Department of the Interior
The Department of the Interior Congress created three Executive Departments in 1789: The Department of Foreign Affairs (which later was renamed State), The Department of Treasury, and The Department of War (which was later merged with Navy and was renamed Defense). Also that year, congress established an Attorney General (Department of Justice) and Postmaster General (which was privatized in 1970). Initially, any domestic matters were distributed among these departments by Congress; But on numerous occasions, the idea of setting up a separate department to handle internal matters was brought forth. ... That night in March, Congress decided, 31 to 25, to create a Department of the Interior (Utley, 7). Today, the Department of the Interior has 70,000 employees and over 200,000 volunteers (DIO History). ... The department is made up of eight Bureaus: (in order of establishment) The Bureau of Indian Affairs, The U. ... Each of the Bureaus do their part to achieve the overall goals of the department. The vision for the department follows a guide explained by the current Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton as, “ the Four C’s: consultation, cooperation, communication, all in the service of conservation. ... ” (Norton) As the nation’s principle conservation agency, the Department of the Interior is approximately located at 2,400 operating locations across the U. ... With these refuges, the department is able to protect and house 1,821 endangered species; with 1,263 actually native to the U. ... The Department also takes care of the Native American land needs; and the U. ... The importance of the Department of the Interior, and it’s responsibilities today, is astounding. ... In fact in it’s early beginnings the department was in charge of such an array of unorganized tasks that it was labeled names like, “a slop bucket for executive fragments,” and “hydra-headed monster” (Utley, 12). Just like many things, it’s early history was rocky, but the Department of the Interior has turned out to be the main conservation mechanism, making it possible to reach out to every American; as well as provide history and tools of education for the future. The first secretary for the Department of the Interior was Thomas Ewing, a former U. ... He established the first Interior Building, which was formerly the Patent Office building and today, houses the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American Art (Utley, 10). All of the Department’s early tasks had connections to the growing nation and the interest of it’s people. For that reason the expansion westward and the establishment of a civil government in California, were the chief reason for the development of this separate department; and therefore a majority of the Department’s first activities were taking place in the west.