Mesa Verde's Secret Garden

Mesa Verde is unique in the National Park System, the only national park created specifically to preserve archaeological values. It was designated on June 29, 1906, when only six major national parks had been established, and as Christopher Barns writes, Mesa Verde was different: “Set aside not for sublime views or biological wonders, but instead for the cultural remains of ancient Americans, this key difference has colored management at Mesa Verde ever since.”

There are, of course, many other units of the National Park System that have been established to preserve the cultural heritages of America, but they are national monuments, national historical parks, or national historic sites. When Mesa Verde National Park was signed into law the Antiquities Act had only weeks earlier been signed by President Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. The park and the act were both intended at that moment to thwart ongoing “injury or despoliation” of prehistoric ruins. No archaeological sites since have become "national parks."

Fifty-five years after Mesa Verde National Park was established, Congress passed the Wilderness Act, which gave specific orders to the National Park Service and the other major federal land managers to inventory their lands for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Park Service and Forest Service were strongly opposed to the very idea of such a system, but failed to stop it and tried many ways to thwart what they perceived as unnecessary interference in their management by this legislation even after its passage.

Eventually the National Park Service found itself managing more of the National Wilderness Preservation System than any other agency. Though Mesa Verde National Park had been created to preserve archaeological values, 8,100 acres of the 52,074-acre park became Wilderness in 1976.

Barns writes that, “In 2024, the park brochure mentions the existing wilderness for the first time, forty-eight years after designation. The text appears to be an addendum and does not mention that the Mesa Verde Wilderness is closed to the public, nor are the boundaries of the three units of the Wilderness shown on the park map. For everyone concerned, the Mesa Verde Wilderness seems an afterthought.”

In many ways, Barns concludes, it was a willfull afterthought, not an oversight because, as he thoroughly documents, generations of Mesa Verde managers suffered from an “institutional bias” and thought wilderness designation incompatible with archaeological preservation.

He was shocked to learn that even though Congress had directed the park to determine if any additional lands in Mesa Verde might be added to the wilderness established in 1976, “it hadn’t even been started forty-one years later.” And, the Mesa Verde Wilderness had never been managed to allow the public to explore it, the only congressionally land-based Wilderness to prohibit all recreational use, thus the “secret garden” of the title.

How this situation came to be is the story Barns tells in the book.

An exhaustively researched administrative history of this one aspect of the park’s history — other books have described and documented the archaeological side of the Mesa Verde story — Mesa Verde’s Secret Garden examines the “friction between wilderness preservation and cultural preservation, both of which are mandated to varying degrees in legislation.” This friction was present from the park’s beginning, though in its early days trails were built into the “backcountry” and a concession allowed horseback forays to ruins there. Barns exhaustively documents how the National Park Service slowly retreated from allowing such use until it prohibited it entirely.

Barns’ treatment is largely chronological, dividing the story up into periods such as the “Nusbaum Decade” (1921-1931) when archaeologist Jesse Nusbaum established solid management after a period of mismanagement, and “Mesa Verde Meets the Wilderness Act: The Fight Over Wilderness Designation” (1964-1976). Eleven detailed chapters, built on close study of unpublished primary sources from the park’s archives, reveals that from the beginning park managers struggled with the tension between opening the park to “recreation,” recognizing and protecting natural values, and preservation of the extensive cultural resources.

Generations of the park leadership rejected any management goals other than archaeological preservation. Time after time Barns documents misleading statements and even lies by park officials intended to thwart designation of Wilderness at Mesa Verde. He also documents outright defiance of agency mandates to prepare wilderness management plans and a congressional mandate to inventory the park for wilderness in addition to that established in 1976.

Congress made clear that additional wilderness should be identified after surveys and inventories of archaeologial sites had been completed, but Mesa Verde park managers never recognized this “wilderness escrow” approach to potential wilderness additions that was applied to good effect in other national parks.

Barns defines his terms carefully in the introduction to the book. After he retired from the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center in Montana, he came to this project as a volunteer with a long and strong background and expertise in wilderness law and policy. He wondered how and why the Mesa Verde backcountry and Wilderness had become closed to recreational use, in defiance of the Wilderness Act. While he sought to tell a carefully documented story, he also cast a critical eye at how the Park Service at Mesa Verde had managed the “backcountry” and later Wilderness.

