On the Road Again

Summary

National parks and their cultural identities have changed their meanings to visitors throughout time. The significance of national parks in the United States to visitors during the 19th and 20th centuries was to experience the nation’s heritage, admire natural resources, and/or gain monetary value. One method in understanding past visitors’ behaviors and how they viewed the significance of national parks is to analyze historic roads. Roads help determine the most frequented places whether for tourism, travel, and/or trade. One national park specifically, Petrified Forest National Park, exhibits these behaviors due to its historic background of having roads for a mail route, guided tours from nearby towns, and for being one of the only national parks to have Historic Route 66 preserved within it. With the amount of history that is found within Petrified Forest National Park, I used Google Earth Pro to map historic roads within the national park and utilized previous site assessments to confirm the dates and purpose of the roads. By examining the historic roads found within Petrified Forest National Park, I determined the significance the park held for past visitors and how its identity has changed throughout time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology along the Painted Desert: Current Research in Petrified Forest National Park   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16655