Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

Designated a National Monument in 2000

As we were honeymooning in southwestern Colorado last year, we managed to stop and visit Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. I’ve been wanting to explore the area more since my time at the Grand Canyon back in 1988. When President Clinton made the area a National Monument in 2000, my desire to visit grew even more.

Canyon of The Ancients National Monument is located in the Four Corners region, 10 miles west of Cortez, and 12 miles west of Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. I still want to go back and hike more in Canyon of the Ancients, but for our honeymoon we were not equipped, and definitely not in shape, to do much beyond very basic walks.

Girl has COPD and it was her first time staying at any altitude, it was 6100 feet elevation in Cortez, so things weren’t bad there. All things considered she did really well, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. Driving on her way in, coming up and over the Sangre de Christo mountains, and again in the San Juan mountains, I did see her oxygen percentages drop some, but overall she was awesome. She has a portable backpack sized oxygen concentrator and it got her through any rough patches we encountered.

There can be significant differences between National Parks and National Monuments, it’s not just nomenclature. To the best of my knowledge the National Park Service administers every National Park, that’s not necessarily the case for National Monuments. Here’s a quote:

Today, depending on how one counts, there are 81 national monuments administered by the USDI National Park Service, 13 more administered by the USDI Bureau of Land Management (BLM), five others administered by the USDA Forest Service, two jointly managed by the BLM and the National Park Service, one jointly administered by the BLM and the Forest Service, one by the USDI Fish & Wildlife Service, and another by the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C.  In addition, one national monument is under National Park Service jurisdiction, but managed by the Forest Service while another is on USDI Bureau of Reclamation administered land, but managed by the Park Service.

National Monuments and the Forest Service – 2003 – by Gerald W. Williams, Ph.D.

For those who don’t speak governmentese: USDI is United States Department of Interior and USDA is actually the United States Department of Agriculture, trust me there’s nothing more bureaucrats love than creating acronyms. Bureau of Reclamation was at one time an agency devoted almost solely to building big dams for (relatively) little agriculture. The folks at the Bureau of Reclamation were serious rivals with the Army Corps of Engineers which was an agency devoted to building big dams for (relatively) little flood control.

Why were there ever two entire agencies in the Federal Government devoted largely (but not entirely) to building dams? I’ll start by asking if you think folks go to engineering school to dig ditches in one place or build up the banks in another? Dams are damn sexy things to build compared to irrigation canals or levees. Everybody sings about “When the Levee Breaks” but but nobody sings about them getting built.

Dams on the other hand, are a different story…

Well, the world has seven wonders, the travelers always tell
Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well
But the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam’s fair land
It’s that King Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee Dam

She heads up the Canadian Rockies where the rippling waters glide
Comes a-rumbling down the canyon to meet that salty tide
Of the wide Pacific Ocean where the sun sets in the west
And the big Grand Coulee country in the land I love the best

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray
Men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave
Well, she tore their boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream

Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of Thirty three
For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me
He said, “Roll along Columbia. You can ramble to the sea
But river while you’re ramblin’ you can do some work for me”

Now in Washington and Oregon you hear the factories hum
Making chrome and making manganese and light aluminum
And there roars a mighty furnace now to fight for Uncle Sam
Spawned upon the King Columbia by the big Grand Coulee Dam

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray
Men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave
Well, she tore their boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream

Woodie Guthrie