How Ancient Native American Rock Art Is Tearing a California Town Apart

A display at the Petroglyph Festival that many Native Americans find disrespectful

By Barret Baumgart
VICE Media

I

At 1.2 million acres, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake is the largest parcel of land owned by the US Navy. It fills an expanse of remote and rugged desert terrain bigger than Rhode Island; to the naked eye, there's not much going on inside. You might spend a whole day driving around the perimeter of the base and, notwithstanding an occasional low-flying F-16 fighter jet, never guess there was anything outside your window beyond barren volcanic tablelands, stands of brittle burrobush, and the occasional sidewinder rattlesnake.

What makes NAWS China Lake special—beyond being a secret test center for the world's most advanced weapons—is that inside a handful of its narrow lava canyons lies the largest concentration of Native American rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The images, carvings known as petroglyphs, are found throughout China Lake's Coso Range and are the oldest in the Americas. Archeologists have dated some of the images as far back as 15,000 to 19,000 years, and nobody has ever successfully counted them. A single canyon—Renegade Canyon, or as it's more commonly called, Little Petroglyph Canyon—may contain more than 1 million images of bighorn sheep, shamans, and abstract geometric symbols.

While archeologists have argued over the function of these and other figures for half a century, their original meanings largely remain a mystery. What nobody contests, however, is that the Coso Range was once one of the most spiritually important sites on the continent.

Some New Age types consider the Coso Range a "vortex"—a geographic location where harmonizing spiritual energy is supposedly highly concentrated. Examples of such places apparently include the Pyramids at Giza, Stonehenge, and the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. Even if you don't put stock in such dubious concepts, being in the presence of such ancient and sacred symbols can be a powerful—and humbling—experience.

For decades, however, their location inside a military base dedicated to top-secret weapons testing meant that the only people who knew—or cared—about the petroglyphs were a handful of Native American tribes, professional archaeologists, and a subculture of Indian art geeks and New Age vision seekers. But Ridgecrest, California—the small desert town just outside the main gates of China Lake—is attempting to change that, and turn the petroglyphs into a full-fledged international tourist destination.

This effort has created a clash between competing economic and cultural interests. For many members of the Native American tribes throughout the region, the Coso Range and its petroglyphs are the most sacred things in the world, but some say that the sanctity and very survival of the artwork is threatened by Ridgecrest's attempt to cash in on the petroglyphs and sell itself as "California's newest cultural mecca"—the Petroglyph Capital of the World.

II

In 2014, Ridgecrest's then-mayor Dan Clark proposed an entire festival centered around the petroglyphs, describing it as a potential "economic engine" for the city of Ridgecrest. "The petroglyph festival will be our signature event," he told the LA Times. "We're going to saturate this community with representations of rock art." Denny Kline, a field officer for Mick Gleason, Kern County's District 1 Supervisor, told reporters, "It's going to be the city's 50th anniversary on steroids." Sponsors for the four-day festival included Coca-Cola, General Electric, NASA, the Ford Foundation, McDonald's, and Home Depot, among others.

A year later, the town remains committed to becoming the "American 'Machu Picchu,'" as a recent press release proclaimed. That release quoted Doug Lueck, the executive director of the Ridgecrest Area Convention and Visitor's Bureau (RACVB), as saying, "Not only is tourism up, we're also experiencing an upward trend in filming for movies and commercials as well." According to Leuck, the first annual Petroglyph Festival "had over 1,000 media impressions over television and radio" and sold out local hotels. Harris Brokke, the former director of Ridgecrest's Maturango Museum, told the local paper. "Not only is the festival successful, but when people come to the festival, they come back again and again, and that's our whole goal."

"Ridgecrest has tried to brand itself in a lot of different ways," a retired Navy veteran named Mike tells me. "There's no real tourism here. Most people either work on the base or the service industry that supports it."

We're standing in the parking lot of Ridgecrest's new $6 million tourist attraction, Petroglyph Park. House finches flit between palm trees and brown monoliths carved with depictions of bighorns, zigzags, and shamans; in the background traffic hums along China Lake Boulevard.

"The city tried the Balloon Festival two years in a row, but the winds were horrendous and just destroyed everything," Mike says. Ridgecrest also launched a spring Wildflower Festival, but given the reality of the California drought and the fact that Ridgecrest only gets a few inches of rain each year, the flowers didn't always show. "But the Petroglyph Festival is something that's uniquely Ridgecrest," Mike says.

Behind us, across the street, music booms from the stage at the center of the Balsam Street Fair, where 200 vendors have set up tents selling scented candles, foreign war memorabilia, and dreamcatchers made in China. It's the second annual Petroglyph Festival, a showcase for the best parts of the town held in November. Balsam Street functions as Ridgecrest's version of a downtown arts district. Elsewhere in the city, abandoned storefronts mingle with used furniture dealers; bail bonds shops sit in squat strip malls with asphalt that looks like it hasn't been repaved since the Vietnam War—but on Balsam Street you find a newly painted bighorn sheep or shaman on nearly every available wall. This is, without question, the Petroglyph Capital of the World.

The catch, however, is that historically it's been extremely difficult to see the actual petroglyphs of the Coso Range. According to the RACVB, 15,000 people traveled from over 50 countries for the 2014 Petroglyph Festival. But only around 40 American citizens who applied early and passed a federal background check were able to view the carvings inside the base. This year, though, an RACVB spokesperson tells me, the Navy had "agreed to forgo the vetting process" and let 500 people see the petroglyphs, including many non-Americans, who would normally be barred from entering the base at all.

Among them is a woman from Germany named Karin. She waited years for the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the petroglyphs; during November's festival she finally did it. "Everything from the drive, the Joshua trees, the beauty of the mountains. The whole landscape was just magic. We saw wild horses," she tells me. "It's obvious why the petroglyphs are there." I ask if she learned anything. "Imagination," she replies. "Imagination is what you need."

Another woman, a Japanese citizen named Maiko, had been waiting nine years for the opportunity. "I'm actually a petroglyph freak. I go to all the sites. It's just attractive to me. I want to see the art. So I do the research on the internet. And then I go there and look for it."

Those whose love for petroglyphs burns less arduously make do with Petroglyph Park, where you can gaze at reproductions of the carvings and experience an Epcot version of the ancient etchings. City and county officials often emphasize the sacredness of the petroglyphs and the educational aspect of the attraction—"the concept of the park is to honor the Native American heritage of the Indian Wells Valley," says Denny Kline—or as Mayor Clark has said of the petroglyphs, "We can bring it to the public's attention what a national treasure they are and, hopefully, they will respect them."

But the park and the festival are unquestionably money-making affairs—the whole point is to draw in vendors and tourism dollars. And many aspects of the festival seem less interested in history and education than hustling and speculation.

I head over to the north end of Balsam Street, where Rod "The Buffalo Man" Blankenship—a Korean and Vietnam War Veteran, and "an Elder in the Cherokee Indian Nation"—is talking about the buffalo to a crowd inside the Old Town Theater. The animals were "a supermarket and hardware store," according to Blankenship, who punctuates his pronouncements with shakes of a ceremonial rattle made from dried buffalo scrotum. Toward the end of the talk, I raise my hand and ask him how important the buffalo was to the Native American tribes in the surrounding area, and he admits that the animals weren't out here in California. But maybe some of the petroglyphs depict buffalo?

"It's possible," he says. "You know what you'll see in some of those petroglyphs, though?" He pauses and seems to stare out above the audience, straight through the back of the auditorium at something unseen. "You'll see pictures of what you call,"—another pause—"aliens. They're pictures of space people. With big round heads. Oval heads."

Other lecturers in the festival's educational "Speakers' Series" include a local wilderness entrepreneur who runs private tours of petroglyph sites that aren't on Naval land—"If you're interested, we can talk prices later," he tells the audience—and an archeologist who also offers private tours. Both do so despite heavy discouragement by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which fears that if the locations of off-base petroglyph sites become widely known they'll be vandalized or stolen.

Outside the Old Town Theater, across Freedom Park, smoke billows up from the cookers stationed behind the Intertribal Powwow and Cherokee Hog Fry. The powwow has all the usual signifiers of Native American life: tepees, donkeys, women dressed in buckskin suits, men on folding chairs beating a large leather drum, vendors hawking dream catchers and geodes. The festival advertises the drummers, dancers, and vendors as members of the local Native American tribes, but the Cherokee have no ancestral ties to the land or the ancient peoples responsible for the petroglyphs.

"We didn't use tepees and we're not a powwow culture and we didn't eat pigs. They're teaching people that this is what the people looked like that were here," says Jonnie Benson, a member of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone who adds that it's the "miseducation" of the community that is most upsetting. "They took a real touristy approach. Now we have all these people walking away after this weekend thinking, 'Oh, wow, I've learned all about the natives who live here,' when in fact they don't know shit. They learned the Hollywood story."

