Colorado is home to a world-class archaeological wonder, the first national park to preserve the works of human beings. But as Mesa Verde National Park celebrates its centennial, it’s important that we ask ourselves what people 100 years from now will think of our 21st century efforts to protect the wondrous relics of ancient peoples who inhabited our region from about A.D. 600 to 1300. Sadly, our ancestors may look at us with disdain for our wrong-headed priorities.
First Lady Laura Bush, honorary chair for the White House’s Preserve America initiative, visited Mesa Verde on Tuesday and praised protection efforts. But in truth, many ancient sites at Mesa Verde and surrounding areas are at risk.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s generation got it right. The same year he made Mesa Verde a national park, Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which to this day makes it a federal crime to vandalize or remove historic artifacts on public lands. Because of such foresight, we can enjoy cliff dwellings and other visible reminders of the Ancestral Pueblo Indians, forbears of 24 tribes that still live in the Southwest.
Mesa Verde, near Cortez, was part of a civilization that once occupied southwestern Colorado, eastern Utah, northern Arizona, and New Mexico. Such nearby areas as Canyons of the Ancients and the Ute Mountain Tribal Park are such rich sites they’ve been called “a kind of American Mesopotamia.”
But now, Mesa Verde, like many American historic sites, lacks the resources to fully protect its treasures. A multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog in the park system can be seen in Mesa Verde’s battle to repair the damage of time and weather and pollution.
Ongoing threats might be controlled if the National Park Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management had the funds and political backing to deal with them: Vandals, neglect, artifact hunters, off-road vehicles, livestock grazing and energy development including drill rigs, trucks and blasting.
And thousands of sites lie outside any protected area – and we of the 21st century are allowing their destruction.
Coloradans appreciated the first lady’s recognition of Mesa Verde’s place in history. Such words should be accompanied by a federal commitment to do as well by our nation’s heritage as Roosevelt’s far-sighted generation did 100 years ago.
