In 1892, some interesting fossils were discovered near the southern
end of the Black Hills in southwestern South Dakota. The fossils were
cycads, primitive relatives of flowering plants. If you've seen
paintings of dinosaurs in natural habitats, cycads are the plants that
look like large pineapples with fern fronds growing from the top.
George Wieland of Yale University became intensely interested in
fossil cycads -- he eventually published a two-volume book on the
subject -- and in 1920 he obtained the fossil-cycad site under the
Homestead Act.
In 1906, Congress had passed the Antiquities Act, which gave the
president the authority to set aside areas of significant scenic,
historical or scientific interest. Wieland offered the cycad site to
the federal government, and on Oct. 21, 1922, President Warren G.
Harding signed a proclamation creating Fossil Cycad National Monument.
Administration of the new monument fell to the recently (1916)
created National Park Service, but management of the site was
minimal. The nearest Park Service office was at Wind Cave, about 20
miles away, so local ranchers were asked to keep an eye on the area.
In 1935, Wieland and a crew of 13 Civilian Conservation Corps workers
opened six to eight excavations and removed more than a ton of fossil
cycads.
After the excavations, Wieland began pushing for the construction of
a visitor's center; he even had architecture students at Yale draw up
designs. His proposal was turned down, not only because of the cost
but also because by then little in the way of fossil cycads remained
to be seen.
At the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933, the Park Service wanted to
display a fossil cycad. None could be found, so one was borrowed from
a Mr. W.E. Parks of Lincoln, Neb. The Park Service lost the specimen,
and Parks demanded a replacement or $75 compensation.
In June of 1946, National Park Service personnel went to Cycad
National Monument to try to find a replacement for Parks. They
couldn't find a single one -- Wieland and poachers had cleaned out the
site. Eventually, Congress awarded Parks $125.
By the early 1950s, the main supporters of the monument, Wieland and
South Dakota Sen. Peter Norbeck, had died. The Park Service looked on
the monument as a white elephant and requested that it be
deauthorized. A bill to do that was introduced in January 1955, signed
on Aug. 1, 1956, and became effective on Sept. 1, 1957. Fossil Cycad
National Monument was no more.
Dale M. Gnidovec (who is reachable online at:
gnidovec@orton.mps.ohio-state.edu) is curator of Ohio State
University's Orton Geological Museum.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Jeshajahu Weinberg, a founding director of the
Holocaust Museum in Washington who used his dramatic talents to tell
the story of European Jewry, died of a stroke in Tel Aviv, an
associate said Monday. He was 81.
Weinberg's creative vision is credited with giving visitors to the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington a glimpse of the reality
in Nazi camps and Jewish ghettos in Europe during World War II. On
display are more than 30,000 artifacts, including a railroad car used
to transport Jews to camps.
Weinberg died Saturday in Tel Aviv, said Asia Reuven, spokeswoman of
the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv.
Weinberg was a founding director of the Tel Aviv museum and came out
of retirement in 1989 to help establish the Holocaust Museum in
Washington, which opened six years ago and has had 12 million
visitors.
Born in Warsaw and educated in Germany, Weinberg - who was usually
called ``Shaike,'' an abbreviation of his first name - immigrated with
his family to Palestine in 1933, settling on a kibbutz, a communal
farm.
His innovative work in the Tel Aviv and Washington museums helped
earn him the 1999 Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, the most
prestigious award the Jewish State bestows on its citizens.
Anita Shapira, a professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University
who worked closely with Weinberg, said he changed the face of history
museums.
``He introduced the concept of the museum as a tool for telling a
story, not just for showing authentic artifacts,'' Shapira said.
In 1939, Weinberg established Kibbutz Elon along with fellow members
of his Marxist-Zionist youth movement. According to friends, he
retained his ardent socialist beliefs throughout his life.
From 1942-1946 he volunteered for service in the British Army's
Jewish Brigade, and served part of that time in Italy.
He served as deputy director in the office mechanization center of
the prime minister's office from 1956-1961 before becoming director
of the Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv's municipal theater, a post he held
until 1976.
Most recently, he was a consultant to the Jewish Museum in Berlin and
the Jewish Museum of Warsaw.
Weinberg is survived by a son and three daughters. He was buried
Monday at Kibbutz Afek in northern Israel, alongside his wife.