Canyonlands National Park and The Organic Act: Balancing Resource Protection and Visitor Use

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation establishing Canyonlands National Park, which resulted in the transfer of a pristine area of high desert in southeastern Utah from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the National Park Service (NPS). The transfer was more than a symbolic shift in agency control. Management of the 527 square-mile area went from BLM's multiple-use-approach to NPS' focused management regime under the 1916 Organic Act as supplemented by various laws of ...