A01=Christopher Barns
Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings
Author_Christopher Barns
Category=NHK
Category=WNJ
Category=WQH
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
MEVE
NPS history
public resource management
Southwestern archaeology
US federal lands
Ute Indian Tribe
Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
Wilderness Act of 1964
Product details
- ISBN 9780826367662
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 May 2025
- Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 The book utilizes unpublished primary sources from the park's archives—including internal memos, public reports, interviews, and anonymous marginalia—and contextualizes them in the evolving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.
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 The book utilizes unpublished primary sources from the park's archives—including internal memos, public reports, interviews, and anonymous marginalia—and contextualizes them in the evolving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.
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.
