Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Mark Pearson). Here’s an excerpt:
May 14, 2025
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Encompassing 178,000 acres of public land west of Cortez, the Monument was created on June 9, 2000 by President Bill Clinton using the authority of the Antiquities Act. Canyons of the Ancients was the brainchild of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who had great familiarity with the area owing to his Arizona roots. Canyons of the Ancients is widely renowned for what is often called the highest known density of archaeological sites in the United States, including more than 6,000 recorded sites and a total number of sites estimated as high as 30,000. As such, Canyons of the Ancients offers an unparalleled opportunity to observe, study and experience how cultures lived and adapted over time in the American Southwest.
As explorers and settlers colonized the western United States, the evidence of these ancestral cultures sparked enormous interest and curiosity. The famous western photographer, William Henry Jackson, recorded dramatic photographic images of prehistoric dwellings in the McElmo Valley in 1874. The General Land Office (the original precursor to the Bureau of Land Management) set aside Goodman Point in 1889 and made it off limits to homesteading for the protection of significant cultural resources. Eventually, in 1985, the BLM proposed protection for the larger landscape that today comprises Canyons of the Ancients, labeling it as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. At the time, the BLM described the cultural resources as “individually and collectively unique and nationally important, representing a successful and challenging adaptation to marginal environments that lasted for 800 years.” A century’s worth of recognition and interest in preserving this cultural landscape set the stage for the presidential proclamation that established Canyons of the Ancients as a National Monument in 2000.