National Trust For Historic Preservation Applauds Obama Administration for Its Role in Preserving Property Within Canyons of the Ancients
Posted November 16, 2009 | Contact pr@nthp.org or 202-588-6141
Washington, D.C. (November 13, 2009) – A 4,500-acre private holding within the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument that contains perhaps hundreds of cultural sites, has been acquired by the Department of the Interior, which will preserve the sites' irreplaceable artifacts on behalf of the American people. The National Trust for Historic Preservation applauded the Obama Administration for its continued leadership on preserving sensitive cultural sites on America's system of public lands.
"This property was one of the most important cultural properties in the United States not in federal ownership," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "We salute Secretary Salazar, the Bureau of Land Management and The Conservation Fund, for their outstanding work to acquire this property and bestow a great gift on the American people."
The property comprises 25 percent of the private holdings in the Bureau of Land Management's Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Canyons of the Ancients is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, the newest system of public lands that was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year.
Background
There are seven individual parcels included in the property acquisition totaling approximately 4,500 acres. There are 25 documented cultural sites on the property, and experts predict there could be as many as 700 in total. The property includes one of the earliest documented sites in the Southwestern United States. Documented by the Hayden Survey and photographed by William Henry Jackson in 1874, the site helped bring Colorado to the attention of scholars and the general public more than a decade before the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde were discovered by Anglo ranchers. A second known site, first photographed in 1908, includes a tower with massive standing walls, a signature of Late Pueblo III Ancestral Puebloan sites. The acquisition also includes a one-of-a-kind Ancestral Puebloan solstice marker thought to be at least 1,000 years old.
The seven parcels, located inside and immediately adjacent to the Canyons of the Ancients boundaries, and expected to contain the most significant concentrations of archeological sites, were purchased by The Conservation Fund with the intent to convey ownership to the BLM. The National Trust worked with the BLM and Secretary Salazar to encourage the use of Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA) Funds to make the acquisition possible. The FLTFA funds used by BLM to purchase these critical lands were generated from the sale of surplus federal land elsewhere in the Western United States, thereby avoiding the need to appropriate new dollars. The closing was finalized on November 13, 2009.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately-funded nonprofit organization, works to save America’s historic places to enrich our future. www.PreservationNation.org
