Every Victory is Fragile, Every Loss is Catastrophic: The Ruins of Bear's Ears National Monument

House on Fire Ruin in Bear's Ears. I wasn't smart enough to catch the "fire" in the rocks at the time.

There are a lot of pictures in this post, and I hope you will enjoy them. They are the ones most precious to me, the product of two hikes into the heart of Bear's Ears National Monument in the years before it was established as a monument by President Obama in 2016.

National monuments are a bit different than national parks or national recreational areas. Parks (and recreational areas) are established by Congress. They may preserve vast scenic landscapes like Yosemite or Grand Canyon, or may be declared because of their potential for, well, recreation (examples are Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Oregon Dunes, or Lake Powell).

The origin of national monuments is by presidential proclamation. Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, presidents can declare monuments of areas with archaeological, historical, or scientific value that are threatened with destruction through looting, mining, logging, or urban development (some monuments are as small as single houses in big cities). They are often controversial, because somebody was to profit off the exploitation of the resource in question, but they are always federal lands that are supposed to be administered to the benefit of all citizens, not the select few. They aren't "land grabs".

Controversial or not, many monuments are eventually transformed into national parks by Congress as the representatives come to realize the value of protecting a resource (or more cynically, how the surrounding towns benefit monetarily). This happened with Grand Canyon, Zion, Olympic, Arches, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, and quite a few others. It would be unthinkable today that someone would want to eliminate national parks from our country's heritage. And that is what is so disturbing about the present administration...they are trying to eliminate protections from a series of national monuments, and invariably it is for the purpose of mining (coal and uranium) or logging, or quite seriously, to make it easier to plunder archaeological sites and rob graves.

I am trying to imagine the protests that would arise if a Civil War battleground were to be eliminated from its status as a monument so that a housing development could be constructed (it's happened). Or digging up an English Castle ruin because coal beds were underneath. Or an ancient Hebrew temple ruin being bulldozed in Israel for a shopping center to be built. These kinds of historical sites are valued by the dominant culture or majority population, and it is easy to understand why people would be upset. What's less easy to understand is why it is so much easier for some to destroy the remains of ancestral Pueblo culture in the American Southwest. The lands at Bear's Ears are held sacred by not one, but five different tribal nations, and they have tried for decades to get this monument established. A great deal of planning and negotiation went into determining the boundaries. There are around 100,000 archaeological sites within the monument, and the vast majority have never been investigated or studied in detail (most should remain undisturbed).

I have only barely begun to explore the riches of the Bear's Ears, having walked through maybe half a dozen canyons that have been carved into the plateaus within the park. These pictures were taken in two forks of a single canyon at the north end of Cedar Mesa within Bear's Ears. A single canyon of perhaps a hundred or more canyons in the monument. And these are just some of the pictures. This land is a precious treasure of sacredness and knowledge of the past.

J.R.R. Tolkien said in the forward to his Lord of the Rings trilogy that he "disliked allegory in all its forms", and I've seen some clumsy ones over the years, but I was looking at the pictographs in the picture above, and noticed how parts of the figures have been destroyed, either by vandalism or eroson (I suspect the former). I couldn't help think that this is a metaphor for what Secretary Zinke and the president are doing to Bear's Ears as they carve it up to make it easier to mine uranium. So much history is lost when lands are not given the protection they preserve.

No, I didn't dig up this bit of what was probably a moccasin. It was already sitting out on a rock.

Cedar Mesa (which makes up a huge part of the southern part of the monument) is a plateau that rises out of the desert above Bluff and Mexican Hat. It is more of a semi-arid landscape that is covered today by a pinyon-juniper forest, and in the highest reaches, ponderosa pine. It is desolate and lonely, crossed by a single paved highway, with not a single development or habitation. A thousand years ago, it was home for thousands of Ancestral Puebloans (once called the Anasazi), and a visit at that time would have revealed thousands of acres under cultivation for maize and beans. It was one of the most important agricultural regions in the entire southwest. Remains of villages lie scattered across the plateau and in the gulches and valleys below. As I understand it, the area once supported a population much higher than the one that exists today.

