The new sites created by a sweeping public lands bill have been years in the making – here’s our guide

Donald Trump has signed a sweeping new public lands bill that protects 1.3m acres of wilderness and creates monuments to US history that has been overlooked, including the African American experience in the civil war and the fight for civil rights.

Years in the crafting, the measure will designate 367 miles of new scenic rivers and 2,600 miles of new national trails. It protects nearly 500,000 acres in California alone, and enlarges both Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks. And it reauthorizes a crucial funding mechanism for land and water conservation that had lapsed.

'Uniquely American': Senate passes landmark bill to enlarge national parks Read more

Trump’s record on public lands has generally been poor. In 2017, his administration sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah by about 2m acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history. “The Trump administration has been hostile to public lands conservation since its earliest days,” Andrea Alday of the Wilderness Society said in a statement. “The bill is a product of years of bipartisan effort among local stakeholders and their members of Congress.”

Here is the Guardian’s guide to America’s five new national monuments.

Location: Jessamine county, 20 miles south of Lexington, Kentucky

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jim Hunn, a descendant of members of the US Colored Infantry, at Camp Nelson. Photograph: David Stephenson/The Guardian

Initially established as a Union army supply depot and hospital in 1862, Camp Nelson became a recruitment and training center for African American soldiers, and a refugee camp for their wives and children during the American civil war.

Camp Nelson quickly became the largest of the eight African American recruitment centers in the state of Kentucky and the third largest recruiting center in the entire nation. Once all restrictions on enlistment were removed in June 1864, the number of black enlistees skyrocketed. By joining the Union army, the formerly-enslaved enlistees were able to gain their freedom.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A visitor walks his dog on the grounds at Camp Nelson civil war park in Nicholasville, Kentucky, on 10 April 2018. Photograph: David Stephenson/The Guardian

More than 500 enrollees in the US Colored Troops (or USCT, as African American regiments were called at the time) arrived to serve during June 1864, and a record 1,370 new troops enlisted at the camp in July. By the time the 13th amendment was finally ratified on 6 December 1865, ending slavery throughout the United States, roughly 10,000 African American men had enlisted in the USCT and became emancipated at Camp Nelson.

Today, the site remains one of the best civil war-era landscapes associated with the African American military and refugee experience. It includes more than five miles of trails and a visitors center showing the role the camp played as a military installation, supply depot, hospital, recruitment center and refugee camp.

Location: northern part of the San Rafael Swell, 32 miles south of Price, Utah

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The San Rafael swell near Green River. Photograph: by Mike Lyvers/Getty Images

A new 2,543-acre Jurassic national monument will rename and protect the area known as the Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur quarry, currently overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. The quarry contains the densest concentration of Jurassic-era dinosaur bones ever found. Scientists have discovered more than 74 individual dinosaurs there, comprised of 12,000 bones and even a fossilized egg.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dinosaur bones at Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur quarry. Photograph: Jonathan Moor/Courtesy of the BLM

Scientists from the University of Utah started exploring the quarry in 1929. The vast majority of bones at the site (75%) come from carnivores, which remains a mystery for paleontologists. Why did so many meat-eaters perish there? Some hypothesize there was a kind of predator trap, potentially connected to a watering hole, back in the Jurassic era.

For visitors today, there are plenty of opportunities to see science in action: paleontologists are still working to carefully excavate bones there. There is also a small museum that displays a complete Allosaur skeletal reconstruction and a Stegosaur, while self-guided walks let visitors wander where dinosaurs once roamed.

Location: Jackson, Mississippi

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ home. Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP

Built in 1956, the Medgar Evers House in Jackson was the home of the black civil rights leader at the time of his assassination.

Evers, a second world war veteran and activist, worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and expand voting rights for African Americans. In June 1963, aged just 37, Evers was shot while in his carport by a white supremacist and Klansman named Byron De La Beckwith. In two separate trials in the 1960s, all-white juries could not reach a verdict. Beckwith remained free until 1994, when the case was re-tried and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Medgar Evers in 1955. Photograph: AP

Historians say the killing of Evers was one of the catalysts for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His widow, Myrlie Evers, became a noted activist in her own right, serving as national chair of the NAACP.

Today, the house where the Evers family lived has been open as a museum by appointment only, maintained by Tougaloo College, a historically black institution. The house features exhibits about Evers’ life and death, period furnishings and family photographs. A virtual tour of the home, produced by Mississippi Public Broadcasting, can be seen here.

Location: Nancy, Kentucky, 88 miles from Lexington

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A bayonet charge during the Battle of Mill Springs. Photograph: Courtesy of the Mill Springs Battlefield Association.

The site of the first significant Union victory in the civil war, Mill Springs Battlefield has earned its place in history. On 19 January 1862, the small town of Logan’s Crossroads (now Nancy, Kentucky) was swallowed by battle, as Confederate and Union forces clashed in the Battle of Mill Springs. When the battle was over, 150 Confederates and 50 federal soldiers lay dead.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A union soldier and cannon limber during a 2007 civil war enactment at the Mill Springs Battlefield. Photograph: Courtesy of the Mill Springs Battlefield Association.

Historians say that, coupled with the Confederate losses of forts Henry and Donelson less than a month later, the Union victory at Mill Springs cracked the southern defense line in Kentucky and opened up Tennessee to Union invasion.

Today, visitors can relive the battle and see where each side had set their camps. A visitors center and museum has a wealth of information and artefacts from the 1860s. Around Halloween the site also holds a historical ghost walk – a trip back in time as visitors walk a torch-lit path around the battlefield, listening as re-enactors tell stories of the battle and watch as scenes from the civil war unfold before them.

Location: 40 miles north-west from downtown Los Angeles, California

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The St Francis Dam after it collapsed, releasing 12bn gallons of water. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

This curved concrete gravity dam is notorious for a disastrous flood that killed at least 431 people in March 1928. Built by William Mulholland, known as the father of Los Angeles’ municipal water system, the 1,300ft span held a year’s supply for the entire city about 40 miles to the south.

Just before midnight on 12 March the dam fractured, sending a 180ft-high wall of water rushing down the San Francisquito Canyon. In the course of just six hours, the flood caused millions of dollars in damage and destroyed numerous homes, ranches and other properties on its path to the Pacific Ocean.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The St Francis Dam flood in Santa Paula, California, in 1928. Photograph: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

The dam’s collapse is considered one of the worst civil engineering failures of the 20th century and is the second deadliest tragedy in California’s history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

Today you can visit the remains of the dam, located off Francisquito Road in Santa Clarita. Large chunks of debris can still be found scattered about the creek bed south of the dam’s original site, while the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society holds tours of the wreckage every March.

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