America mints a new national park, elevating an Arizonan ‘sky island’
By RYLEY OBER
America has a new national park.
A bill signed Tuesday by President Donald Trump turned Chiricahua National Monument — known for its towering rock spires, Apache heritage and rich biodiversity — into the United States’ 64th national park. While the site was first protected as a national monument by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, the new designation will “shine a national spotlight on one of Arizona’s hidden gems,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said in a statement.
The 12,000-acre park in the Chiricahua Mountains is about two hours by car from Tucson and features massive rhyolite rock formations shaped by an ancient volcanic eruption. This “sky island” ecosystem is unlike any other landscape in the country and offers some of the best bird-watching in the world, Christina Hazard, the legislative director at the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement. The land also carries rich cultural significance as the homeland of the Chiricahua Apache.
The new designation provides the park with the federal government’s highest protection at a time when conservation has eroded elsewhere. In July, Trump shrank two national monuments in Utah by nearly 3 million acres, following efforts in his first term to open the sites to oil drilling, uranium mining and other development. Trump has also moved to lift restrictions on off-road vehicles in most national parks and has considered giving a parcel of land in Yosemite National Park to a developer.
Members of Arizona’s congressional delegation have tried to upgrade Chiricahua to a national park for years, with bills introduced in Congress as far back as 2016. With this latest bill, introduced in December, the bipartisan effort was finally successful. Chiricahua is the first to receive the designation since New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, in West Virginia, in 2020.