Early on, and for most of the history of the region, people lived in the open on the plateau surface. Towards the end, just before the abandonment of the region, the situation had changed and people began to construct literal fortresses in the alcoves of the sandstone canyons. One ruin I saw was simply astounding. It was built flush with the wall of the canyon and was mostly invisible, aside from a single structure (above). A closer inspection revealed seven or eight rooms hidden behind a façade (on the right side).

Even more extraordinary was a granary or additional room about fifteen or twenty feet higher up the sheer cliff. It was completely inaccessible by any means that I could see. At best, I could guess that access was possible only by placing logs into the cliff to make steps, or a large ladder, but it would be a terrifying climb in any instance. One has to wonder what had changed to make these people so scared, and so defensive? There are all kinds of clues in the ruins and hints in the oral histories of the people in the region, but no definitive answers.

The interior walls are astounding as well. Soot from years fires covers the plaster they used to fill cracks in the rocks. After eight hundred years, one can still make out the fingerprints of those who came before (above). It is an incredibly intimate connection to the past.

Every victory is fragile, every loss is catastrophic. These ruins sat undisturbed for 600-700 years before Europeans moved into the region in the 1800s and started plundering. It was the destruction of ruins like these that caused the passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906, and Bear's Ears is one of the last regions that needs to be part of the monument system. I "assume that some of them are good people" (to paraphrase the current occupant of the White House), but some the people living in the area are part of the network of grave robbers and plunderers. There have been arrests, but for the most part these "thieves of time" (as Tony Hillerman so aptly put it) steal with impunity. They feel free to threaten the overextended federal officers who are trying to patrol the lands and protect them. Some have told me personally about having mummified bodies in their garages, or described the use of heavy equipment to tear down the walls of ruins or digging pits to get at artifacts. Without adequate protection, the loss to humanity will be incalculable.

In a sense, I am preaching to the choir. When Zinke allowed comments on his proposal to gut the monument, they ran 98% to 2% in favor of preserving the monument as is. Most of those who would take the time to read this are the people who also know the importance of preserving the past.

If you can, see these places before they fall to the vandals and grave-robbers. If you aren't able to see them, work towards their preservation from a distance. Support those who are involved in the lawsuits against the president's illegal actions. Make your voices heard...

...because those who plunder these lands can't hear the voices of those lived and died here for thousands of years. Nor will those in power listen to their descendants. We only have the times we are living in to do our part to preserve the stories and artifacts of this bygone past. In so many ways it is a gift to be able to play a part in doing the right thing.

Some of the parties to the lawsuits over the national monument reductions are included in the article found here. The clothing manufacturer Patagonia deserves credit as well. They have taken a very public stand in favor of the monuments (information here).

How Foolish Can These People Be? The Treasure of our National Monuments

Let's make something very clear: these lands belong to the American people. They have always belonged to the American people, dating back to the time of statehood. There were attempts at times to give some of the lands away a century ago under the Homestead Act, but no one wanted them (not that anyone was asking Native Americans at the time).

There are people who have borrowed these lands. Some of them were miners, others were oil drillers, some were ranchers. But they were renters, leasers, who owed fees to help keep the lands healthy. It may be that some of them feel they own these lands because they used them for decades, but if we go by that standard, the land belongs to the Native Americans who used these lands for thousands of years. But the ranchers and miners have persisted, and they finally seem to have found a "champion" in Washington. Secretary of the Interior Zinke and President Trump have suggested that they might rescind the national monument status of some of our most precious lands.

 The lands were set aside by proclamations of several presidents, both Republican and Democrat, under the auspices of the National Antiquities Act. Rescinding these monuments would be illegal, but there is no one in Washington apparently who will fight to protect them. Foremost among them are Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Bear's Ears, which are the monuments I am highlighting with these pictures.

The so-called "process" had to include public comments, and according to reports, the public support for these monuments has been on the order of 98%. But I fear that the desires of the American people will be ignored in Washington. This must not be allowed to happen.

There is local opposition to these monuments. Some of it has come, as noted above, from ranchers and miners. But I'm not going to mince words here: much of the local opposition is coming from pothunters who would despoil the heritage of the Native Americans who lived and died here for thousands of years. They fear monument status would mean more scrutiny and greater protection of the archaeological resources of these monuments. And it should. These people are criminals.

