1929 - Environment

Environment

Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park is established February 26 by an act of Congress signed into law by President Coolidge to protect the snow-capped Teton Range, whose highest glacial peak (Grand Teton) rises to a height of 13,766 feet. Sheep ranchers had opposed setting aside the land, as had residents of Jackson Hole, but many have come to see the wisdom of protecting the 96,000-acre area from commercial development (see Rockefeller, 1949).

Utah's Arches National Park has its beginnings in a national monument established by act of Congress in an area of 115 square miles that include red limestone that has been eroded into shapes that include Landscape Arch, the world's longest (291 feet) natural rock bridge, skyscraper-like Courthouse Towers, Fiery Furnace (which glows at sunset), and other such wonders. The monument will be designated a national park in 1971.

Africa's Serengeti National Park has its beginnings in a 900-square-mile lion sanctuary set aside by the colonial government after complaints by professional hunters that people are going into the bush with Model T Fords to slaughter lions (see 1940).

An earthquake in Persia May 1 leaves an estimated 3,300 dead.

One heath hen is left in America, down from 2,000 in 1916, and the male of the species seen on Martha's Vineyard has no mate. It will be extinct after 1931.

New York's Jones Beach State Park opens August 4. Occupying 1,200 acres of Long Island beachfront, the new park has four miles of clean, white, sandy ocean beaches, a boardwalk with mahogany railings, parking for 12,000 automobiles, a 200-foot-high, 300,000-gallon water tower built to resemble Venice's Campanile de San Marco, two salt-water swimming pools, east and west bath houses that accommodate 10,000 visitors, and various recreational facilities. Attendants are outfitted in nautical uniforms, and the well-policed state park attracts more than 325,000 people in its first month, despite predictions that New Yorkers would not drive 40 miles to a park located on a sandbar.