218 Patterson Stepped In, Using the Occasion Not So Much to Contest The

218 Patterson stepped in, using the occasion not so much to contest the in- crease as to complain about the evils of federal interference in the lives and affairs of Colorado ' s pioneer class . "As I have said, " said Patterson, "we believe in forest reserves , but those who are thrusting them upon us are the representatives of states that have grown into mighty empires •••• If our mountain states were like them , we would not complain. But, like the senators from states whose limit has perhaps been reached, we might if we were not too broad for such littleness, attempt to foist an unwelcome and distasteful system upon weaker states ••• • I protest, in common with the people of the state I represent, that under the so- called forest reserve system we do not want more than a fifth of our state taken from the people and turned into a federal preserve .48 Pinchot received his request for expanded appropriations . But even so, the westerners were not disappointed. Again they--Patterson and others- -had made their point. Now , sparring and probing aside, they a1::andoned Pinchot and went after Roosevelt himself. On February 23, Senator Charles 4ui ton of Oregon moved an amendment to the appropriation bill providing that hereafter no forest reserve shall be created, nor shall any addition be made , to one heretofore created, within the limits of the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho , Montana , Colorado, or Wyoming , except by an act of Congress.49 It was a stunning move . If enacted into law it promised to virtually destroy the progress of the conservation movement in America. The insurgents were 219 jubilant; for his part, the bullish Patterson said that that amendment we are heartily in favor of, for we do not want any more forest reserves in Colorado • •• • So indignant tod3.y are the people of the western portion of the state I represent about the administration of forest reserves that they are in a state of rebellion.50 So, in a sense, was the Senate . After a bitter del:ate amidst loud western threats to filibuster to reduce reserves already created, conservationist senators capitulated to the insurgents1 the Senate passed the amendment and the bill . The House concurred on March 4, 1907, and the Agricultural Approp- riation Act went to the White House to await the President' s signature . The insurgents savored their moment of victory . While anti-conservation zealots throughout the West celebrated the passage of the Appropriations Act, Roosevelt intently pondered his next move . He wast ed little t i me ; no sooner had Congress passed the bill than he and Pinchot "almost gleefully" devised a plan to outflank the insurgents and neutralize the crippling effects of the Fulton Amendment . 51 On March 4 and 5, while the insurgent West impatiently awaited his signature, Roose- velt and Pinchot plotted an eleventh- hour withdrawal {r seventeen million acres of timberland in the Rocky Mountain West. On the morning of March 5 ./ Roosevelt dramatically proclaimed the creation of twenty- one new national forests in six western states (Colorado excluded) . Four days later he signed the Appropriation Act. The "Midnight Reserves" left the Wes t mute. When the shock wore off, as Roosevelt later recorded in his autobiography, "the opponents of the For- est Service turned handsprings in their wrath>"52 but for a fleeting moment 220 the West was too stunned to react , Both then and later, Colorado ' s re- sponse to the President ' s action was surprisingly mild--but only because none of the reserves had been created in Colorado (although large additions were made to t he Holy Cross , Uncompahgre , Park Range , Montezuma , Medicine Bow , and San Juan reservations) . Nevertheless, Colorado insurgents display- ed their disgust--most of it aimed directly at the President himself . One Col orado Republ ican wrote t o Governor Buchtel s "Now mind you , I am a strong Roosevelt man , but he does get off on some things, and one of them is this fool forest reserve syst em . 11 53 Even the Denver Republ ican, which had sup- ported Roosevelt through some of the most chaotic years in Colorado ' s history, ruefully admitted that 'the withdrawals • • • looked a little like disr egard of the congressional will." It was well and good to es tablish reserves , said the Republican, as it always had, but it added, resentfully, that "the people of the Ro cky Mountains are quite as well able as an official Wash- ington bureau to determine where a reserve is needed . 