Mesa Verdes Secret Garden A History of Managing by Christopher Barns PAPERBACK

University of New Mexico Press

Mesa Verde's Secret GardenA History of Managing the Backcountry and Wilderness of a National Park\nAuthor(s): Christopher Barns\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of New Mexico Press, United States\nImprint: University of New Mexico Press\nISBN-13: 9780826367662, 978-0826367662\nSynopsis\nMesa 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 la.