In a remote canyon in Arizona, north of the Grand Canyon, exists an incredible
array of prehistoric paintings and etchings.
These colorful images represent thousands of years of human history, and leave us a
visual record of the rich cultures that once occupied this area.
This place, known as Snake Gulch, is located in Kanab Creek Wilderness on the Kaibab National Forest.
Over time, weather has faded these rock paintings, but in their day, these designs would have
helped communicate stories about the people who first occupied this area.
Their modern descendants still visit the canyon, and place great cultural value on these sites.
My name is Glendora Homer and I am a member of the Kaibab Band of Southern Paiute.
The Kaibab mountain is a sacred mountain to the southern Paiute. It is a place where
at the beginning of time that our people was brought...place to be.
It holds our Indian paint.
There is a lot of things that are very significant in that canyon.
It needs to be protected, you know so that not only our children can come here and see
the writings to the Southern Paiute we call the writings "Tumpe Po-Op" and that is rock writing.
And that's what our people did.
They weren't drawing pictures here.
The deity's you see on the wall have meaning.
Great significance.
And those things need to be preserved.
In recognition of historic sites located on public lands, Congress passed the
National Historic Preservation Act in 1966.
This act directs federal agencies to protect significant cultural resources located on
public lands and share that legacy with the American people.
Managing cultural resources on federal lands is an enormous task, it's quite difficult.
We've just in snake gulch alone we have over ten thousand rock art images.
Federal archaeologists cannot due this alone. We rely on the assistance of our partners
that includes volunteer groups, our tribal partners as well as scientists.
Our ultimate goal in the canyons is to preserve these sites for the benefit of the public
today and for future generations.
My name is Bradley Heap, I'm an Arizona site steward working in support of the Kaibab National Forest.
A site steward regularly goes out and visits and
monitors prehistoric sites on the forest. Determines whether or not they've been visited by others
...vandalized, so forth. We find out anything we report back to the forest archaeologists
potentially show them any damages that's been done.
So this granary or storage structure here that is so well preserved after
a thousand years of being exposed to the elements is one of the many great reasons why I really love
helping protect the past.
Here we can actually see the fingerprints of the people that created this wall over
a thousand years ago and it is really a way to connect with the past for anybody that's
wandering down this canyon... and you can actually feel somebody creating this.
We also have the remnants of the grasses that were used in the mortar...and that can actually
be dated through radio-carbon methods...and we can also determine the types of vegetation
that were in the area a thousand years ago.
So it's incredibly important that we continue to protect and preserve the past.
The ongoing focus of the National Historic Preservation Act provides us with
an opportunity to tell our story, and celebrate the success of a significant piece of legislation
that has allowed us to preserve an important part of American history like Snake Gulch.
From both a national and global perspective, the United States public land system is unique...
special and something for which all Americans can have pride.
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