Down the street from the powwow sits another sore point for some local tribes: a plywood board painted with two shaman figures, their faces cutout to allow tourists to poke their heads through and smile for pictures.

"It's so offensive. Our ancestors put those marks on the rocks, whether people want to believe that or not. It's sacred to me, and to see it as basically a caricature, with people putting their faces in it—they don't know what those symbols mean," says Benson, who'd seen the pictures on Facebook. "I don't know how people would take it if there was a painting of Jesus up there and people were sticking their faces in it. Right? It just wouldn't be cool."

III

Though the Petroglyph Festival is based around the cheerful, corporate-ready commercialization of the Coso rock art, the petroglyphs themselves depict strange and often violent imagery. On nearly every cliff face of Renegade Canyon, you find not simply pictures of bighorn sheep, but bighorns etched in the throes of death, their bodies impaled with spears and torn by arrows.


The mood on petroglyph tours is, if not somber, generally one of quiet reverence. Tour guides do an especially good job just hanging back, allowing the art to sink into the group, and not pushing forth any interpretation. Though they do occasionally step in. I remember on my first tour of Renegade Canyon, a woman kept pointing out the strange round-headed humanoids carved in the walls, and saying, "Look, an alien wearing a space helmet," or, "Look, an alien with a cell phone."

"Archeologists call those 'patterned body anthropomorphs,'" a guide eventually told her, adding that the art was still sacred to the tribes throughout the region, and it was disrespectful to infantilize the art of their ancestors in such a way.

When the festival isn't happening, normal tours of Renegade Canyon, arranged through the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, take 20 people on select weekend dates determined by the military during the fall and spring months. The Navy makes you sign a form that releases them from responsibility should you break a leg or catch a stray bomb, and the background checks conducted by the military usually take two to three weeks. The tours cost $40 and nearly ever one sells out. Excluding the festival, only about 800 people make it in to see the art each year.

In many ways the tours seem like a routine trail walk. People park in a dusty lot, tightening their boots and backpacks while guides take a headcount. In the distance below, the black gash of Renegade Canyon cuts west across the wide desert terrace, its exit at the lower ridge too far off to see.

A trail winds out through the fragrant burrobush, sage, and creosote, out from the edge of the dirt lot to the rim of the canyon, where it drops down through a steep side wash. Below, bright lichens cover the brown walls of the canyon, but you can't see anything yet. Guides remind you to watch your step as gravel crunches underfoot. Sunlight burns against your back, painting your blue outlines as you file forward and the walls narrow and voices hush. A carpet of soft sand covers the canyon floor. Like children sneaking into some forbidden sanctuary, everyone keeps trading excited and worried glances, scanning for the first petroglyph—but there's only the vast silence of the canyon, impenetrable as the rock walls closing you in. You glance back. Faraway, along the eastern horizon, a pair of perfectly formed volcanic domes lay like soft breasts tanning in the morning sun.

Then, without a word, the digital camera shutters start clicking. Up ahead, a dozen people stand aiming at the rock wall, while others crouch and kneel, jostling for position. Five pale shoe-sized sheep engravings cover the dark basalt. Geometric designs wrap around the periphery. A man crawls up for a closeup and one of the guides tells him that it's close enough: "Everyone, please keep back at least two feet from the petroglyphs." People keep vying for position, standing on their toes with cameras raised, as though the tiny darting sheep were actually alive, actually running away, fleeing the hungry tourist photographs.

Just minutes later, this initial flurry of photography seems absurd. The canyon contains more petroglyphs than any camera eye or human memory can record. By the time most people reach the cliff at the end of the canyon, they've stopped taking pictures, stopped talking altogether—they just sit and stare off into the expanse below.

The cumulative effect of the canyon is hard to describe. It's not something you can get from simply looking at a few panels of petroglyphs. You have to spend the whole day walking the canyon's entire length to let the images wash over you. Not everyone who takes the tour hikes the mile and a half down to the end—some people only go halfway and then return to the shaded picnic table beside the parking lot. You cannot get this cumulative effect if you turn back. Nor can you get it from other petroglyph sites off base or the tours during the Petroglyph Festival, which only spend an hour at the canyon's entrance.

Everyone's experience differs, I'm sure. For me, an initial impression, if there ever was one, that the petroglyphs resembled something inspirational or alien faded away the further I walked down the canyon. It was replaced by a sense of awe at the sheer number of etchings, which in turn gave rise to a sensation of mild dread when I realized that they all mostly depict the same image—bighorn sheep.

And as you continue to wander down the length of the narrow lava canyon, despite the open sky, the clean desert light, and the quiet conversation of the people around you, a feeling of claustrophobia begins to assert itself. And the further you venture, the more the canyon narrows, and the more pictures you pass, the deeper this feeling extends, until you come to understand that you've entered a place that is not your home, gawked at pictures not made for your enjoyment, photographed panels of bighorn sheep never made for pleasure but rather in pain, ripped out from the walls by desperate men with bloody fingers over so many lonely millennia, and once you reach the end of the canyon and see how many times that single intentional image occurred, a final conclusion presents itself: Something went wrong here.

IV

No one knows for certain what the rocks record. But they have been perfectly preserved thanks to airtight military security. Even the tribes who revere the rock art of the Cosos have to jump through hoops to pay their respects.

"The sites still have their power but we can't use them properly; we have to be escorted and they watch us down at the hot springs and it's very irritating," says Kathy Bancroft, the Cultural Officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone.

"At this point in the journey," says Jodie Benson, "I'm just grateful that the art is out there on Navy land, and not just anybody can go out there."

Not all the petroglyphs are on land protected by the military, however, and as the art has become more famous, Native Americans and archaeologists worry about people damaging other unprotected sites or stealing the petroglyphs right off the walls. The worst case of vandalism occurred not long before the first annual Ridgecrest Petroglyph Festival, in an area north of the Cosos. In a matter of hours, looters wielding power saws, electric generators, and ladders managed to steal a handful of petroglyphs that had survived thousands of years of natural erosion.

"Anybody could have driven out on top of them, there would have been a dust cloud," Greg Haverstock, an archaeologist at the Bureau of Land Management, tells me. "These people were extremely bold." The event was the worst case of vandalism ever seen on the nearly 1 million acres of public land managed by Haverstock's BLM office.

Though multiple people I talked to say that cases of vandalism were on the rise, there was some disagreement about the cause. Donald Storm, another BLM archaeologist, says that China Lake's severely restricted access is a problem—if people can't enter the base they might go looking for petroglyphs on unprotected land. "If they're out in the public domain, damage is more likely because these sites are hard to control," he says.

Bob Robinson, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Kern Valley Indian Council, thinks that the festival is not helping to reduce the destruction. "As it is we have enough problems with sites being vandalized without all the promotion of the festival." Robinson says that tourists need to know that the petroglyphs are not doodles on rocks, but put there for a reason, and they're part of a living ongoing culture that is here today: "People need to understand that they're sacred and they need to be treated with respect." According to Robinson, this is the "education part that I hope will be there at the festival, and not this thing of creating this whole New Age story around aliens putting them there."

But Robinson isn't very optimistic. He describes the festival as "commercial exploitation. They're turning it into a Roswell bullshit."

This, ultimately, is the dividing line between Ridgecrest and some local Native Americans, who see the festival not just as a commercialization of their culture but something that could literally fuel the destruction of their sacred symbols.

"The worst thing about it is the town of Ridgecrest," says Kathy Bancroft. "They want to be the petroglyph capital of the world. I heard that on the local radio station and I thought, Who said they should do that? " Bancroft says it's incredibly disrespectful for the festival to be promoting the petroglyphs with vandalism on the rise.

On this point, everyone agrees: Protecting the petroglyphs is the most important thing. "The only way that the petroglyphs will continue to be here for a very long time is by protecting them and respecting them," says Debbie Benson, the current director of the Maturango Museum, which organizes tours of Renegade Canyon. "Not all petroglyphs are on the base. If people are harming them and don't understand them and not respecting them, they will not last."

Some of the materials in Petroglyph Park are of dubious educational value, however. One large engraving near the entrance is entirely unlike any of the actual petroglyphs; when I asked archaeologists about it they said they had never laid eyes anything like it. "I can honestly say I've never seen an image in rock art that resembled that even closely," Greg Haverstock said. "I look at that and I think 1950s sci-fi aliens."

The particular stand of petroglyphs is labeled "Shamanic Visions or Alien Visitors." The placard in front of it pays lip service to the popular New Age concept—promoted by Erich von Däniken's 1967 bestseller Chariots of the Gods—that many rock art images throughout the world portray aliens who visited earth, planted the seeds of consciousness in primitive humanity, and made possible all the cultural achievements of ancient man. This notion has been criticized for minimizing the actual artistic achievements of indigenous people and for simply being shoddy history. "That writing as careless as von Däniken's," Carl Sagan wrote in 1976, "whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times."

