Colorado's Canyons of the Ancients National Monument Gains 4,500 Acres
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Nov. 25, 2009
The Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans, left traces of their culture throughout the southwestern United States. Mesa Verde, now a national park, is among the most famous, but many more sites are all but hidden on private land.
This month, thousands of acres in southwestern Colorado that contain unprotected prehistoric sites—including a 1,000-year-old Ancestral Puebloan solstice marker—have passed from private hands to the federal government.
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument acquired 4,573 acres in southwestern Colorado on Nov. 13, thanks to the Conservation Fund, which bought the land and transferred it immediately to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
"We're glad to help the Bureau of Land Management with this significant addition to Canyons of the Ancients National Monument," Larry Selzer, president and CEO of The Conservation Fund, said in a statement today. "Through the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA), an innovative tool for Western land conservation, and the support of numerous partners, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, we will enhance visitors' opportunity to learn how cultures lived thousands of years ago."
New Plan for Canyons of the Ancients
In January 2008 the National Trust provided comments on the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument's draft Resource Management Plan. Read more
The new parcel includes 25 prehistoric sites but could contain nearly 700, according to LouAnn Jacobson, manager of the Bureau of Land Management's Canyons of Ancients National Monument/Anasazi Heritage Center.
(Archaeologists had already identified 5,000 prehistoric sites within the existing monument—previously about 150,000 acres—but estimate that it may contain 30,000 such sites.)
No one can visit the new parcel yet, however. The Bureau of Land Management must first document the archaeological sites and then determine whether or not the landscape, which includes three riparian areas, can support visitors—and how many.
Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, called the transfer a "great gift to the American people" in a Nov. 13 statement. "This property was one of the most important cultural properties in the United States not in federal ownership."
Read LouAnn Jacobson's article on Preservation Nation's blog
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Submitted by vanessa at: December 2, 2009
cool