The Pittsburgh Press (September 16, 1944)
Ickes assails Dewey claims
Jackson Hole story called ‘untruthful’
Washington (UP) –
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes was still bristling today over what he termed the “wildly extravagant and untruthful” statements of Governor Thomas E. Dewey concerning the government’s Jackson Hole National Monument in Wyoming.
Mr. Ickes spoke out last night against the Republican presidential nominee’s recent criticism of the Jackson Hole project, asserting that credit for the monument “belongs to the Republicans.”
He accused Mr. Dewey of “beagle-like snuffing about for votes” and charged that the New York Governor was “willing to enter judgment on any complaint against the administration, even without hearing the evidence.”
‘Land grab’ charged
Mr. Ickes’ charges were contained in a statement replying to Mr. Dewey’s Sheridan (Wyoming) press conference Statement describing the project – a recently-established national park under Mr. Ickes’ jurisdiction – as a “land grab” harmful to thousands of Wyoming residents.
Mr. Ickes traced the monument’s origin back to “the last known Republican Presidents” – the late Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, whom Mr. Ickes labeled “the political godfather” of the 1944 GOP nominee.
Mr. Ickes said Mr. Coolidge, when he was President, persuaded John D. Rockefeller Jr. to purchase land in the Jackson Hole area for enlargement of the National Park System. Mr. Hoover encouraged Mr. Rockefeller to continue buying the land which eventually was offered to the government, Mr. Ickes said.
Land sale cited
Of the 220,000 acres comprising the monument, Mr. Ickes declared, 170,308 acres were already owned by the government when President Roosevelt took office. Mr. Rockefeller’s purchases pushed the total above 200,000.
Mr. Ickes said:
The balance of these lands are still privately owned and a good deal of the outcry to which Mr. Dewey listened with shocked but naïve attention was from these owners. The basis for their complaint is that Mr. Rockefeller refused to pay them the exorbitant prices for which they were quite willing to sell.
Terming Mr. Dewey a “Charlie McCarthy talking without his Bergen,” he advised the New York Governor to “listen to Herbert Hoover about the West instead of international affairs.” In that way, he said, Mr. Dewey “would not be making the blunders that he has chalked up to his credit to date.”