V

As it stands now, the tribes have no interest in participating in the Petroglyph Festival. None of the Native Americans I spoke to had ever attended it, and some, like Bob Robinson, openly condemned it. "They're just cashing in on something sacred. They're selling it. And I don't want any part," he says. "We don't want to participate because of the money."

Kathy Bancroft says that Ridgecrest never even approached her tribe about the festival. All they did was send advertisements. "If I really felt they cared and wanted to do it right maybe I'd participate," Bancroft says. "They've taken something sacred and spiritual and created a stereotype, a team mascot for the city of Ridgecrest, and it makes me sick."

Some Native Americans I spoke with emphasize that a festival that educated the public about the petroglyphs could be beneficial, if it made people more aware of the sacred nature of the rock carvings and the history behind them. Barbara Dutton, a member of the Death Valley Timbisha-Shoshone, tells me the festival was "a good opportunity for educating the general public about how important these sites are to the native people." But Dutton did admit, "I don't know what kind of information they have out there."

Given the information I encountered there, the Petroglyph Festival appears to have little interest in educating the public about the sacred nature of the rock art or the history behind it—which is truly a shame.

The petroglyphs at China Lake can be interpreted many ways. I prefer an explanation offered by archeologist David Whitley, who thinks that the Coso Range was once the central pilgrimage point for rainmaking shaman throughout the Great Basin.

"The images should not be interpreted in a literal sense," Whitley says. The petroglyphs represent not literal hunting scenes but rather "graphic expressions of the visions of rain shamans that, themselves, were metaphors for the rain shaman's supernatural control over the weather." The images of mutilated bighorns represent prayers for rain, not bighorns, according to Whitley.

As anyone who has lived through California's ongoing drought knows, we still pray for rain, though we do it in different ways. It was in China Lake where the military crafted the rain-making technology of "cloud seeding," which was deployed during the Vietnam War in an attempt to flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Today the technique, which involves shooting particles into clouds to form ice crystals, is used across the American West, including California, to ward off drought. It isn't clear, however, that cloud seeding is any better at bringing rain than carving bighorns into the sides of rocks.

If you go to the Ridgecrest Petroglyph Festival, or if you visit the rock art of the Coso Range, don't approach the art lightly. Don't dismiss its creators as being primitive, or assume they needed to be influenced by UFOs in order to make their art. Think about their world, plagued with uncertainty, their struggles to scratch out lives against the harshness of the Mojave Desert. And think about the uncertainties of our own world today—the reality of global climate change and a perpetual war on terror. Remember that at China Lake, while the military continues to protect the traces of past man, in the same breath, in the same location, they continue to perfect the art of erasing him from the present.

And if you have a chance, take a look some of the most impressive petroglyphs, the rare ones depicting the skinny men riding strange animals, the white men arriving—the aliens. Ask yourself: Who will last longer—us or the petroglyphs?

Utah residents become next to confront Bureau of Land Management, in growing debate

May 10, 2014: ATV riders cross into a restricted area of Recapture Canyon, north of Blanding, Utah, in a protest against what demonstrators call the federal government's overreaching control of public lands. (REUTERS)

FoxNews.com

A band of Utah residents rode all-terrain vehicles onto federally managed public land Saturday to protest the Bureau of Land Management closing off the area.

The protest comes weeks after Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s successful standoff against the agency over grazing rights and appears to be the latest episode in the battle across the West over states’ rights on federally managed public lands.

In Blanding, Utah, in the state’s scenic southeastern, the protesters and their supporters say the agency has unfairly closed off a prized area, cheating them of outdoor recreation, according to The Los Angeles Times.

However, federal officials say the region, known for its archaeological ruins, has been jeopardized from overuse.

Bureau of Land Management Utah State Director Juan Palma, in a statement, said the riders may have damaged artifacts and dwellings that "tell the story of the first farmers in the Four Corners region" of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

"The BLM was in Recapture Canyon today collecting evidence and will continue to investigate," Palma said. "The BLM will pursue all available redress through the legal system to hold the lawbreakers accountable."

Bureau of Land Management officers recorded and documented protesters who traveled into the closure area, he added.

San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge said from 40 to 50 people, many of them waving American flags, drove about a mile down Recapture Canyon near Blanding and then turned around. Hundreds attended a rally at a nearby park before the protest

"It was peaceful, and there were no problems whatsoever," the sheriff told The Associated Press.

About 30 deputies and a handful of U.S. Bureau of Land Management law enforcement personnel watched as protesters drove past a closure sign and down the canyon located about 300 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

The ride was organized by San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman to assert local control of the region, known as Recapture Canyon.

Recapture Canyon is home to dwellings, artifacts and burials left behind by Ancestral Puebloans as many as 2,000 years ago before they mysteriously vanished.

The canyon was closed to motor vehicles in 2007 after two men forged an illegal seven-mile trail. But hikers and those on horseback are still allowed there, according to the agency.

Governments in Western states are trying to get more control over vast tracts of federally owned land in large part because they say the land could be strategically developed to help boost local economies.

Supporters of the decades-old movement also say local governments are better suited to manage the land, considering in part the federal government is understaffed to manage the acreage.

Lyman and his supporters want the BLM to act more quickly on a years-old request for a public right-of-way through the area.

The Blanding protest being spearheaded by a local public official, not a resident, also appears to be a sign of the growing frustrations in a rural county composed of nearly 90 percent public lands managed by the BLM.

Environmental groups have spoken out in support of the BLM, saying that fragile Recapture Canyon must be protected.

Earlier this week, BLM officials notified Lyman that any illegal foray in the area would bring consequences such as citations and arrest.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert also urged people to uphold the law.

Earlier this week, two men wearing hooded sweatshirts brandished a handgun at a BLM worker driving an agency vehicle, holding up a sign that read, “You need to die.”

Utah ranchers and county leaders recently threatened to break federal law and round up wild horses this summer if the agency doesn't do it first.

Motorized access to Recapture Canyon and other areas in Utah's wilderness has been a source of tension for decades. ATV riders rode another off-limits trail in 2009 in a protest. The Bureau of Land Management gave information about the riders to federal prosecutors, but no charges were filed.

Rare visit to the Mitchell Caverns

Naturalists from the SCV push back the desert to earn a rare visit to the now closed, historic, cave

Deep in El Pakiva Cavern are numerous formations over which the imagination can take flight. One docent saw in this formation “A woman with a flowing gown with crossed arms and a Poodle’s head.”

By Jim Harris
Santa Clarita Valley Signal

It nearly takes my breath away.

Billowy, white cotton candy clouds march eastward, covering the top of Fountain Peak; its red sentinel spires pushing through feathery cloud-fog.

Descending the mountain are wide, uneven strips of crimson, gray and green; rhyolite and limestone.

“See the three layers?” asked Brian Miller, organizer of our trip to the currently closed Mitchell Caverns in the Providence Mountains State Recreation Area.

“The gray band—that’s where the caves are,” he says.

The caverns are opened to us in exchange for work to push back the Mojave Desert at the Mitchell Caverns Visitor’s Center.

Brian Miller, an employee of the state parks system, enticed his fellow docent/naturalists from Santa Clarita with the chance to be the first in three years to descend into the limestone caverns in exchange for pushing back the encroaching desert.

More than 20 volunteers from Placerita and Vasquez Rocks Nature Centers drove up to the remote site, 116 miles east of Barstow on Highway 40 for the chance to go into the deep, historic caverns.

The volunteers spent hours rooting out desert vegetation that was pushing into buildings, as well as intruding on concrete walkways and planters at the Mitchell Caverns Visitor Center.

“I’m tired,” said Laneita Algeyer, school trips coordinator at Placerita Nature Center. She and her husband Bill are veteran hikers who haunt places like Mitchell Caverns, looking for the historic and the unusual all through the West.

Jim and Toni Crowley brought a wheel barrow and extra tools in their pickup. They haul out the vegetation when the work ends.

Exhausted after hours of work, and a hearty lunch including soup provided by Sue Wallendar, the Placerita/Vasquez group was fired up once more when Miller announced, “Time for the Caverns.”

Suddenly, a Grounds Keeper appeared to lead us into the cave. So remote are the caverns in Fountain Peak that he had to turn on a generator to provide lighting for us as we descend into the caverns. The Caverns are off the grid.

We followed a craggy, rocky trail under Fountain Peak’s red spires, dug into the Mountain’s gray limestone band. On the left the trail plunged hundreds of feet below.

But, we were safe with a solid chain guard rail installed during the heyday of park building after the state park system took possession of the Caverns.

