Remarks announcing the establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 23, 1996

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here and for being in such good spirits. Thank you, God, for letting the Sun come out. This is a sunny day - we ought to have a sunny day for a sunny day.

Thank you, Rob Arnberger, for the work you do here at Grand Canyon National Park and for your participation; to all of our distinguished guests. I want to say a special word of thanks to my good friend Governor Roy Romer from Colorado. And thank you, Secretary Bruce Babbitt, for your long, consistent, devoted efforts on behalf of America's natural heritage.

I also want to thank the Harvey High School choir and the students and the faculty from the Grand Canyon Unified School who are here. Where are you all? Thank you. I think this ought to qualify as an excused absence - [laughter] - or maybe even a field trip.

I want to thank all of our tribal leaders who are here and, indeed, all of the Native Americans who are here. We are following in your footsteps and honoring your ethic today.

I want to say a special word of thanks to my longtime friend Norma Matheson. Norma and her late husband, Scott, became great friends of Hillary's and mine when we served together as Governors. After Scott passed away, Norma honored me by asking me to come to Utah to speak at a dinner in his honor for a foundation set up in his memory. I never was with Scott Matheson, I never even talked to him on the phone that I did not feel I was in the presence of a great man. Both of them are truly wonderful human beings. And I am very grateful for her presence here today and for her commitment.

And finally, I want to thank, more strongly than I can ever convey to you, the Vice President for his passion, his commitment, his vision, and his sheer knowledge of environmental and natural heritage issues. It has become a treasure for the United States, and I have mined it frequently for 4 years.

I remember when I was trying to decide what sort of person I wanted to ask to run with me for Vice President, and I made up my mind I wanted somebody who was smarter than I was - that left a large field to pick from - [laughter] - someone who was philosophically in tune with me, someone who would work like crazy, and someone who knew things I didn't know. And I read "Earth in the Balance," and I realized it was a profoundly important book by someone who knew things I wanted to learn. And we have learned a lot and done a lot together over the last 4 years. Very few things we have done will have a more positive, lasting effect than this, and it will always have Al Gore's signature on it as well. And I thank him for what he has done.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first time I ever came to the Grand Canyon was also in 1971 in the summer. And one of the happiest memories of my entire life was when, for some fluky reason, even in the summertime, I found a place on a rock overlooking the Grand Canyon where I was all alone. And for 2 hours I sat, and I lay down on that rock, and I watched the sunset. And I watched the colors change layer after layer after layer for 2 hours. I could have sat there for 2 days if the Sun had just taken a little longer to set. [Laughter] And even today, 25 years later, in hectic, crazy times, in lonely, painful times, my mind drifts back to those 2 hours that I was alone on that rock watching the sunset over this Canyon. And it will be with me till the day I die. I want more of those sights to be with all Americans for all time to come.

As all of you know, today we are keeping faith with the future. I'm about to sign a proclamation that will establish the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Why are we doing this? Well, if you look at the Grand Canyon behind me, it seems impossible to think that anyone would want to touch it. But in the past there have been those who wanted to build on the Canyon, to blast it, to dam it. Fortunately, these plans were stopped by far-sighted Americans who saw that the Grand Canyon was a national treasure, a gift from God that could not be improved upon.

The fact that we stand here is due, in large part, to the Antiquities Act of 1906. The law gives the President the authority to protect Federal lands of extraordinary cultural, historic, and scientific value, and in 1908 that's just what Theodore Roosevelt did when he protected the Grand Canyon.

Since then, several Presidents of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have worked to preserve places that we now take for granted as part of our own unchanging heritage: Bryce Canyon, Zion, Glacier Bay, Olympic, Grand Teton. These places many of you have been to, and I've been to many of them myself. I thank goodness that the Antiquities Act was on the books and that Presidents, without regard to party, used it to protect them for all of us and for generations to come.

Today we add a new name to that list: the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Seventy miles to the north of here in Utah lies some of the most remarkable land in the world. We will set aside 1.7 million acres of it.