When the chips are down, Arizonans truly have grit.
Case in point: The Jerome State Historic Park, with the Douglas Mansion as its crown jewel, will reopen in all its glory on Thursday, thanks to the determination of people who value its significance in Yavapai County’s history.
Two major forces came together to shut the park down in 2009: a crippled state budget that forced the Legislature to cut money for state parks operations and the mansion’s crumbling adobe walls and roof.
But, the “closed” sign that went up on the park’s gates didn’t sit well with the people who treasure the vestiges of Jerome’s colorful past – and for good reason.
Jerome, which rose atop Cleopatra Hill, was once one of Yavapai County’s boomtowns, rich with copper that lured prospectors, investors and promoters who sought wealth from its depths. The little burg quickly grew from a cluster of tents and mining shacks to a flourishing company town, burgeoning with Americans, Croatians, Irish, Spaniards, Italians and Chinese, a cosmopolitan mix, all with hope that Lady Luck would smile on them.
The Douglas Mansion is Jerome’s most prominent landmark. Visible from every direction in the hillside town, the formidable edifice presides over the state park. The luxurious landmark was once the home of mining magnate James Stuart Douglas, owner of the Little Daisy Mine, and featured a wine cellar, a billiard room, marble shower, steam heat and a central vacuum system. The museum resonates with history of life in Jerome during its heyday as a major Arizona mining town.
When Jerome’s mining industry went bust and the town faced certain destiny as a ghost town, folks got together and stood guard over its historic buildings. The mansion became a state park in 1965 and Jerome became a national historic landmark in 1976.
The same strong will for preservation prevailed again when the park closed in 2009. One of the first to step up was Yavapai County Supervisor Chip Davis who was successful in persuading his board colleagues to appropriate $30,000 of county park money for three years to benefit three state parks in his District 3.
The Douglas family donated $15,000 to help repair the building. The Arizona State Parks board allocated sufficient Heritage Fund grant money to rebuild the roof, fix the adobe walls, reinforce the chimneys and paint the exterior.
Voila. The grand dame shines again, all thanks to the tenacity of people who appreciate the significance and colorful contribution of Jerome and the Douglas Mansion to Yavapai County’s historical tapestry.
Somewhere out there, there’s a modern Western explorer who decided he had something so important to say that it had to be slathered in silver paint on a remote rock wall full of ancient petroglyphs in the national forest.
The mysterious etchings depicting people, animals and a blazing sun are in a box canyon known as Keyhole Sink in the Kaibab National Forest east of Williams, a mountain town off Interstate 40 that has welcomed sojourners since its namesake, fur trapper “Old Bill” Williams, explored the locale in the early to mid-1800s.
The pristine rock art in Keyhole Sink was a silent reminder of the ancient culture that long flourished in northern Arizona, and it stood unaltered for at least 1,000 years. That all changed in August, when someone painted “ACE” on top of the petroglyphs in sloppy, dripping letters. Under the defacement is an indistinguishable glop of paint that could be more lettering.
Kaibab officials aren’t sure exactly what it says, nor what it means, other than a potentially expensive restoration job that might not work. Investigators are trying to find the culprits but have no suspects.
“It’s beyond words,” Kaibab archaeologist Neil Weintraub said of the damage. “It feels like an attack on this site. What has it done except give people pleasure for years?”
The damage at Keyhole Sink is a fresh reminder of the ongoing assault on ancient archaeological sites in Arizona and across the Southwest – graffiti, looting of artifacts, littering and garbage-dumping. Sites are defaced with paint, bullet marks, paintball stains and messages scratched into rocks. Professional thieves remove pottery, hack out chunks of ancient art-covered rock and dislodge anything they can carry away.
The sites are vulnerable because they’re not behind locked doors. They are operated on the assumption that visitors will behave, since monitoring is intermittent at many of these locations. There aren’t enough people, either paid or volunteer, to check them frequently. There are simply too many sites. Often, they’re hard to reach.
“We can’t monitor them all, and neither can the land managers,” said Nicole Armstrong-Best, interim coordinator for Arizona’s Site Stewards program. The program oversees a group of volunteers who monitor local, state and federal sites all over the state.
There are about 800 volunteer stewards who monitor the 3,000 most significant or most affected sites the program tracks. Armstrong-Best said there are thousands of other sites – both known and undiscovered – not being watched.