The safety rails were among many improvements Jack Mitchell, the original owner of the caverns, could not have imagined when he ran tours there on his own property.

Mitchell started the tours during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Mitchell played at mining, but what he really excavated was the imaginations and spirits of people who wanted to see and experience unique and mysterious works of nature.

And in that spirit, as we descend into the caverns, many among us gasped as the lights turned on. The upward lighting cast strange shadows on bizarre, outlandish limestone formations.

“Breathtaking,” said Dolores Olson, fellow docent/naturalist.

Stalagmites, stalactites, shields, helictites, draperies, curtains and popcorn form intricate, sensational formations that illuminated our imaginations. Like children looking at clouds, we could see in our mind’s eyes that which are not there.

“Do you see the Queen washing her face in the basin, her hair hanging down?” asked the caretaker as he pointed to a complex formation of curtains, and stalactites in a section of the Caverns known as “The Queen’s Chambers.”

“Those formations will continue building. This is a living cave, when it rains,” continued the Grounds Keeper.
He pointed to a single trickle of water hanging on the end of a stalagmite, and then down at a tiny stalactite exactly below the motionless drip. This is at the beginning of our descent into the Caverns beginning at El Pakiva, “The Devil’s House” Cavern.

“This is how the formations grow over the years,” said the Grounds Keeper.

To me it was fantastic to think that such a small thing will grow like the enormous formations surrounding us as we continued.

Through El Pakiva we continue down state constructed steps, a far cry from the days when Mitchell and his visitors had to wriggle and climb over and around rocks and boulders.

After El Pakiva, we move in single file through the “Solution Tube” and are stopped abruptly at “The Pit.”
Here, in the 1930s, Mitchell dropped flares which would slowly go out, never to be seen again, said the Grounds Keeper.

“Jack (Mitchell) called it the ‘Bottomless Pit’,” smiled our guide. “It’s not bottomless; it’s about 40 feet deep.”
In those days the tour had to stop, go back, wriggle again through the entrance and walk the trail to the second cavern, Tecopa, named after one of the last Shoshone chiefs.

Now, there is a bridge and an opening to Tecopa, both built by the state.

There was also air-lock doors between the two caverns to eliminate a steady draft that blew through the caves once the state connected them together.

Archaeologists have found the remains of prehistoric animals, including a pre-historic sloth in Tecopa Cavern.
Throughout these caves there is evidence of Native-American life. The caverns were a sacred place for the Chemehuevi Indians, and a number of tools and fire pits have been found.

The Chemehuevi people called the caves the “the eyes of the mountain” because of their double entrances located near the top of Fountain Peak Mountain.

Much later, Jack Mitchell owned the caves (from 1934 to 1954) and operated them as a tourist attraction and rest stop for travelers on nearby U.S. Route 66. He held mining rights to the area and mined several holes and tunnels, which can be seen today.

In 1956 the caves became a state recreation area.

“They are an island of state owned land within the federal Mojave National Preserve,” said Miller.
The Caverns were closed in 2011.

Like the closing of Mitchell Caverns, we ended our tour as we emerge from Tecopa Cavern into the sunlight of Fountain Peak Mountain, and thread back along Jack Mitchell’s old cavern trail, sadly leaving behind our fantastical experience.

And back to our normal lives in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Energy company halts plans for wind project

A wind energy project proposed for Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa will not move forward after plans were terminated by Desert Mesa Power. The company has been testing wind conditions at the site since 2011.

By Courtney Vaughn
Hi-Desert Star

PIPES CANYON — A proposed utility-scale wind energy project slated for Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa will not move forward.

The Bureau of Land Management received a notification Thursday from Desert Mesa Power, LLC that it plans to terminate its right of way grant for wind testing.

Desert Mesa is owned by Element Power. The company installed two meteorological towers atop the buttes in July 2011 to test wind conditions on the public lands there.

Wind not conducive

In its letter to the BLM, the company stated it “does not believe that the wind resource at the site is conducive for further consideration for utility scale wind energy generation.”

California Desert Coalition and Save Our Desert released a joint statement Friday, saying the area should be off limits to industrial development.

“The work isn’t finished by any means,” Frazer Haney, president of SOD, stated. “We need to ensure permanent protection for these remarkable landforms...”

Both conservation groups collected thousands of signatures on petitions opposing the wind energy project.

SOD has been surveying the area’s flora, fauna and geological formations to register the buttes as important archaeological sites with the county museum.

According to the CDC, Desert Mesa Power planned to install 400-foot tall wind turbines on the buttes if wind patterns were favorable.

In November 2012, the Yucca Valley Town Council passed a resolution in opposition of the wind project, citing concerns of a scarred landscape and the destruction of biological resources. April Sall addressed the council, saying the proposal for a wind energy project in Pipes Canyon was left over from the Green Path North project previously proposed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“Our perseverance and hard work has paid off, and the enlightened public voice has been heard again. We are pleased that Element Power is withdrawing their application and that we are one step closer to maintaining our viewsheds and protecting the resources in and around the buttes,” Sall stated in a news release.

A representative from Element Power could not be reached for comment.

BLM agents continue to investigate petroglyph crimes

An area where the thieves tried to carve out a petroglyph
but ended up leaving it. (Bureau of Land Management)

by Benett Kessler
Sierra Wave Online

Bureau of Land Management investigators continue to look into the case of the stolen and damaged petroglyphs near Bishop. A month ago, BLM reported that someone had used a power saw, generators and ladders to cut out and take at least four petroglyphs, leaving dozens of others damaged. The news went global.

One of the BLM agents working on the case is Melody Stehwein. She said in the new year the investigation is still ongoing. She said donations are still being made and that the $2,000 reward for information in the case has gone up. She said the climbing community, for one, had contributed to the fund.

Stehwein said she could not report any new details on the case. Anyone with information on the case that would lead to the thieves is asked to call investigator Eric Keefer at 760-937-0657 or Melody Stehwein at 760-937-0301.

Greg Haverstock, BLM Archaeologist, confirmed that the rock art is thousands of years old and part of the current Paiute Tribe’s ceremonial tradition. Haverstock said Europeans documented the rock art prior to 1890 and geological evidence shows them to be thousands of years old. Haverstock had earlier said, “The location of archaeological materials, feature remains and the rock art clearly portray the activities that occurred at the site during the past 3,500 years.”

County Opposes Wind Turbines On Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa

Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.

San Bernardino County Sentinel

In one of his last acts as Third District county supervisor, Neil Derry convinced his board colleagues to take a stand against a British company’s proposal to erect several score 197-foot high wind turbines in the desert north of Yucca Valley on Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa north of Pipes Canyon Road between Pioneertown and Yucca Mesa.

London-based Element Power, which has its main North American office in Portland, Oregon, has been doing exploratory work to determine whether it will seek permits for the project under the aegis of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which calls for 33 percent of California’s commercially-produced electricity sales to be provided by renewable sources by 2020. Element is banking upon an expedited permitting process that is available for projects applied for under the plan.

The board of supervisors this week, however, significantly complicated that approach when it collectively endorsed a resolution brought forth by Derry opposing Element Power’s application.

In making his recommendation for the resolution, Derry noted that the Black Lava Butte Wind Project was proposed to be sited where previously an electrical transmission line project known as Green Path North was to have been located.

“On December 4, 2007 the board of supervisors adopted Resolution No. 2007-367 opposing the Green Path North project proposed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,” Derry stated in his report to the board with regard to the resolution. “The project called for the erection of power transmission lines throughout western portions of the Morongo Basin and endangered natural wildlife corridors, sensitive habitat areas and important cultural resources. Following the abandonment of the Green Path North project, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power once again solicited requests for proposals to be filed for proposed projects on the Green Path North alignment.

The Black Lava Butte Wind Project application filed by Element Power and approved by the Bureau of Land Management calls for the exploration of potential wind energy capture and transmission within the backcountry of the Morongo Basin. Element Power would first seek to ascertain the viability of wind energy development by measuring data from two meteorological towers approximately 200 feet in height that have already been constructed.”

In July 2011, Element Power erected the two 197-foot high towers Derry referred to in order to collect data on wind speed and direction at that height at that location. The Bureau of Land Management in 2010 gave Element permission to build those towers. Element hopes to determine from that data whether building a wind farm at that location will prove commercially viable.

While some endorse the concept of aggressive corporate efforts to develop renewable energy and certain environmentalists embrace the wind farm concept, others, including some environmentalists, are opposed to the project proposal.

Some opponents cite the harm they perceive the placement of turbines will have on the desert vista. They and others find objectionable the danger they say the wind turbines represent to eagles, bats, and other birds that fly through or inhabit the area. Another point of protest hinges on the possible destruction of Native American rock art and other archaeological artifacts in the area. Other critics point out that the remote location of the wind field will require that the electricity be transported a considerable distance, and that a significant percentage of the energy will be lost during that line transport.

