GILA BEND Before committing to the motion, Zion White cautiously checks where he plans to place his hand, trying to avoid the Native American petroglyphs he’s there to document.
“When I see these petroglyphs, I think about how someone spent the time to peck out that image, put it on this rock and tell our history,” said White, a member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe. “Now, I’m here doing the exact same thing to preserve our history.”
With his hand carefully positioned, White steadies himself and silently shimmies down the side of a boulder.
“Try not to wake the bees,” he whispers, pointing at a pile of honeycombs littering a crack in the cliff face. “Last time, we couldn’t finish documenting this site because of them.”
Future Parks npca.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from npca.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Mar.13.2021
Originally established to conserve and preserve some of the most beautiful and unusual wilderness places in America, the National Park System soon grew to include archaeological and historic sites. The first park to preserve âthe works of men,â as President Theodore Roosevelt put it, was Mesa Verde, established in 1906. Others followed, preserving and showcasing ancient ruins and archaeological sites throughout the country. Most of them are in the Southwest. And for good reason.
People of the Southwest built their homes and cities in stone, carving them in soft sandstone crevices or building structures up to four stories high from clay and mud bricks. In the bone-dry environment of the desert, these ancient structures baked in the sun but stayed preserved. Visible for miles in the wide-open spaces, they were easy to find, and as settlers moved into the area, they started visiting them with no regard to their preservation. Vandalism threatened to destroy stru