More than 130 vandalism reports have been filed by the stewards since October 2009, when a computerized reporting system was put in place. Reported incidents include petroglyph thefts, paint damage, graffiti and dumping of debris. In a few cases, even shrines and cairns have been built on the sites, along with other alterations.
Looters and vandals can be prosecuted under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. But experts say the cases can be difficult to prosecute unless there are witnesses. Still, there have been enforcement actions in Arizona and neighboring states recently.
Perhaps the best known is a federal sting that targeted looters in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. More than 25 people were arrested in the case.
In other examples of prosecution, a Bullhead City man was hit with several citations after a paintball fight damaged petroglyphs in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and the federal Bureau of Land Management is investigating a case near Tucson in which people were spotted spray-painting a series of rock-art panels.
Archaeology buffs like Robert Schroeder of Phoenix wonder if it’s a good idea to have the sites listed so publicly.
“I don’t see any easy solution,” said Schroeder, who photographs petroglyphs, including some that have been damaged. “You want Americans to have access to the country’s cultural resources, but you want to keep sensitive sites off the radar, so to speak.”
Mike Johnson, deputy preservation officer for the BLM’s Arizona office in Phoenix, said urban growth in the West means more people looking to crowd into diminishing open space, putting more pressure on archaeological sites. At the same time, he said technology like GPS helps people find sites, and Internet marketplaces permit thieves to easily market what they’ve stolen.
Johnson said the BLM is working to increase steward visits and patrols by uniformed officers at sensitive sites, and to increased cooperation with Native American tribes, for whom these sites are sacred reminders of their ancestors.
Experts say that the impulse to restrict access is giving way to the idea that educating visitors about the value of the sites will make them more apt to notice and report criminal shenanigans.
“You give people who are professional looters more reason for concern, more eyes and ears out there,” said Andy Laurenzi of Tucson’s Center for Desert Archaeology.
Kaibab officials were proactive in trying to protect Keyhole Sink. Two forest roads leading to the small canyon were closed, and now the rights of way are carpeted with forest growth. Without easy access, garbage and litter almost disappeared.
To keep the site accessible, forest managers created a ¾-mile walking trail to Keyhole Sink. They figured that anyone willing to make the effort to get there on foot would value what they were seeing.
Kaibab officials erected signs warning against vandalism and explaining the significance of the site. Now, Weintraub said, the agency may have to consider installing cameras and motion detectors to protect the site, though that runs counter to his notion that the place is a touchstone to the past.
Until the paint is removed, he said, people who come there from around the world will be disappointed.
“We’ve lost the value of people being able to come there, see the stuff, sometimes sit there alone and imagine how it was for the ancient people who lived there,” he said.
Margaret Hangan, Kaibab National Forest’s heritage-program manager, said she was unsure if anyone would be caught for the vandalism. Kaibab officials are still trying to figure out the best way to remove the paint without leaving more damage. Officials hope publicity helps educate people and generates some tips on who did it.
“It hurts us emotionally, because this is just such a special place,” Hangan said recently, standing near a pool at the base of a cliff where a waterfall cascades during the snowmelt season. “It’s really hard to see that not everybody feels the same way we do about it.”
Anyone headed out to enjoy county or state parks or hike the Grand Canyon this weekend should encounter few, if any, problems from this week’s violent storms.
Storms dumped plenty of rain and hail, but there were no reports of significant damage in Maricopa County and Arizona State parks, officials said.
“It was pretty violent,” said John Gunn, supervisor at Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area, north of Cave Creek. “In the nine years I’ve been here at Spur Cross, I’ve never seen it rain that hard. It was unbelievable, nearly whiteout conditions.”
Although hail at the park “pounded the trees pretty good,” he said, the storm did no other damage.
None of the trails is closed at the 2,154-acre park.
None of the other members of the park system reported any damage, according to Maricopa County Parks spokeswoman Dawna Taylor.
The Los Alamos Day Use Area at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood was closed temporarily due to flooding, but is now open, according to Ellen Bilbrey, spokeswoman for the state park system. The park itself was never closed.
The Verde River Greenway Complex, temporarily inaccessible due to high water, is also open again.
