From Monument to Park: Early Infrastructure and Tourism at Petrified Forest National Park

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Research in Petrified Forest National Park" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

On December 6th, 1906, Petrified Forest National Monument was created under the Antiquities Act, based on President Theodore Roosevelt’s recommendation that, "…the mineralized remains of Mesozoic forests…are of the greatest scientific interest and value and…that the public good would be promoted by reserving these deposits of fossilized wood as a National monument with as much land as may be necessary for the proper protection thereof." Petrified Forest would hold National Monument status until December 9th, 1962, when it would be established as a National Park. I will attempt to identify building foundations and scatters associated with early Monument and Park infrastructure through geospatial analysis, survey and historical records. I will then assign a date range to each location, associating each with the National Monument period, the National Park period, or both. Finally, geospatially situating each location within current and past Park and Monument boundaries as well as in relation to historic roads, railways and towns will allow for an analysis of the ways in which Monument and Park personnel managed the lands they were responsible for. Additionally, this analysis will shed light on how early visitors experienced the phenomenon of tourism in the Painted Desert.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Archaeological Research in Petrified Forest National Park

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25408