travelRANGER87508: Find-Your-Park… mine is west (& east) of the Pecos.

Pecos - once a mighty pueblo

Earlier this month the National Park Service (NPS) kicked-off the “Find Your Park” program. The campaign hopes to encourage us to share our National Park area experiences as part of the NPS Centennial celebration: I’ll tell you about Pecos, the park I’ve chosen, and a special personal experience in a few moments (after all, I live about 20-miles “west of the Pecos”)…

Kiva entrance - Pecos NHP

Many of us know the National Park Service Organic Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on August 25, 1916, and the NPS was created to protect parks, monuments, and reservations with a special mandate: “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Park_Service_Organic_Act

North Pueblo- room blocks on right

“According to the National Park Service, Find You Park invites the public to see that a national park is more than just a place - it can be a feeling, a state of mind, or a sense of American pride. Beyond vast landscapes, the campaign highlights historical, urban, and cultural parks, as well as National Park Service programs that protect, preserve and share nature, culture, and history in communities nationwide. Further, Find Your Park encourages people to find their own personal connections within the network of national parks and public lands.” You can check-it-out at: www.findyourpark.com

Trash IS Treasure to archaeologists

OK, my park is Pecos National Historical Park: I’ve been going for years, and it is a gem. On Tuesday I joined fellow Santa Fe National Forest Site Stewards on our walk back through time. The area has had visitors since at least Paleo-Indian days, and we are just some of the more recent ones. The area certainly experienced use by Archaic era hunter-gatherer groups, as it is along a natural migration route skirting to the south of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. First pit-house villages were ca. 600-800 AD/CE.

Sangre de Cristo Mountains

A real development boom came hundreds of centuries before the Spanish, as ancestral pueblo societies & nations moved into the area in concentrated numbers in the late 13^th Century. Due to trade between both the Plains Tribes and Rio Grande Pueblos they grew (wealthier and stronger). Then about 1540 new visitors arrived: The Coronado Expedition. The Spanish were received well, but not exactly buying what Coronado was selling it was at Pecos that he got steered to present-day Kansas (in his quest to find the golden cities of Cibola). The Spanish came back, building their first mission at Pecos in 1610. A larger 17^th Century mission was razed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the Spanish were driven from New Mexico (to El Paso and beyond) for 12-years. With the second Spanish “entrada” in New Mexico (1692) came a new mission at Pecos. Signs of the Old Santa Fe Trail, that brought “Yankee Traders” from the U.S., are also found “a stones throw” from the last mission site, and descendants from Pecos are still found at the Pueblo of Jemez (they have a Lt. Governor position for Pecos): a long and proud history.

Gen. Sibley

With the coming of the U.S. Civil War, in the spring of 1862 a Confederate Expeditionary Force under the command of Gen. H.H. Sibley was hoping to capture the gold & silver of Colorado, and then push west to do the same in California. However, Pecos became the temporary staging area for Union forces from Colorado led by Col. Edward Canby. They were there to block the Confederate’s northerly advance. The two sides battled a short distance west of Pecos, at Glorieta Pass (now a unit of Pecos NHP). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Glorieta_Pass

Kidder & crew

Anyone that has studied archaeology in the southwest U.S. is indebted to Alfred Vincent (A.V.) Kidder for his early 20^th Century work at Pecos and the establishment of a ceramic chronology we still use today. Kidder’s seminal works at Pecos, resulted in the 1^st gathering of archaeologists working in the southwest. It was convened at Pecos. The Pecos Conference remains an annual event for professionals. Though it now moves location, it is still called the Pecos Conference and returns to Pecos every 5-years. In 1935 the State of New Mexico created Pecos State Monument from lands acquired from the Forked Lightning Ranch (then owned by a rodeo personality known as “Tex Austin”).

18th Century church

The NPS became involved in the mid-1960’s, when Pecos was declared a National Monument. My relationship started in 1989 as the Southwest Region’s Ranger Activities Specialist (EMS, SAR, fees, radios, uniforms, law enforcement, fire, etc.). It was furthered in the mid-90’s when the Regional Resources Protection Unit was down-sized to one person (me). Our archaeologist (Judy Reed) took a similar position at Pecos, and I was in need of a secure evidence vault for the sensitive materials I was entrusted to protect (pending case dispositions).

Greer & Buddy

As it turned out, Buddy Fogelson (“Dallas oil man”) and Greer Garson (the movie actress) had acquired the Forked Lightning Ranch, and it eventually became part of Pecos National Historical Park. The ranch house had an old walk-in refrigerator unit (for their entertaining & events) that made a perfect secure evidence area. The Chief Ranger (Gary Hartley) had the outer lock, and I had the inner lock.

Church interior

My admiration for Pecos was cemented in the late 1990’s: an event that, in retrospect, I’d spent my career working towards (ever since a sundance near Lodge Grass, along the Little Bighorn River in July ’75). In the early spring of 1999 I received a telephone call informing me that the Park had been consulting with the Pueblo of Jemez and many other pueblos & tribes for 8-years regarding the repatriation and reburial of the remains from over 2,000 individuals previously buried at Pecos (and a few associated sites). They had been excavated and removed to The Harvard Peabody museums in Massachusetts during the early 20th Century. As part of the largest return under the Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act of 1990 representatives from the Pueblo & Park would be traveling east to receive and escort the ancestors back to Pecos in late May. I was asked to be the Operations Section Chief for the Incident Management Team involved with the event.

Repatriation at Pecos

It was a great day in late May, with hundreds of tribal pilgrims accompanying their ancestors the final miles back home to finally rest. When the reburials, blessings and prayers were concluded, signs from the heavens opened with purifying rain that indicated: “this is good.” I had never received such heartfelt thanks as that from tribal members that day; many eyes were swollen with tears of joy that further sanctified the ground and the occasion. I was honored to be there (a humbling experience); certainly one of the highlights of this Ranger’s career. The Nov. 2000 issue of “National Geographic,” page 118 chronicles the “Pueblo Ancestors Return Home.”