There were no other reports of damage to state park trails or properties, Bilbrey said.
At the Grand Canyon, a little hail was reported at Desert View, at the east end of the park, but the weather wasn’t bad at the South Rim, Grand Canyon National Park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge said.
All trails in the Canyon are open, as are all facilities.
The lodge on the North Rim lost electrical power Tuesday afternoon. Power has been restored, said Shannon Marcak, also a spokeswoman for the park. The North Rim will close for the season next Saturday.
Preliminary recommendations by the Governor’s Commission on Privatization and Efficiency (“Arizona urged to privatize its parks,” Sept. 22) come as no surprise to those of us who have been on the front lines of the battle to save Arizona’s state parks.
For the rest of us, it should serve as a wake-up call of what’s at stake if a lack of vision and political will is allowed to destroy our state park system. Conveniently, the final proposal won’t be released until after the fall elections; but it’s difficult to envision any park privatization scenario under which Arizona citizens and taxpayers won’t be the big losers.
In comments posted to the Star’s website, one writer asked: “What’s wrong with somebody earning a profit?”
The answer: absolutely nothing, and that’s just the point.
Hundreds of businesses throughout our state earn profits by supplying park visitors with gas, groceries, supplies, lodging and meals. A 2009 study by Northern Arizona University estimated the total economic impact of our state parks at $266 million per year, about half from out-of-state visitors. When a local park closes, as has already happened at Winslow (Homolovi), Springerville (Lyman Lake), and Oracle, visitors and the dollars they spend go away.
You may ask: “Won’t they do just as well under private management?”
The answer: Not likely! Private operators will, no doubt, be eager to take over profitable parks such as Catalina, Kartchner Caverns and the Colorado River parks. They probably won’t show much interest in smaller parks that, in themselves, aren’t profitable but still support local jobs.
How did we get here? The Legislature began the systematic dismantling of our state parks long before it could be justified by a budget crisis.
General-fund park appropriations ceased in 2002. Legislators told parks to become “more entrepreneurial and self-supporting” through admission fees, souvenir sales, etc. When they did, the Legislature took the money.
As a holistic system, profitable parks could carry those that didn’t break even but still generated economic benefits for their communities. That was no longer possible when the Legislature swept away every cent parks earned for themselves. In a particularly outrageous fund grab, legislators even took money from park donation jars and $250,000 from the estate of a benefactor who specifically willed it to state parks.
Before leaving office Gov. Janet Napolitano assembled a task force on sustainable parks to consider all options, including sale and privatization.
Gov. Jan Brewer continued the task force when she took office in January 2009. In October 2009, the task force recommended a modest $12 surcharge on noncommercial-vehicle licenses. In return, anyone with a current Arizona license plate would gain unlimited admission to all state parks. The system has worked well in other states. It would have assured the future of our state parks and reopened all roadside rest areas.
The measure died when House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Kavanagh would not allow a vote by the panel. Kavanagh claimed to be taking a principled stand for taxpayers. It was nothing of the kind. If the measure had passed the Legislature, it still would have required voter approval. By denying voters a more direct voice in determining the future of our parks, Kavanagh exemplified the arrogant abuse of power that prompted the framers of our state constitution to provide for voter initiatives.
In testimony to the House Appropriations Committee, I relayed sharply contrasting experiences at two state historic parks: Judge Roy Bean in Texas and McFarland in Arizona. Although it’s far off the beaten path, at Roy Bean we found beautifully maintained facilities that celebrate a colorful chapter in the history of the Lone Star State. At McFarland, in the Tucson-Phoenix corridor, we found a closed facility with crumbling historic buildings, even though Senator, Governor and Judge McFarland arguably played a bigger role in Arizona history than Judge Roy Bean did in Texas.
Our tax code is riddled with dozens of loopholes that could be closed to distribute the overall tax burden more evenly and allow for investment in our state’s future. The legislative leadership flatly refused to consider it.
Where do we go from here? The future may look grim, but it’s far from hopeless. Much will be decided in the upcoming elections. If you agree that we need a vibrant system of parks to preserve our natural, cultural and historic treasures for all Arizonans, make your views known to the governor, your state legislators and candidates.
William C. Thornton is a member of the Arizona Heritage Alliance Board. E-mail him at cactusworld@msn.com
