Mesa Verde's Secret Garden
A History of Managing the Backcountry and Wilderness of a National Park
Mesa Verde National Park is the only congressionally designated land-based Wilderness to prohibit all recreational use. While backcountry use was encouraged for decades, stewardship changed over time as “gardening” the park for aesthetic purposes decreased while secrecy increased. The reasons for these changes, as Christopher Barns discovered, are multifaceted, but ultimately they reflect a desire to protect the park’s thousands of archaeological sites, including six hundred Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, while allowing natural processes to continue. However, most of the park is without recognizable cultural features, and if the public is prohibited from experiencing the surrounding landscape, Barns asks, what is being protected and for whom?
Mesa Verde’s Secret Garden is an authoritative history of Mesa Verde National Park’s management. The book utilizes unpublished primary sources from the park’s archives—including internal memos, public reports, interviews, and anonymous marginalia—and contextualizes them in the evolving (and often conflicting) federal and local priorities for Wilderness, conservation, and the national parks. The result of this painstaking research is a fascinating chronicle of national-park administration and development over a nearly 120-year history that provides unique insights into the people and protocols that have shaped the very landscape of Mesa Verde.
A lifelong wilderness expert, Christopher Barns offers a nuanced and insightful history of wilderness’s contested place in the national parks and the struggle over how we preserve both natural and cultural resources while allowing for their enjoyment.’—Michael W. Childers, author of Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement
A unique and significant view of an important piece of the story of the America we live in.’—Charlie Steen, former Mesa Verde National Park ranger
Christopher Barns retired from the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center in 2015. He was the lead author of the Bureau of Land Management’s 2012 Wilderness and Wilderness Study Area policies as well as a coauthor of many reports and law journal articles on Wilderness management. In addition, he wrote and directed the film American Values: American Wilderness for PBS. He has volunteered in Mesa Verde National Park since 2017.
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Abbreviations and Terminology
Introduction
Chapter One. Mesa Verde National Park: The Earliest Years, 1906–1916
Chapter Two. Mesa Verde and the Birth of the National Park Service, 1916–1921
Chapter Three. The Nusbaum Decade, 1921–1931
Chapter Four. The Great Depression and the CCC, 1931–1942
Chapter Five. World War II and the Recovery, 1942–1956
Chapter Six. Mission 66 and the Wilderness Bill, 1956–1964
Chapter Seven. Mesa Verde Meets the Wilderness Act: Business as Usual, 1964–1976
Chapter Eight. Mesa Verde Meets the Wilderness Act: The Fight Over Wilderness Designation, 1964–1976
Chapter Nine. The Mesa Verde Wilderness: Initial Management, 1976–2006
Chapter Ten. Wilderness in the Park’s Second Century, 2006–present
Conclusion. The Path Forward
Notes
Index
