Mesa Verde National Park – First lady Laura Bush’s motorcade traveled many long, winding miles Tuesday so she could wish this park a happy 100th birthday.
Standing under a great sweep of golden sandstone that shelters Long House, one of the largest cliff dwellings in the park, the first lady made a short speech on the importance of national parks to the American people and the generations to come.
“Congratulations on your first century,” Bush told park officials. “I wish you many, many more. … This park’s archaeological sites are some of the best-cared-for in the United States.”
Scottie Jacket, a 19-year-old Ute Mountain Ute from Towaoc was among the dancers and drummers of Red Sky who performed for Bush in buckskin and cloth raiments embellished with elk teeth, shells and porcupine quills. “I told my friends, ‘I get to dance for the president’s wife,”‘ Jacket said. “Some of them believe me. Some of them don’t.”
The celebration offered an unusual sight – the grounds of the 860-year-old Long House cluttered with more than a hundred metal folding chairs for invited guests, half of them blinking in the bright light on a sun-baked ledge and half cooled by the deep shade of the cliff alcove.
Attendees included acting Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett and 18 fourth- and fifth-graders from Cortez’s Manaugh Elementary School, honored as the first International Junior Rangers for their research and collaboration with students living near archaeological preserves in Mexico and Belize.
Bush is an active supporter of the Junior Ranger Program and honorary chair of the National Park Foundation.
“There is no greater champion of the National Park Service than our first lady,” Scarlett said.
Bush also helped create in 2001 the Preserve America program, which promotes cultural heritage and celebrates the communities that foster it.
The sneaker-clad first lady said she planned to stick around for a few days to explore the area with some of her usual hiking companions, Regan Gammon and Nancy Bechtle.
Bush, 59, said it has been a tradition since her 40th birthday to vacation each year with her friends in one of the national parks. The first year they floated the Colorado River and climbed out of the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. She repeated that trip last year, but it was more difficult, she joked.
Park Superintendent Larry Wiese said Bush’s visit was one of the highlights of the park’s centennial celebration, which culminates with a June 29 gala.
President Theodore Roose- velt signed the bill establishing Mesa Verde National Park on June 29, 1906, to “preserve the works of man.”
Laura Bush’s excursion to Mesa Verde was the first official White House visit since former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton came in May 1999.
Tuesday’s event concluded with comments and a prayer by Zia Pueblo official Peter Pino, a descendant of the ancient Mesa Verde people, sometimes called the Anasazi. There are 24 modern tribes that claim cultural affiliation with the ancient Puebloans.
“It used to be said this place was abandoned,” Pino said. “But every Dec. 29 we tell the story … of the migration of our people from here to the pueblos in New Mexico and Arizona. This place was not abandoned. The spirits of our forefathers are still here.”
Then it was quiet except for the echoes of banging metal as volunteers folded the heavy chairs to lug them up trail switchbacks to the canyon rim.
“There is no shortcut here. We did it just like everybody else,” Susan Whitson, the first lady’s press secretary, said of the hike and the roughly 30 miles of sharp curves and steep grades to the man-made treasures of Wetherill Mesa.
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
