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Sunday, June 24, 2001
Mesa Verde's Damage Control
By James Abarr
For the Journal
MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, Colo. — Despite two huge wildfires that threatened to destroy this world-famous archaeological park in the summer of 2000, Mesa Verde survives with its wonders and magic intact.
Thousands of acres of blackened trees and thick gray ash still scar some of the park's tablelands and formidable canyons, but there also are signs of recovery as mankind and nature combine to negate the damage.
In burned areas, roads and trails are under repair, miles of scorched and melted guardrails along the park's only entrance road have been replaced, and modern burned structures are being rebuilt.
If you go
WHAT: Mesa Verde National Park, administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior; telephone (970) 529-4465; Web site: www.nps.gov/parks/html
WHERE: In southwest Colorado, 36 miles west of Durango or nine miles east of Cortez via U.S. 160 to park entrance.
FEES:
* Park admission: $10 a vehicle.
* Guided tours of Cliff Palace, Balcony House and Long House are $2 a person per site. These ruins can be entered only in company of Park Service rangers. However, they can be viewed from canyon overlooks at no charge.
Tours of Cliff Palace and Balcony House are one hour in length and are conducted on the half-hour from 9 a.m. to late afternoon.
Long House tours are 90 minutes in length and are conducted on a variable schedule from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Tickets for tours can be purchased only at Far View Visitor Center.
Archaeological teams are assessing damage to scores of ancient Indian sites. Where these cultural treasures are threatened by erosion on slopes stripped of protective covering by the fires, specialists are installing small log dams to divert water away from the sites.
Native grasses are being regenerated in massive reseeding programs. Hundreds of tons of seed already have been sown from helicopters across 7,000 acres. Everywhere, clusters of green marking new growth of Gambel oak and mountain mahogany offer sharp contrast to the burned piñon and juniper forest.
It all lends credence to the National Park Service's invitation to visitors: "Come see the rebirth."
Unprecedented event
In July and August 2000, it appeared that Mesa Verde, a national park since 1906 and a World Heritage Site since 1978, would vanish in walls of flames that reached heights of 300 feet.
Two lightning-sparked wildfires, striking in succession from opposite directions, threatened to destroy the 82-square-mile park. It was an unprecedented event.
At risk were the renowned 800-year-old cliff dwellings, ruins of surface pueblos, ancient pithouses and thousands of other sites marking the passage of the Anasazi, a prehistoric Indian people who inhabited Mesa Verde from about A.D. 550 to 1300.
Modern structures such as the park headquarters complex, Far View Visitors Center, staff residences, the popular Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum and Morefield Lodge and Campground were also in peril.
Almost a year later, Will Morris, Mesa Verde's chief of interpretation and public affairs officer, still views the summer of 2000 with dismay.
"Two major wildfires back-to-back are simply unprecented," said Morris. "Odds against that happening must be astronomical. It was a real jolt. We couldn't believe it was happening."
Kindled by lightning
In early afternoon of last July 20, lightning kindled a blaze in grasslands on the farm of the Bircher family, just outside the northeast boundary of Mesa Verde near the park's entrance.
Fanned by strong winds, the fire swiftly grew and roared into the deep canyons that bisect the park's 2,000-foot-high escarpment. A wall of flames quickly reached the mesa top. Because the fast-moving blaze, dubbed the Bircher Fire, threatened Morefield Campground and Ruins Road, the only access to the park, Superintendent Larry Wiese ordered Mesa Verde evacuated and shut down.
Within two hours, 1,000 visitors and the park staff were safely evacuated under the park's contingency plan for emergencies.
Nine days later, on July 29, the Bircher Fire was snuffed out. More than 1,000 firefighters, supported by aerial tankers and water-dropping helicopters, had averted loss of Mesa Verde and its priceless cultural treasures. Even so, the fire had consumed nearly 20,000 acres of juniper and oak forestland, leaving a blackened swath eight miles long and four miles wide. A large part of this, however, is in the park's remote eastern section which is wilderness area and is not open to the public.
Early on the morning of Aug. 4, after being closed for two weeks, Mesa Verde reopened, attracting a near-record number of visitors for a single day.
As Wiese said at the time: "I think they came to see the aftermath of the fire as much as they did the cliff dwellings."
Repeat performance
Only 12 hours after its reopening, Mesa Verde again was evacuated and closed as a second wildfire threatened from the west. This was the Pony Fire, which had been started by lightning two days earlier in Pony Canyon, just outside the park's western boundary on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation.
