Thu Jul 01, 2004 5:38 am by Indy11
Long Secret, Ruins of an Ancient Civilization Are Revealed in Utah
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: July 1, 2004
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
HORSE CANYON, Utah, June 30 — Archaeologists pulled aside a curtain on Wednesday to reveal what can only be called a secret garden: the pristinely preserved ruins of an ancient civilization that was long ago lost to the mists of time in the remote cliffs of eastern Utah, then resolutely protected over the last 50 years by a stubborn local rancher who kept mum about what he knew.
The ruins, called Range Creek, are spread over thousands of acres, much of it in inaccessible back country and reachable only through a single-track dirt road once owned by the rancher and recently bought by the State of Utah. Preliminary research dates the settlement from about A.D. 900 to 1100, during the period of the Fremont Indian culture.
Researchers say the site's singularity is not its monumental architecture. The people who lived here were more apt to build humble single-family stone-walled pit houses, of which there are believed to be hundreds — no one even knows yet — rather than high-rise cliffside apartment complexes like Mesa Verde in Colorado.
What mostly distinguishes Range Creek is that through quirk of fate and human will, it escaped both the ravages of looters and, until recently, the spades of archaeologists. Cliffside grain-storage vaults have been found here with their lids still intact, the corn and rye still inside. And while many sites in the West can still produce an old stone arrowhead or two, researchers found whole arrows here just a few weeks ago, apparently lying in the dust just where they were dropped 10 centuries ago at the time of William the Conqueror.
"There are places with concentrations of this magnitude," said Kevin Jones, Utah's state archaeologist, who led a group of journalists to the site on Wednesday. "The difference is that this place hasn't been wrecked."
Dr. Jones said that, so far, 225 sites at Range Creek have been documented, some as small as a single wall of pictographs, others as large as a village cluster of a half-dozen dugout pit houses. Twenty of the sites were documented in the 1930's -the only other scientific work here that anyone knows about - by a team from Harvard University. After the initial examination, no further research was done at the site as far anyone knows, Dr. Jones said.
"The other 200 sites have never been seen by anybody," Dr. Jones said, adding that there are unquestionably thousands of sites, and that every time a team goes out, still more are found. The Fremont culture existed from about A.D. 500 to 1300.
Two reasons account for Range Creek existence and preservation, he and other researchers say. The first is geography. The land chosen by the ancient people who lived here is reachable only through a steep narrow walled canyon that could be easily defended from intruders. The Fremont people then built many of their homes and their granaries in the most remote parts of the remote canyon, on the summits of ridge lines and high on the sheer faces of cliffs, where they were not likely to be disturbed.
The second and far more serendipitous reason for the site's preservation is that in 1951 a man named Waldo Wilcox bought the 4,200-acre ranch at the end of that canyon and prohibited anyone from entering.
"I tried to keep people from knowing about it," Mr. Wilcox, 74, said.
Mr. Wilcox said he knew that the historical treasures that were underfoot and on the cliff walls above where his cattle grazed were important. Over the years, he became the valley's foremost expert.
About 15 years ago, for example, he was chasing a mountain lion that had been bothering his cattle. The lion went up the mountainside and up went Mr. Wilcox in hot pursuit. Once at the top - a spot he could not have seen from the valley floor - he stumbled on one of the most perfectly preserved sites of all, a tiny cliff-top village that he has since pointed out to the researchers. He said he has no desire to climb to it again.
"These places were secure because nobody in his right mind would go up there," he said.
The great debate about Range Creek is not the record of the past, however, but the great risk of the future, and what the breaking of the long secret will mean for the valley's preservation.
Mr. Wilcox sold the ranch to the Trust for Public Land in 2001 for $2.5 million, but officials at the trust kept quiet. The Federal Bureau of Land Management then acquired the land from the trust and kept quiet. The State of Utah obtained title earlier this year and had been delaying an announcement until a management plan was in place to protect the grounds from looters. That strategy was shattered last week when a local paper in southern Utah broke the story, which was then picked up by The Associated Press. That led to the invitation to the news media from around the country for the valley's unveiling.
"We're rolling with it," Dr. Jones said.
He said that the state wanted people to be able to experience Range Creek, but that he also had an obligation to protect it. Among the options under consideration, he said, include opening the site on only certain days of the year, or through prior permits, or only with a guide.
Environmentalists are also looking closely at what might happen next to the lands around Range Creek, which include areas under consideration for federal wilderness designation.
"It raises a complicated management issue, especially when you have a place like this that is so special, so unique and so vulnerable," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonprofit conservation group in Salt Lake City. "The best way to preserve these places is to preserve their remoteness."
Some people working at the site, however, are deeply pessimistic that it can be protected in the same way that nature and Mr. Wilcox preserved it.
Hikers have been seen in the canyon in the last few days - an extremely rare site out here - and some artifacts that were on the ground, ready for cataloging, were later found missing. Looting and vandalism are common in many of the cliff dwellings on public lands east of here.
"I'm unbelievably worried," said Joel Boomgarden, a graduate student in archaeology at the University of Utah who began working at the site last year. "I just feel it's going to happen here, too. It's inevitable."
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