why is the position called interior? since it’s dealing with a lot of environmental aspects, why not exterior?
You should see the guy’s office. Talk about lavish!
The DOI was created in 1849 to oversee the interior lands of the country.
Gale Norton is a guy?
You just never know.
Though much of the job has come to focus on the parks, monuments, forests, and such, its original duties paralleled those of the Secretary of State for Home Affairs (“Home Secretary”) in the British cabinet. I suspect that just as the Secretary of State took on the aspects of the British SoS for Foreign Affairs (“Foreign Secretary”) – and remember that originally State was much like the individual states’ Secretaries of State – the official repository and certifier of government documents and such – so too the intent was to reflect the Home Secretary under a slightly variant name in America.
The Secretary of State still is in charge of the seals of the country and such. It’s just that the office has much more to do.
The agency was originally called the Department of Foreign Affairs, but was soon changed to the Department of State.