This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Encompassing 178,000 acres of public land west of Cortez, the Monument was created on June 9, 2000 by President Bill Clinton using the authority of the Antiquities Act. Canyons of the Ancients was the brainchild of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who had great familiarity with the area owing to his Arizona roots.
Canyons of the Ancients is widely renowned for what is often called the highest known density of archaeological sites in the United States, including more than 6,000 recorded sites and a total number of sites estimated as high as 30,000. As such, Canyons of the Ancients offers an unparalleled opportunity to observe, study and experience how cultures lived and adapted over time in the American Southwest.
As explorers and settlers colonized the western United States, the evidence of these ancestral cultures sparked enormous interest and curiosity. The famous western photographer, William Henry Jackson, recorded dramatic photographic images of prehistoric dwellings in the McElmo Valley in 1874. The General Land Office (the original precursor to the Bureau of Land Management) set aside Goodman Point in 1889 and made it off limits to homesteading for the protection of significant cultural resources.
Eventually, in 1985, the BLM proposed protection for the larger landscape that today comprises Canyons of the Ancients, labeling it as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. At the time, the BLM described the cultural resources as “individually and collectively unique and nationally important, representing a successful and challenging adaptation to marginal environments that lasted for 800 years.”
A century’s worth of recognition and interest in preserving this cultural landscape set the stage for the presidential proclamation that established Canyons of the Ancients as a National Monument in 2000.
Recently, the national press has reported on rumblings that the Trump Administration may attempt to rescind at least a half-dozen existing national monuments. Whether Canyons of the Ancients would be targeted is not presently known, but when Trump first took office in 2017, he immediately put the Monument on a list for elimination. That threat posed to Canyons of the Ancients eight years ago spurred an outpouring of bipartisan support for the monument.
The Cortez city council supported Canyons of the Ancients, and emphasized that “local archaeological resources in our area are the cornerstone of our local tourism and marketing efforts, and protecting these resources helps to ensure our continued financial viability as a region.”
Democrats Sen. Michael Bennet and then-Gov. John Hickenlooper sent letters supporting the monument. And Republican Sen. Cory Gardner and Rep. Scott Tipton noted “the designation of Canyons is an example of what the Antiquities Act was intended to do – protect cultural treasures while incorporating the historic use of the land into the management of the monument so that communities support and promote the designation.”
Canyons of the Ancients encompasses cliff dwellings, towers, villages, great kivas, shrines, sacred springs, agricultural fields, check dams, reservoirs, rock art sites and sweat lodges. Rather than fencing off a few acres for a postage-stamp sized preserve, the monument protects an entire landscape that supported tens of thousands of people. It allows us to understand why Ancestral Puebloans chose to live where they did, interacted with their neighbors, used the natural resources of the region, communicated with others, worshipped and why their communities changed over time.
A celebration of Canyons of the Ancients is tentatively scheduled for June 9, hosted by BLM and its partners like Southwest Colorado Canyons Alliance. Stay tuned for details.
Mark Pearson is executive director at San Juan Citizens Alliance. Reach him at mark@sanjuancitizens.org.
