Gun Play

On a fair Wyoming morning last week, Hollywood's Wallace Beery rose up early at his ranch in the rugged Jackson Hole country, donned an old shirt, blue denim pants and cowboy boots. He put on his big black Stetson with the chin strap, grabbed his trusty six-shooter and climbed aboard his trusty white mare. In the fresh morning air he rode through the fertile valley to join a posse of ranchers.

What made Rancher Beery, and all his neighbors, strap on their six-guns was a sudden executive order by Franklin Roosevelt, turning the entire Jackson Hole valley (221,000 acres) into a national monument, in the care of a man whom Western cattlemen loathe extraordinarily: Interior Secretary Harold Ickes.

The President's order had in effect added Jackson Hole to the Grand Teton National Park. The ranchers opposed this expansion because it would eliminate grazing land, and reduce county tax revenues. And they felt they had been tricked: national parks can be created only by Congressional action; monuments by mere executive order.

Said Banker-Rancher Felix Buchen-roth: "It may be a monument to Ickes, but it's a tombstone to me."

Harold Ickes had stuck to his guns. All ranchers, said he, who have used Jackson Hole for grazing may do so until they die. The procedure in setting up Jackson Hole Monument was the same as that followed in creating other national monuments. Now the time had come to drive the cattle to the summer ranges. On their way to the Grand Teton's slopes the ranchers kept a sharp eye out for them dang Federals. No Government officers showed up; gun play was unnecessary.

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