Ruth Lambert has worked on numerous documentation and preservation projects during her 12 years as the cultural program director for the San Juan Mountains Association. The most recent work is garnering accolades for her and for the organization.
Last week, History Colorado announced it is honoring the public-lands stewardship nonprofit with its Caroline Bancroft History Project Award for the Wooden Canvas Project, which documented arborglyphs carved by Hispano sheepherders along the Pine-Piedra Stock Driveway.
“These are arborglyphs: tree carvings that provide a glimpse of past lifeways,” Lambert wrote in a blog for the state history institution. “Too soon, they will be gone. Wind, fire, disease or age will claim these trees. As they fall, their messages will decay, and this window into the past will close.”
The project, a follow-up to an earlier mountains association archaeological study, included archaeological documentation of two field camps, historical research into Hispano settlement of the area and oral histories with carvers and their descendants, Lambert said. It resulted in two museum exhibits, a photo exhibit and an 80-page book written by Lambert.
Bancroft, the award’s namesake, was a journalist who had a passion for history, said Shannon Haltiwanger, spokeswoman for History Colorado.
“In the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote numerous books, and she saved a number of historically significant buildings,” Haltiwanger said. “She left part of her estate to support this award.”
The presentation will take place Wednesday in Denver and includes a cash prize of $1,000.
This is the fifth recognition of a local project by History Colorado since 1998, Haltiwanger said.
A Caroline Bancroft History Project Award went to Michael Brennan and Walt Heikes for The History Mystery in 1998, which teaches middle schools in Durango how to discover information about eight Durango buildings located in “The Boulevard” National Historic District. Three Josephine H. Miles History Award acknowledgements have been given: as co-winner in 2005 to the La Plata County Historical Society for its publication Historic Durango: Natural Resources, Inviting and Impacting Development; as co-winner in 2006 to the Durango Herald Small Press for its seven-volume Mesa Verde Centennial Book Series; and an honorable mention in 2014 to Peggy Winkworth for her publication Walking Durango: History, Sights, and Stories.
“When you hear Ruth is working on a project, you want to talk to her because you know it will be fascinating,” Haltiwanger said. “You live in such a historically rich area, and so many people are passionate about your history.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
To learn more
Visit bit.ly/1JNSu5w to read Ruth Lambert’s blog about the Wooden Canvas Project.
Visit http://sjma.org/ to learn more about the San Juan Mountains Association.
Visit www.historycolorado.org to learn more about History Colorado.