11 54 Characteristical ly, the abrasive Steamboat Pilot editorialized that it is remarkable that with a boasted "Western man" for President the land policy of the present administration has been the most burdensome and restrictive in all the hist ory of the public lands . The whole theory of the ( government] is that every settler is going to rob the government •••• And then the precedent is set that the public lands are to be disposed of ••• dependent on the whi m of the chief faddist in the Agriculture Department (PinchotJ •••• Very few of the auto- cratic monarchs of the world would so dare to set aside the will of the people this way .55 So another crisis came . And passed. For the conservationists, for the 221 government, the moment--no matter how beclouded by protest--was one of victory. For the tired insurgents it was one of defeat . And it had .'a numbing ef- fect. Wearily, in a half-humorous vein, the Denver Field and Farm _com- plained in March, 1907, that if the President continued to "nationalize" the land of the United States in the future as he had in the past, soon the only burial grounds left in the nation would be on the forest reserves. Then the old cowboy song would have to be changed to Bury me not on the range, Where the taxed cattle are roaming, And the mangy coyotes yelp and lark, And the wind in the pines is moaning; On the forest reserve please bury me not, For I never would then be free; A forest ranger would dig me up In order to collect his fee.56 Despair, though, did not mean retreat. Speaking for insurgent pio- neers all over Colorado, the Denver Record-Stockman grimly vowed _that there would be no retreat. As long as federal authorities sat in Washington and v dictated "rules and regulations that set at naught the statutes of the states," it warned, the West would "fight to the end. 11 57 A condition of revolt. A state of rebellion. The conservation wars were not over. They had just begun. CHAPTER VIII WATERSHED In the riotous spring of 1907, the Colorado state legislature stepped into the conservation maelstrom. For too many years, throughout the entire course of the conservation movement in the West, the legislature had ignored the struggle. It had de- 1:a.ted and passed its own laws; it had attended to its own business; and it had sought no confrontations over the question of conservation. But throughout fifteen years of strife it became more and more difficult to look away; and by the early months of 1907 it was impossible. The fact was undeniable 1 the state of Colorado was engaged in a corrosive quasi-civil war with the government of the United States. And under such circumstances, the state was no longer operable. Deeply concerned by what it saw--the debilitating social and economic effects of the conservation 1:a.ttle, the rising militance of citizen groups, the inexorable drift toward anarchy--the legislature re- solved to act. v:' On March 20, 1907, Colorado state Sena.tor Rodney Bardwell introduced into the legislature a resolution calling for a meeting of western states and federal officials in Denver to discuss the topic of conservation. Pre- dictably, the Bardwell resolution singled out the government and its reserves as the source of all the trouble. "Assuming all the rights of a private landowner," it asserted, the government had "undertaken the active administration of the lands composing the forest reserves," callously and illegally "utilizing them for the benefit of the government" at the expense v' of the people. After withdrawing from entry a quarter of the total area of 223 of Colorado for needless forest reserves, the government had disregarded its "implied obligations" to the state by entering into active possession of these lands, with the expressed determination of developing their resources for the benefit of the general government, thus depriving the state and its citizens of the benefits which would accrue from the use of these lands in the man- ner established by custom and practice in the older states, and, in addition, engaging in business in competition with our citizens. With that indictment, the resolution concluded that the action of the Federal Government in thus usurping the rights of the states and its citizens to develop and acquire title to these public lands and to utilize {their] resources •• • as part of the assets of the state, we believe to be contrary to the spirit and the letter of the act of Congress creating the state of Colorado.1 The Senate passed the resolution with only two dissenting votes. While the Colorado House approved of the content of the Bardwell resolution, it recoiled at its tone; before it approved it, it greatly soft- ened its text. When the amended version was returned to the Senate, it was flatly rejected. The upper council, traditionally more militant than the House on conservation matters, apparently planned to settle for nothing less than a full-fledged condemnation of the government's conservation poli- cies, On March 30, Representative John Lawrence of Saguache, a hotbed of in- surgency for a decade, introduced a substitute resolution calling--in ra- tional terms--for a meeting of western states and federal officials 224 for the purpose of discussing the relation of the states to the public lands, and, if possible, agree upon some policy in regard to these lands to be urged upon the general government, that will look toward a more rapid settlement by citizens ••••2 On the same day it was introduced, the resolution was unanimously adopted by both the House and Senate, and was signed on April 1 • On April 27 the call for a public lands ~ onvention was formally issued by Governor Buchtel, The place would be Denver and the time June.

Load more