Rota

Why should it be a National Park?

Rota is the southernmost of the Northern Mariana Islands, thirty-three square miles of raised limestone in the western Pacific, and it is the only substantially inhabited island in the Marianas that was not fought over in the Second World War. American forces bypassed it. Saipan and Tinian were shelled, bombed, bulldozed, and rebuilt; Rota was left alone. The result is an island where the ancient Chamorro landscape survived largely intact, and archaeologists describe its prehistoric sites as the most numerous and best preserved in the entire archipelago. The signature of that culture is the latte: paired rows of stone pillars capped with hemispherical stones, the foundations of Chamorro houses. At the As Nieves quarry on Rota, latte stones lie where they were being cut out of the bedrock when work stopped, and they are the largest in the Marianas.

The Park Service assessed Rota in 2005 and concluded that a National Park unit appeared to be the best way to protect its resources. Delegate Kilili Sablan filed study bills; the House passed one under suspension in 2010 without objection, and the study was finally authorized in 2014 and funded in 2016. The finished study went to Congress in October 2023, and its conclusion was that Rota's resources are nationally significant and suitable, but that Park Service management is not needed to protect them. After nearly twenty years, the answer was that the island deserves a National Park and does not require one.