Three groups opposed to the project on environmental grounds, the California Desert Coalition, Save Our Desert, and the Center for Biological Diversity, are seeking to have that portion of the desert which was identified as an area of critical environmental concern in the Desert Protection Act introduced to Congress in 2011 extended to include Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.

If Element Power elects to proceed with the project, it will need to erect eight miles of transmission lines and towers to deliver the energy to the California Power Grid’s existing electrical transmission lines.

Derry made reference to the transmission line and its placement in his call for the board to oppose the project.

“In order to supply the region’s electrical grid with the wind power, an eight-mile transmission line would need to be constructed over environmentally sensitive habitat,” Derry wrote. “Over 4,000 acres of undeveloped public lands would be subjected to transmission lines and networks of wind turbines. This project area required helicopter transport in order to erect the meteorological towers and further development would require the building of road infrastructure in order to reach two scenic jewels of the Morongo Basin: Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.”

Derry said that neither he nor the county are opposed to the harnessing of the wind to produce electrical power, but that such projects should be undertaken in areas that will not suffer environmental or ecological degradation as a consequence.

“As stated previously in Resolution No. 2007-367, while the county supports the use of renewable resources and encourages programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; the county of San Bernardino also places a high value on protecting and preserving the natural resources of the California desert and as a result opposes the construction of high tension power lines through environmentally sensitive areas in the Morongo Basin, and recommends that additional power lines be located within existing energy corridors,” Derry stated.

Haenszel became 'the source' on San Bernardino County's past

Nick Cataldo, Columnist
San Bernardino Sun

During my years researching San Bernardino County's colorful past, more than a few historians have helped me out immensely. But without question the scholar who made local history the most exciting for me, not only through her own amazing work, but also through the encouragement she gave me, was the late Arda M. Haenszel.

Born on Sept. 24, 1910, in Ebenezer, N.Y., the only child of Dr. Allen and Arda C. Haenszel became fascinated with history early on when she moved with her parents to the semi-abandoned Nevada desert mining town of Searchlight in 1919. Dr. Haenszel was the company physician for the Santa Fe Railway as well as the lone town doctor. In fact, he was the only doctor for miles around.

The region's mining boom was over by nearly a decade, so young Arda grew up around the ghostly reminders of abandoned buildings, mine shafts, and rock dumps. This unique environment may have sparked her interest in the past.

The Haenszel family left Searchlight in 1922 and moved to San Bernardino, which is where Arda called home for most of the rest of her life, until moving to Redlands' Plymouth Village, where she resided during her last years.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Arda launched a 33-year elementary school teaching career in San Bernardino. No doubt, her kids learned a thing of two about our region's "olden days" during her tenure.

After her retirement in 1966, she often was honored as the No. 1 consultant on our county's rich heritage. A longtime associate of the San Bernardino County Museum, she amassed a famous set of files - an unbelievably extensive historical collection on any and every topic regarding San Bernardino County as well as parts of Southern Nevada - that have provided material for countless other researchers (including yours truly) in their quest of exploring this region. She efficiently and willingly shared information on local Indian tribes, old trails, pioneers, historic sites, nearly forgotten towns, the Mojave Desert ... the list goes on and on.

Arda also had a strong interest in archaeology and, although not blessed with great health, was no "couch potato" writer. Up until about 10 years before her passing, she always was driving her Jeep out into the most remote areas of the desert, photographing abandoned sites, documenting her findings, and analyzing ancient petroglyphs.

Over the years Arda wrote numerous articles pertaining to archaeology, paleontology, anthropology and history for the San Bernardino County Museum Association. She also wrote many articles for the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society's publications, "Heritage Tales" and "Odyssey," an amazing accomplishment considering her busy schedule volunteering with the County Museum and San Bernardino Public Library. Even more remarkable was that this was mostly done while she was practically deaf and her vision was failing.

Arda was well known for her book donations; she is responsible for the creation of the California Room at San Bernardino's Feldheym Library.

For decades Arda Haenszel had been the "the source" for local history and when she passed away on Jan. 9, 2002, the 91-year-old San Bernardino County resident became part of that story she loved to research and write about.

Her estate included a very generous donation of $749,000 to the City of San Bernardino Library Endowment Fund. On Dec. 13, 2007, the San Bernardino Library Board of Trustees unanimously approved the naming of the California Room as the Arda Haenszel California Room.

Judge orders new plan for dam releases into Grand Canyon

Federal officials must reconsider the irregular water releases from Glen Canyon Dam, which may harm the humpback chub, an endangered fish.
Endangered Humpback Chub (AZ Game Fish)

By Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Denver -- Federal officials must reconsider how they release water from Glen Canyon Dam into the Grand Canyon in order to protect an endangered fish, the humpback chub, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Environmental groups have long argued that the irregular releases from the dam just above the canyon damage the fish's native environment, erode beaches and wash away ancient ruins in the canyon.

Nikolai Lash of the Grand Canyon Trust, which filed a lawsuit along with Earthjustice, said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation should release water in regular flows, which would do less damage. "They're better at preserving the beaches, the archaeological sites and the fish," he said.

Officials at the bureau could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

For much of its existence, Glen Canyon released water on timetables designed to benefit Southwestern power companies, whose demand for hydroelectric power peaks during the day.

Last year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, reversing an old agency opinion, found that the fluctuating dam releases did not violate the Endangered Species Act. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell ruled that that revision was improper and ordered the agency to reconsider how the dam flows may harm the endangered fish.

Campbell gave the government until November to file a new plan and ordered that, should it find the releases threaten the chub, it must propose a new schedule.

Collect a rock, lose your car

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

Ominous forfeiture provisions in new bill restrict use of federal land

WorldNetDaily

This souvenir could land you in hot water under the provisions of pending legislation. (DanielCD)

WASHINGTON – A land management bill that swept through the U.S. Senate last month and is headed for a House vote this week punishes rock collectors and paleontologists with arrest and expropriation of their cars and other equipment for even unknowingly disturbing fossils on public land, say critics.

In the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a "forfeiture" provision would let the government confiscate "all vehicles and equipment of any person" who digs up or removes a rock or a bone from federal land that meets the bill's broad definition of "paleontological resource," says a report by Jon Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"The seizures could take place even before a person and even if the person didn't know they were taking or digging up a 'paleontological resource," writes Berlau. "And the bill specifically allows the 'transfer of seized resources' to 'federal or non-federal' institutions, giving the government and some private actors great incentive to egg on the takings."

Tracie Bennitt, president of the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences, is protesting the bill's vague language and severe penalties.

"We can visualize now a group of students unknowingly crossing over an invisible line and ending up handcuffed and prosecuted," she wrote to members of Congress.

Subtitle D of the bill called the "Paleontological Resources Preservation Act" would make it illegal to "excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any paleontological resources located on Federal land" without special permission from the government.

"Paleontological resource" is defined in the bill as "any fossilized remains, traces, or imprints of organisms, preserved in or on the earth's crust, that are of paleontological interest and that provide information about the history of life on earth." Penalties for violations include up to five years in jail.

Berlau believes picking up rocks could be interpreted as a violation of the law since most would fit the broad definition under the law.

The forfeiture provision is effective before a trial and conviction, making the defendant guilty until proven innocent, Berlau suggests.

Berlau believes the House will take up a vote on the bill this week. He is urging Americans to contact representatives before the bill, known both as S. 22 and the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009" is approved, as expected, and heads to the White House for President Obama's signature.

Highway 95 solar projects on hold

Studies will be conducted prior to any development


By MARK WAITE
Pahrump Valley Times



A map of the solar energy projects filed for Southern Nye County. The checkerboards indicate overlapping applications for the same land.

There's been an almost daily spiel of propaganda about the need for renewable energy and reducing our dependence of foreign oil emanating from politicians ranging from U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to Gov. Jim Gibbons.

But it may be a few years yet before projects actually start being developed in Southern Nevada, at least on public land.

That was the verdict after a field tour by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Resource Advisory Council last Thursday of solar energy sites in Amargosa Valley.

BLM Pahrump Field Office Manager Patrick Putnam said there have been approximately 35 applications for solar energy projects comprising 250,000 acres just in the southern BLM district.

BLM Realty Specialist Wendy Seley said of 21 to 24 applications for land just in the Amargosa Valley, about 14 applicants have started the initial process, paying the BLM for the cost recovery process, which pays for all the consultants and is a first step for requesting BLM right-of-way.

The BLM decided against issuing a moratorium on applications for solar energy projects throughout the western states last summer, while a programmatic environmental impact statement is prepared. Work on the statement began last May, a draft is expected this summer, and a final EIS by summer 2010.

After the moratorium was lifted, numerous companies submitted applications for solar energy projects, some competing for the same piece of land, Seley said.

