Misty Fjords National Monument

Misty Fiords National Monument (or Misty Fjords National Monument) is a national monument and wilderness area administered by the U.S. Forest Service. Misty Fiords is about 40 miles (64 km) east of Ketchikan, Alaska, along the Inside Passage coast in extreme southeastern Alaska, comprising 2,294,343 acres (928,488 ha) of Tongass National Forest in Alaska's Panhandle. All but 151,832 acres (61,444 ha) are designated as wilderness. Congress reserved the remainder for the Quartz Hill molybdenum deposit, possibly the largest such mineral deposit in the world. The national monument was originally proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter in December 1978 as Misty Fiords National Monument, using the authorization of the Antiquities Act and became a part of an ongoing political struggle between the federal government and the State of Alaska over land use policy and authority that finally led to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980. In that law, it was statutorily established as Misty Fjords National Monument.