Ears monument. While some leaders have argued that monuments should occupy the smallest area compatible with protecting their objects, the courts have historically sided with presidential discretion. For example, a 1920 Supreme Court ruling unanimously rejected a claim that Roosevelt's Grand Canyon monument was too large, with Justice Willis Van Devanter writing that the canyon qualified as a protectable object of scientific interest.
Even as modern administrations seek to adjust monument boundaries, the historical precedent set by Roosevelt remains a cornerstone of land management. For instance, on July 13, 2026, President Donald Trump signed proclamations that reduced the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by approximately 90 percent each. Despite these modern reductions, the legacy of Roosevelt's "thinking big" regarding the American landscape continues to influence how the country views its public lands and the authority of the presidency in preserving them.
What this means for Clinton
For Clinton residents, Roosevelt's historical actions established the legal framework for how national monuments are managed. His use of the Antiquities Act to protect large landscapes set a precedent for presidential discretion that continues to influence land use debates and conservation efforts across the country, including in the Southwest, as of the July 16, 2026, report.
