History
When the United States acquired the territory comprising Arizona and New Mexico by treaty with Mexico in 1848, those lands not already privately owned, including Spanish and Mexican land grants, nor reserved by treaty for the various Indian tribes, became a part of the “public domain” and open under various laws to settlement, purchase, and use.
In 1898, President William McKinley established the San Francisco Mountain Forest Reserve, at the request of Gifford Pinchot, head of the US Division of Forestry. Local reaction was hostile—citizens of Williams, Arizona held a mass protest, and the Williams News editorialized that the reserve "virtually destroys Coconino County."
In 1905, the Forest Reserves were transferred to the Department of Agriculture. Some 21 million acres (85,000 km2) of public lands, almost one-eighth of the area of Arizona and New Mexico, were now to be administered by the new Forest Service.
In 1908, the Coconino National Forest was established from parts of the Tonto, Black Mesa, Grand Canyon, and entire San Francisco Mountains National Forests.
Read more about this topic: Coconino National Forest
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)