Some applications are being withdrawn as companies learn about the costs and requirements, she said, There were 71 applications submitted for solar projects statewide, which has since dropped to 68, she said.

The right-of-way application includes stipulations on road construction, removal of vegetation, disturbing biological and cultural resources, as well as site reclamation. A plan of development for construction and operation of a solar facility must be completed within 90 days of receiving the cost recovery application, Seley said.

Right now, six plans of development have been forwarded to the state BLM office in Reno for an engineering review.

The BLM is asking for a rental fee for the public lands calculating the highest and best use of the land. Seley said they're using the agricultural value of the acreage as a guide.

A bond will be required, similar to what's required for mining companies, for land reclamation once the project is over. It will include removing solar collectors as well as reclaiming access roads.

"A lot of companies are asking for a lot of acreage. This is something new to the BLM," Seley said.

The right-of-way is only going to be issued for the footprint of the actual solar facilities, she said.

"If they want 30,000 acres, one thing they've got to remember -- they're going to be paying rent on those 30,000 acres," Seley said.

BLM Natural Resource Specialist Jayson Barangan said companies will also be paying desert tortoise mitigation fees of $753 per acre.

Realty specialist Mark Chandler said a company like Cogentrix Solar Services, which had requested 30,000 acres of right-of-way, has scaled back that request to 3,000 acres due to the cost. Chandler said companies like to locate a site next to existing infrastructure like gas lines, power lines and telephone lines.

"You can't just hold 30,000 acres in reserve. You have to develop it," Chandler said.

Seley said companies will also have to apply for an interconnection agreement to sell power on the market and a power purchase agreement with companies like NV Energy and Valley Electric Association. Seley said from discussions she had with the power industry on the California side, it could take two to five years to execute those power purchase agreements.

Those agreements are also not cheap. Chandler said an interconnection agreement can cost a company $250,000 all by itself.

An application to install a 500-kilovolt power line 347 miles long that will connect Northern and Southern Nevada from Yerington to Jean is being protested in court by environmental groups, BLM's Resource Advisory Council was told. That power line could be tapped into for solar energy projects in the Amargosa Valley area.

Putnam said the majority of solar projects up for engineering review now use wet-cooled technology, which uses more water to cool the turbines. The use of wet-cooled technology could be a limiting factor to how many projects get off the ground, he said.

The more water efficient process, the dry cooling technology, requires a larger footprint, Chandler said.

Seley said companies would have to show they have water rights, and will drill a well or pipe the water to the site.

"With 250,000 acres, how are you going to deal with cumulative impacts?" RAC Chairman John Hiatt asked.

"I think that is going to be a crucial issue," Putnam replied. He referred to all the applications filed in a row along Highway 95 from Lathrop Wells to Beatty, except for the US Ecology site.

Seley said the BLM can issue a right-of-way for up to 30 years.

Archeologist Kathleen Sprowl said the BLM hasn't conducted many archeological surveys in Nye County except for proposed power lines and off-road races.

"The solar projects are covering massive acres in Amargosa Valley, and up to this point in time not much has been done in the Pahrump district culturally because there haven't been many developments out here," Sprowl said. "We will have a large area inventoried to know what kind of historic or prehistoric activities were happening out here. For each solar project, we are going to be requiring that the entire area they ask to be leased is inventoried."

Sprowl said there are two historic railroad systems that may go through some lease sites, like the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad and the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. Most stagecoach roads have already lost their integrity, she said.

BLM natural resource specialist Jayson Barangan outlined the unique situation at Big Dune, in the western Amargosa Valley, which is surrounded by applications for solar power. An area of critical environmental concern has been designated for 2,000 acres around Big Dune, mostly targeting the periphery around the dune which is home to four species of beetle found nowhere else, he said.

Barangan said the BLM is developing a resource recreation area management plan to address the environmental concerns and the popular off-highway use around the dune.

Barangan said the EIS will have to examine whether solar energy projects planned around Big Dune will affect the biological resources.

So how come Acciona Energy was able to build a solar power plant so quickly in El Dorado Canyon near Boulder City and another system went up already on Nellis Air Force Base?

Hiatt said Acciona Energy is using property belonging to the town of Boulder City. The Nellis project was built on military land.

Dust on the rocks

by Keith Kloor
High Country News







Constance Silver measures dust in Nine Mile Canyon.




Last summer, Constance Silver spent a week examining the world-renowned rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon, a two-hour drive south of Salt Lake City. Tucked into the rugged Tavaputs Plateau, the place contains upwards of 10,000 images, painted and pecked onto sandstone walls. Many of them are visible from the curving, roughly graded road.

But the respected art conservator wasn't there to admire the renderings of hunters, bighorn sheep and geometric patterns. Rather, she came to study dust. More specifically, to take air samples and observe the brownish-gray clouds kicked up by an armada of oil and gas trucks as they rumbled through the canyon.

After wrapping up her fieldwork, Silver stopped by the local Bureau of Land Management office in nearby Price, which oversees Nine Mile Canyon, and sought out its lone archaeologist, Blaine Miller. She informed Miller that the dust was having an "alarming effect" on the rock art and "had to be taken care of immediately."

"In your dreams," Miller said, recalling the exchange. His own concerns had been repeatedly ignored by his superiors since 2004. That was when the Bill Barrett Corporation, a Denver-based energy company, began exploratory drilling for natural gas higher up in the plateau, using Nine Mile's rutted road as the main transportation route.

Silver, who specializes in restoring vandalized rock art, became adamant, according to Miller. "No, not in my dreams," she insisted. "It has to be taken care of now."

A year has passed since that conversation, however, and nothing has been done to solve the problem. Not only that, but Silver's original findings have essentially disappeared. Hundreds of documents obtained recently through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that crucial data and other supporting evidence attesting to severe dust contamination never made it into her study, which was released last February. These omissions enabled the BLM to cast Silver's report as inconclusive, at a time when the agency was approving a controversial proposal for expanded drilling by Barrett. It's not clear exactly what happened to the study or why, but the story of how it got watered down provides a window into the murky mingling of science, industry and an underfunded federal agency faced with an onslaught of energy development.

The doctored study is just one of many questionable actions taken by the BLM during the past five years relating to gas drilling impacts in Nine Mile Canyon. To many critics, the crowning insult came earlier this year, when the BLM issued its draft environmental impact statement for Barrett's 800-plus gas well project. "It is the worst document I have seen in my 30 years working in the BLM," Miller told me recently. Forbidden to participate in the review, Miller, who is an expert on Nine Mile Canyon, wasn't even permitted to see the document until it was released to the public. "There's nothing in there about how bad the dust is, what the effects are on the rock art, no attempt to mitigate any of it."

For decades, scientists and rock art buffs have marveled at the prehistoric carvings and paintings in Nine Mile Canyon. Even the BLM has acknowledged Nine Mile Canyon's importance, calling it the "largest concentration of rock art in North America."

Most of the pictures were left by the Fremont people, a culture of farmers and foragers that thrived throughout Utah a millenium ago, before leaving the area around 1350.

As recently as the 1990s, the Price BLM office had put Nine Mile's archaeological treasures front and center, writing a management plan that, according to Miller, would showcase and protect the rock art.

Then, in 2005, after several years of exploration, geologists for the Bill Barrett Corp. hit a sweet spot in the Tavaputs' ancient bedrock, with extractable gas deposits estimated to be worth $2.5 billion. The company quickly applied for a "full-field" development, which requires an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate potential negative affects. The exhaustive assessment often takes years to complete, but that hasn't slowed down Barrett. To date, the company has drilled 200 of its proposed 800 gas wells, nearly half of them under "categorical exclusions," a provision in the 2005 Energy Act that allows the BLM to give the go-ahead to a variety of projects without doing an environmental review.

By 2006, however, the traffic and dust in Nine Mile Canyon had become so bad that the BLM had to respond to growing complaints by archaeologists and environmentalists. The agency called on Silver to assess the problem. The initiative stalled, though, after the BLM was unable to secure government funding. Barrett then agreed to pay for the study. By the time Silver arrived on the scene last summer, some 350 trucks and rigs were barreling through the canyon on any given day.

In the following months, as Silver worked on the dust study, her worst fears were confirmed by a series of lab analyses. Each time something noteworthy turned up, she e-mailed the person who hired her, Nine Mile Canyon's supervisory archaeologist, Julie Howard, who works out of BLM's Division of Land and Minerals office in Salt Lake City.

In early October of 2007, Silver advised Howard of the likelihood that magnesium chloride was being "tracked all through the canyon." For years, the Barrett Corp. had extensively applied the chemical dust suppressant -- essentially a salt -- along portions of the Nine Mile road. And over the years, the industrial flotilla has pulverized the unstable roadbed, creating an airborne potpourri of silt, diesel fuel and chewed-up magnesium chloride, which is notoriously corrosive to concrete, cars and just about everything else.