Those leading the local opposition, if they had a single brain among them, should be calling on Congress to make these monuments into national parks. I've been to Zion National Park and others in the region and they are so crowded that it is degrading the experience of visiting. It would be incredibly smart to capitalize on the demand for beautiful open spaces by making new parks to take on some of the tourism. These parks would be a marvelous addition to the crown jewels of our national heritage.

I'm making an economic argument for the protection of these lands, but the most important reason to preserve them is ethical and moral. These canyons and alcoves contain the heritage of numerous cultures, and we don't have the right to vandalize their history. We don't have the right to strip mine the sacred places of a people.

Do what you can to maintain the integrity of our national monuments. The time for comments is past, but you can make sure that your congressional and senate representatives hear from you. Please don't let these lands be stolen again. The destruction of the past is permanent, and the shame will be on us all if we allow it to happen.

Introducing Pinnacles National PARK!

One of our nation's oldest national monuments is set to become our nation's newest national parks, and I couldn't be happier about it! Assuming the legislation is signed by President Obama, Pinnacles National Park will be one of the most geologically interesting parks in the system for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it lies on a major plate boundary, and provided critical evidence for understanding the movement of the San Andreas fault. It doesn't hurt that it is also one of the most scenic portions of the central Coast Ranges of California (mind you, Big Sur is beautiful too, but remarkably no part of Big Sur is a national park or monument).

Pinnacles was established in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt under the auspices of the National Antiquities Act, which was one of the wisest acts of Congress ever. The act allowed presidents to establish monuments without congressional approval, and without it we might never have had Grand Canyon, Zion, Petrified Forest, Death Valley, or Joshua Tree National Parks, because all of them were established as monuments at first, often over local opposition. It often took decades, but Congress would eventually come to its senses and make the monuments into national parks, as it did this week with Pinnacles.

I have been taking geology classes on field studies trips to Pinnacles National Monument now for 24 years, and it has been a significant part of my blog explorations of California (click here for a sampling of some of my descriptions of the region). The geological attraction of the park is the 22 million year old extinct stratovolcano that erupted on top of the San Andreas fault in southern California near Palmdale and Lancaster in the Mojave Desert. Subsequent movement along the fault has carried the Pinnacles half of the volcano 195 miles northwest to its present location in the central Coast Ranges (the other half, called the Neenach volcanics, aren't nearly as scenic).

The ancient volcano has eroded into an intricate maze of spires and deep slot canyons. The High Peaks Trail loop, which traverses the most rugged part of the Pinnacles, is close to the top of my list of favorite hikes in the world (and mind you, that is a list that includes Angels Landing in Zion, Delicate Arch in Arches, the Grand Canyon, and the Burgess Shale in Canada). The slot canyons have in places been completely covered over by gigantic boulders, forming talus caves. One is a quarter mile long, and includes an underground waterfall.

The park has some great wildlife and botanical attractions to complement the wonderful geology. To this day it remains the only place where I've seen a wild bobcat. It is also home to one of the few populations of the California Condor, and they can often be viewed from the visitor center on the east side of the park.

Pinnacles National Monument was enlarged several years ago, and there is a proposal to incorporate ranchlands to the east across the San Andreas fault. This would be an excellent idea if the funding could be found to do it. The park is already an example of a transform boundary, and expansion would add rocks that formed in the Franciscan subduction zone that effected the region during Mesozoic and early Cenozoic time.

On a political note, I want to thank Representative Jeff Denham for co-sponsoring the legislation that is allowing the monument to become a park. Denham represents my district, and on most issues (really, all of them) we greatly disagree. But on this, he did good.

Pinnacles National Monument-soon-to-be Park can be accessed by paved roads from the west out of Soledad and King City, and from the east on roads out of Hollister and San Juan Bautista (no roads cross the monument). A campground is available on the east side of the park, and 30 miles of trails are available. The park is a popular technical rock-climbing area. There are only nine days left to comment, but an extensive management plan is being considered at this time. Information can be found by clicking here.