Crews had the fire under control, but then shifting winds drove the Pony across containment lines. The growing blaze, feasting on thick juniper forest and brush, roared into the park and onto Wetherill Mesa, where it imperiled Long House, second largest of Mesa Verde's 600 cliff dwellings. Kodak House, Step House and other major ruins also were at risk.
As the intense blaze swept across the mesa, it destroyed restrooms, a ranger station, a visitor shelter and snack bar. Also consumed were wooden shelters built over centuries-old Anasazi pithouses.
It took 500 firefighters and aerial support teams nine days to douse the blaze, which consumed another 1,352 acres of the park. Although the Pony Fire burned over and around them, Wetherill's cliff dwellings were saved with only minor damage.
On Aug. 14, Mesa Verde again reopened to a large number of visitors. They saw a park blackened over 40 percent of its total area. However, thanks to the firefighters and their aerial support teams, visitors also could still marvel at the fluid stone architecture of Cliff Palace, Spruce Tree House, Balcony House and other prehistoric cliff dwellings that are the most spectacular and best preserved in the nation.
Speeding the recovery
On a recent morning, Doug Bowman stood amid the scorched and twisted trees on Wetherill Mesa as he surveyed the task of advancing the park's recovery. In the vicinity, a score of specialists were pursuing projects.
"We have about 1,500 archaeological sites to survey," said Bowman, an archaeologist and chief of the post-fire damage assessment team working in the heavily burned area. "We have to write a report on what we find at each one. It's a big task. It'll take a while."
Many of these sites are small, and some are new ones uncovered when the fire stripped away covering brush and timber. They may be merely a mound of rocks, a concentration of pottery shards, an alcove under a ledge or a depression in the earth indicating where ancient walls once stood.
To archaeologists, these sites are vital, for they add to scientific knowledge in the never-ending search to solve the mysteries of Mesa Verde and its ancient people.
As Larry Wiese, who has been superintendent of Mesa Verde since 1994, expressed it:
"We hope we never see another summer like last year, but the silver lining in the black cloud of the fires is the opportunity to assess and treat the known sites and the potential of finding new ones. It's exciting to think about the chance to discover new information about the lifeways of the Ancesteral Pueblo people."
Flurry of activity
On this day, there was a flury of other activitiy on Wetherill Mesa. From a parking area, Don Thomas of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs was directing a helicopter pickup of damage-assessment teams being flown into the remote canyons of the park and the bordering Ute Mountain Reservation.
Nearby, on a sloping rocky ridge above a small alcove where a prehistoric Anasazi family may have once lived, archaeologist Sarah Payne explained the silt-log diverter being installed to protect the site from erosion damage.
"With the trees and brush covering stripped away by the fire, there is nothing to stop water from flowing down this ridge and into the alcove," said Payne. "These diverters, which are six-inch-high dams of chopped and compacted aspen bark mixed with rocks and dirt, will help to prevent that."
Farther south on Wetherill Mesa, Will Morris stood on a canyon overlook above 800-year-old Long House, an Anasazi masonry cliff dwelling of 150 rooms, 21 kivas and a dance plaza, and expressed concern:
"With the piñon and juniper burned away and shelters gone, there isn't any shade down there, and it can get pretty hot, even at this elevation (about 7,000 feet). We considered closing the area this summer"
Instead, officials decided to extend the length of public tours of the ruins from an hour to 90 minutes. These tours, led by park rangers, are the only way visitors can enter the ancient dwelling.
"With the longer tours, visitors will have more time. They can pace themselves and not become exhausted in the heat," said Morris.
For a time, park officials also were ready to close Step House, a smaller cliff dwelling just north of Long House. When the Pony Fire, which reached temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, burned around the ruin, the intense heat loosened slabs of rock in the alcove ceiling.
"This posed a danger to visitors, and we thought we would have to close the ruin," Morris explained. "We didn't want rock slabs falling on people. Then we decided to see if we could peel the loose rock away, so we brought in contractors to do the job and it worked out quite well. Engineers have since examined the alcove, and they say Step House is safe."
Busy season
While the fire recovery continues, Mesa Verde girds for the busy summer season, when the majority of the park's 600,000 visitors a year arrive.
All of the major cliff dwellings and surface ruins are open, and the park's many facilities and programs are fully operational.
As visitors wind up Ruins Road through the burned areas, they still will see broad swaths of blackened hills and forest. However, they also will see a profusion of green. New grasses and oakbrush, amid splashes of colorful wildflowers, line the roadways and canyons.
It's as Wiese said: "Nature has an incredible power to heal, and the park is a graphic example of this rebirth and rejuvenation."