In that same e-mail, Silver also told Howard that the dust "all over" the Great Hunt panel -- Nine Mile Canyon's most iconic and frequently photographed image -- had the same chemical "signature" as the dust produced in the air along the adjacent stretch of the road by passing oil and gas trucks. Her other test samples of rock art sites in Nine Mile Canyon had shown a similar pattern. "So, at the very least, dust is getting all over the rock art," Silver wrote. "At the very worst, it is contaminating the rock art with magnesium chloride."

Silver explained to Howard that "the presence of magnesium chloride in dust could become a critical marker for how the Nine-mile road is producing and spreading dust." Puzzling this out -- and determining the extent of the overall problem -- would be huge, but Silver wanted to be sure, so she had the lab run a second set of tests. At the end of October, Silver informed Howard that the final lab results were in: "They found magnesium chloride all over the place, alas."

Two months later, in early January of this year, I met up with Silver in New York City, while she was working on a restoration project at the Guggenheim Museum. Clad in frocky work clothes stained with plaster, the Vermont-based conservator talked proudly of her study at Nine Mile Canyon. Previously, little research had been done on the impacts of dust on rock art -- a worldwide issue -- so she believed her contribution would fill in a significant academic gap.

Silver sounded sure of her findings, stating unequivocally that magnesium chloride-laced dust was being kicked up by trucks and was "going all over the place and settling on the rock art." She was particularly "alarmed" by "all these little crystals of magnesium chloride getting into the pores of the rock art."

"It's such vicious stuff," she added. "It peels concrete, corrodes it."

I was surprised by Silver's certainty, because the last time we'd spoken about her study, over the phone in September, she made a point of telling me how difficult it might be to distinguish current impacts to Nine Mile Canyon from those that began a century ago, when homesteaders first arrived. During that period, the main road through the canyon was also used as a freight route, which no doubt produced its share of dust. Bored cowboys and stagecoach drivers were fond of using the rock art panels for target practice. Later, pothunters and tourists started leaving their own stains on the landscape.

"Let's face it, (Nine Mile Canyon) is not a pristine environment," she said to me. "What I was concerned about was how much of the dust is coming from current use and how much from 100 years of mistreatment. I was worried from the beginning how we were going to figure that one out. But now when you get the magnesium marker, you can pretty much say you're getting a really accelerated settlement of dust."

Silver was not opposed to Barrett's operation herself, but she believed her study results were so "harsh" that some environmental groups might seize on them to try to stop it. In 2004, activists and archaeologists had unsuccessfully sued to halt the company's incursion into Nine Mile Canyon.

They never got the chance, however, to use her results, because the version of her study published in early February contains none of the relevant, damaging information Silver expressed either to me or in her e-mails to Julie Howard.

In fact, Silver's published study makes no mention of the positive magnesium chloride finding throughout the canyon. Instead, it describes the difficulty of separating out the historical and naturally occurring dust and concludes that "thus far it has been impossible to isolate and identify magnesium chloride in the laboratory."

After learning of the e-mail exchanges between Silver and Howard, Nine Mile advocates are seething. "All these years, we thought they (BLM) were just being irresponsible," says Utah archaeologist Jerry Spangler, an expert on the canyon. "Now it's moved to willful, intentional deceit to benefit an agenda and one particular developer, and that's really disturbing."

If relevant lab results were intentionally excluded from the EIS, it was "a violation of NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act), which in the full spirit of disclosure, the federal government is supposed to present the most recently available information, not that which supports an industry project," says EPA's Larry Svoboda, a Denver-based director of the agency's NEPA program.

In a recent phone interview, Howard said no such intent existed. "To the best of my knowledge, we included everything we knew at this point," she said. But when confronted with e-mails showing that she knew about the excluded lab results at least four months before the EIS was published, Howard claimed that the results didn't get into the impact statement because the deadline had already passed. "We weren't trying to hide anything," Howard insists.

Barrett's involvement in the study also seems to be a point of confusion for Howard. She first said that the gas company "never saw the study until it was done." However, an extensive e-mail paper trail reveals that Howard kept Barrett officials abreast of Silver's progress, even giving them a chance to weigh in on draft reviews and participate during conference calls. In August, Duane Zavadil, Barrett's vice president for environmental regulatory affairs, confirmed that company officials saw the study before it was released to the public. However, he says: "We didn't provide a single editorial comment. We never asked for a word in the report to be changed."

Still, that the energy company paid for the study and was then allowed to review drafts before it was released "suggests that the process was biased," says Jeffery Clark, an archaeologist with the Tucson-based Center for Desert Archaeology. At a minimum, Clark says, the BLM should have put up a firewall between Silver's study and the company. "If data was withheld, then that's illegal," he adds. "That's like an archaeologist finding a site where the development is taking place and not recording the site. That would be grounds for shutting down the project."

Before any of this would be known, the BLM was already getting hammered from all sides regarding the Barrett EIS it released in February. In recent months, major concerns over ozone pollution, stream contamination, disappearing wildlife habitat, and of course, continuing destruction to the rock art, have poured in from many quarters, including the Utah governor's office, environmental groups, the Hopi (who claim ancestral ties to Nine Mile), and lately, the Environmental Protection Agency, which gave the EIS a failing grade for faulty air modeling of emissions.

Clearly, though, both the BLM and Barrett are most skittish over the allegations of dust damage to the canyon's rock art. When I spoke to BLM managers and Barrett executives in the spring and summer, they repeated the same talking point: Silver's findings were inconclusive. In a May editorial published in a local paper, a Barrett official even cited her study to defend its use of magnesium chloride, which it had applied again that month.

Despite her role in the BLM's shenanigans, Silver obviously cares deeply about the rock art. That's evident in her comments in an early draft of her study: "During the public comment period, some years ago, several conservation scientists and conservators (including the author of this report), raised objections to the use of magnesium chloride for dust abatement in Nine Mile Canyon, because eventually some magnesium chloride will escape the road and be deposited in rock art. The potential for damage is very great, and remediation would be very difficult." Those comments do not appear in the published study.

Silver's recommendation in the next (and concluding) paragraph on how to solve the problem never saw the light of day, either: "Therefore, another road surfacing must be developed and implemented as soon as possible in proximity to all rock art panels. A very promising road surface system identified by the BLM is asphalt chunks that can be spread on the road and then packed in place. -- It is absolutely critical that this -- or some other system -- be employed as soon as possible to arrest the development of dust near the rock art sites."

Notably, this solution was never mentioned in the BLM's draft EIS of the Barrett proposal. As this story went to press, the agency was testing six different types of dust control along Nine Mile road involving the use of enzymes. Whether or not enzymes would be any less harmful to rock art panels than magnesium chloride is not known, because no studies on their impacts have been done.

The company could utilize existing roads that circumvent Nine Mile Canyon altogether. Environmentalists and archaeologists have repeatedly suggested this, but the company insists that the cost and operational constraints are prohibitive. The BLM, for its part, has never seriously considered it as an alternative.

Several groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has listed Nine Mile Canyon as one of its nine most endangered places since 2004, are now paying for an independent engineering study to assess the viability of bypass roads.

A year after Silver conducted her study, conditions in Nine Mile Canyon remain unchanged. The road is crumbling under a steady parade of oil and gas trucks. Dust is still flying everywhere, eroding innumerable rock art panels, according to Miller and other archaeologists.

Final drafts of Silver's study and the BLM's evaluation of Barrett's drilling expansion are set to be released in the fall. At the most recent Utah BLM advisory council meeting in late June, Julie Howard assured attendees that, according to Silver's study, evidence of damage to Nine Mile Canyon's rock art from dust and magnesium chloride was "inconclusive."

Silver, for her part, seems to believe that her study was properly handled by both the BLM and the Bill Barrett Corporation. Until recently, she had not responded to repeated requests for comment on this story. Then, on Aug. 15, she sent me an e-mail stating, among other things: "The work that I am doing in Nine Mile Canyon -- with the full support of the BLM and BBC (Bill Barrett Corp.) -- is pure science and the chips are going to fall where they will."

Keith Kloor is a New York-based freelance writer and currently a Ted Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism, University of Colorado.

Farewell to the Archaeological Survey Foundation

The End of the Archaeological Survey Association

By Anne Q. Stoll, President and Executive Director

LaMonk Collection

“The next generation” – a quick look through a recent SCA newsletter suggests this is a hot topic for many of us. The future was certainly on our minds when we board members voted this past April to disband the Archaeological Survey Association of Southern California, Inc. or ASA, as it was fondly known, after 61 years of operation.

Many of you may remember the ASA – some of you are former members. This organization, recognized as the oldest avocational archaeological society in California, covered a lot of ground in the early days. The name often shows up in old reports.

The Archaeological Survey Association was started back in January 1947 at a meeting in the Southwest Museum in Highland Park, near Los Angeles. Mark R. Harrington, Edwin F. Walker, Frederick W. Hodge, and Howard A. Edwards, were worried about the rate at which archaeological sites were being destroyed by Southern California’s post-war development boom. If that first meeting was anything like the one I was at many years later that started the Coachella Valley Archaeological Society, these guys were sitting around talking, eating pizza and drinking beer after spending the day in the field.

At that meeting in 1947 it was resolved to create the ASA to conduct a complete archaeological reconnaissance of California. The vision – and the naïveté – of such a goal are hard to grasp today, but such was the bravado of the times. These men proposed to form a team of professionals from local universities and museums who would use crews of volunteer amateurs to do the work. They drafted a very persuasive letter which they sent out to everyone they knew (and M. R. Harrington knew everybody). The Southwest Museum became the first sponsor but USC, UCLA and the LA County Museum of Natural History participated too. George Brainerd at UCLA served as the first president, followed by Robert Ariss of LACMNH, and then Gordon Hewes at UC Berkeley. Early field leaders included Stuart Peck, Freddie Curtis, Charles Rozaire, Edwin Walker, William Wallace, Ruth DeEtte Simpson (known as “Dee”), and Ben E. McCown.

As we all know, it isn’t hard to recruit volunteers to help dig. ASA was soon a big success with well over 200 enthusiastic members. Between 1947 and 1963, ASA volunteers were at work in the field somewhere between Bakersfield and San Diego nearly every weekend, surveying, scouting, photographing, or digging. Some of the bigger excavations were at Malaga Cove, Arroyo Sequit, Temeku, Phillips Ranch, and Burro Flats. The tough part was getting site maps made, artifacts catalogued and analyzed, and reports written but in the beginning, ASA’s publication record was pretty good, especially during the 16 Southwest Museum years.

In 1963, the ASA moved to the San Bernardino County Museum in Bloomington and the organization changed. The group’s focus turned from coastal sites to the Mojave Desert, and several more big projects were undertaken in Kern, Inyo, and San Bernardino counties. Then followed a few more moves and many changes but somehow, through the efforts of many devoted volunteers, the ASA hung on. Through the 1970s, ASA worked in Black Canyon, near Barstow, surveying and excavating. Much of this project was recorded by ASA photographer Charley Howe, who published the summary report in 1980. Through the end of the 1980s, there were more weekend surveys in the East Mojave. The Mud Springs Lab nights in LaVerne continued through the 1990s, but the group was clearly losing steam. There were just enough members left in 1997 to make the 50th anniversary party worth having. The invitations and catering almost broke the bank, however. When we decided to throw in the towel at our final meeting on October 26, 2002, a grand total of 19 people attended. The vote to disband the ASA was unanimous.

And then – surprise! The ASA hit the lottery. Seriously. Who knew Dee Simpson was worth that much money!? She lived alone in a funky trailer with a half dozen cats in Calimesa. Who knew those stock certificates and bank account books in her kitchen drawers were real? Dee Simpson passed away on January 19, 2000 and when the dust settled three years later, the ASA found she had bequeathed us one-eighth of her considerable estate.

What to do? There was no shortage of ideas. At last, this was ASA’s big chance to track down our scattered collections, find the old field notes, and write up the old reports. We would give grants and scholarships. We would clean up all the old messes and deal with the skeletons in the closet. The new streamlined five-member board voted to stash the money in an investment account and look for good professional advice. Investment managers, lawyers, accountants, appraisers, web-designers – we hired them all.

We floundered at first. We paid good money for bad legal advice, and spent the better part of the next two years working with another lawyer to unravel the mess with the State and the IRS. Because we no longer had dues-paying members or took public funds, we became by default a private charitable foundation. In 2004 we turned the corner. We officially renamed ourselves the Archaeological Survey Foundation (ASF) and began to enjoy some success. We supported the publication of several long-overdue reports and gave out a number of research grants. Ben McCown’s report of years of survey work at Lake LeConte was finally published. Russ Kaldenberg’s Ayers Rock report went to the printer. Thanks to SRI’s support, we consolidated our collections in Redlands. We subsidized CSUSB students attending archaeology field school in the San Bernardino Mountains. We moved slowly but we were doing good things.

Then the accountants delivered some bad news (non-profits beware!). There are new definitions of what is a “taxable expenditure” for a private charitable foundation. Thanks to the lawbreakers who scammed the IRS by setting up bogus foundations and giving themselves grants, the government changed the rules. No more simple cash grants to private individuals or deserving students. Unless you give to a non-profit, you have to ask the IRS permission BEFORE you give away the money, the recipient needs to prove their qualifications, you have to follow up on how the grant is spent and if misspent, you must try to retrieve the money, you must submit reports to the IRS in a timely fashion for each grant, etc. etc. See Internal Revenue Code 4945 for the rest of it.

The paperwork seemed onerous and was the last thing the ASF needed. We were already starting to bog down with competing demands for our time and too many boxes of orphaned artifacts. It was time to molt and move on.

In the end, the decision was surprisingly easy to make. We voted unanimously to give our entire 119-piece LaMonk art collection and almost all our money -- $340,000 -- to the Foundation for CSUSB to benefit their traditionally underrepresented student population here in the Inland Empire. With the wave of the pen, we created the ASA – Southern California Archaeology Endowment to ensure that the funds will be used exclusively for the benefit of the Cal State San Bernardino Anthropology Department in support of their undergraduate program in archaeology and cultural resource management. It’s the largest cash gift the CSUSB College of Social and Behavioral Sciences has ever received. Everyone is happy -- our legacy will serve the future.

In shutting down the organization, we’ve had the fun of giving two $10,000 distributions to worthy local non-profits, the first to the San Bernardino County Museum Association for the renovation of the Anthropology curation facility. The SBCM has graciously given a home to our archives, business papers and artifacts. The second gift went with the Charley Howe photos to the CSUSB Library, Special Collections, to properly curate the collection and get it online.

So we close the book on the ASA/ASF with a smile. Sixty-one years is a long run for any volunteer group. We hope other avocational societies who are struggling with shrinking membership rolls will consider following our lead and will plan for the needs of the next generation of California archaeologists.

Activists assail final Arizona Strip plan

Associated Press
Deseret News







PHOENIX — Environmental groups sharply criticized a final federal management plan Friday for millions of acres of rugged and remote public lands in northern Arizona's Arizona Strip.

Groups including the Wilderness Society and the Center for Biological Diversity said the plan allows too much off-road vehicle use, livestock grazing and oil and gas development on the 2.8 million acres of public lands.

The Arizona Strip stretches for miles north of the Grand Canyon National Park and includes the Vermilion Cliffs and Grand Canyon-Parashant national monuments.

There are no paved roads on either monument, but several graded gravel roads on the latter. "They mostly are primitive two-track roads that are very infrequently traveled," said Scott Florence, BLM district manager for the Arizona Strip.

Critics contended that the plan, which took effect Friday upon being published in the Federal Register, would not prevent habitat fragmentation for such key wildlife species found in the region as deer, elk and mountain lions.

It also would do little on behalf of the desert tortoise and other threatened, endangered and sensitive species, they said.

Wildlife habitat and archaeological sites will be sacrificed to oil and gas development, off-road vehicles and livestock grazing under the plan BLM issued, members of several environmental organizations said.

"Page after page, the BLM finds ways to promote continued off-road vehicle use in places that were set aside for their ancient artifacts, rugged landscapes, and habitat for desert species," said Nada Culver, Wilderness Society senior counsel.

The BLM's 3,000-page plan ignored why national monuments were created and disregards the wishes of the public to protect them, she said.

But federal officials defended the plan as the most practical, saying it allows people to use the land while protecting it. It has been debated for several years.

Florence said his agency was trying to be as proactive as possible and that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a no-jeopardy biological opinion concerning the plan's impact on the desert tortoise.

"It isn't surprising that they would take that position because they did in their comments and protests on the final plan," he said.

"In developing the plans, we looked at the monument proclamations and feel that we developed plans that will adequately protect those monument objects while allowing for other uses out there.

"They seem to be focused a lot on the route designations, and in developing the plans we did close several hundred miles of routes to vehicle use."

Florence said a total of 290 miles of roads and trails on the two monuments would be closed under the plan, along with another 17 miles under National Park Service administration on the Grand Canyon-Parashant.

Nearly 1,650 more miles will remain open on the two monuments, along with more than 275 miles for administrative use only, he said.

Environmentalists fear the land will come under increasing pressure from thousands of tourists and off-highway vehicle enthusiasts in the next 20 years. The surrounding communities in Nevada and Utah are expected to grow by an estimated 1.4 million new residents in that time.