After reviewing five qualities that constitute “the essential tangible aspects of wilderness character found in the statutory definition of wilderness, reflected in on-the-ground conditions and wilderness and the outcomes of wilderness stewardship,” Barns observes that research in wilderness management has concluded that “recreational use is compatible with the preservation of cultural resources if that use does no undue damage. In fact, the presence of cultural meaning can significantly enhance visitor experiences.”

From this foundation he examines the unique story of a national park that has throughout its history largely disagreed with this view in its management policies. 

There is no question, as Barns admits, that managing for preservation of archaeological ruins on the exceptional scale of those in Mesa Verde presents unusual challenges not faced in most Wilderness. Pot-hunting, vandalism, and impact of many
visitors were and are real problems there, but his analysis suggests that there are other ways to combat these problems than complete closure of Wilderness to the public.

Bandelier National Monument and Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, he points out, have extensive archaeological values and they manage these problems effectively without complete closure — and Bandelier has a large Wilderness unit. He does not explain what these other units do, but suggests that managers at Mesa Verde have taken the easy route of complete closure, demonstrating a lack of imagination in their approach.

A guiding principle for management of Mesa Verde backcountry touted repeatedly by the Park Service is that recreation use lowers the standard of management established in the legislation creating the park, and thus it cannot be allowed. Barns argues that the park managers have not made the case for this argument against opening more of the park for recreation. The Wilderness Act stipulated there should be recreational use in Wilderness, but also no lowering of management standards. Acting for decades out of compliance with the Wilderness Act would seem to require a strong case justifying such action, but that case has not, in Barns’ view, been made even today.

The “Garden” in the book’s title is another theme in the story that Barns examines. As in every national park, Mesa Verde faces issues of what “natural” conditions to seek in management, in addition to its mandate to protect archaeological ruins. Barns suggests that a reasonable goal might be to aim for the natural community and landscape to be as close as possible to what it was like when the “cliff dwellings” were occupied, but what condition was that, and how is that possible in the modern world?

Some early managers allowed cattle to graze in the park, feral horses not present in Ancentral Pueblo days were and are present, and past wildfire management and consequent recent severe fires require strong measures that affect the landscape in ways not present in prehistoric times.

The place has significantly changed since it was occupied by Ancient Puebloans. Some parts of the park must be managed for visitation, some for wilderness character, some for protection of archaeological values, so the “gardening,” which may be seen as another word for “management,” is a process fraught with many challenges. The issue of “gardening” wilderness is a difficult one throughout the National Wilderness Preservation System — whether to let “nature” take its course or to manage for values the public holds for these lands. Is the very concept “management” anathema to wilderness? There are no easy answers.

Barns documents that the National Park Service at Mesa Verde has recently increased its focus on non-archaeological resources in the park, so he thinks it is moving in the right direction even though it still places wilderness low in its management
objectives. What, Barns asks, might be the path forward? He raises questions that will determine the path. An example is, “How can land managers come to a common understanding about the complementary roles of cultural and wilderness resources?”

Another is, “Are not the cultural and natural “scenes” inseparable?” And yet another, “Is there a middle way? How much is enough to be protected — if ‘protected’ means collected or stabilized by a professional? Is it reasonable to believe a thorough
investigation of designated access routes would go a long way to further mitigate possible negative consequences of public access.”

These and other questions seem to add up to Barns’ assertion that the Park Service has some real problems at Mesa Verde, but asking the right questions and attacking the conundrums and dilemmas seriously and creatively will be necessary if the park is going to meet its mandates and realize its potential. He sees three options: (1) “KEEP the Garden a Secret – THE STATUS QUO”; (2) “Make the Garden’s Secret IRRELEVENT – UNDESIGNATE THE WILDERNESS”; (3) Open the Garden AND SHARE THE Secret – ALLOW SOME RECREATIONAL USE (Barns’ capitalizations).” He likes the third option.

As I close this review of a significant contribution to national park literature, I can’t help but note that this book will come out in May 2025 while the Trump administration seems bent on reducing the National Park Service to a skeleton crew, destroying any hope that work like that required to address issues like those raised in this book will be done anytime soon. The Interior Secretary has decreed the parks remain fully open whether or not they can be adequately staffed, a recipe for disaster for irreplaceable archaeological relics and sites as well as many other precious values protected in the national park system.

Whatever mistakes it may have made at Mesa Verde and elsewhere, the National Park Service has for more than a century sought to carry out our wishes to preserve, protect, and steward for the American people and the world America’s rich natural and cultural heritage. Sooner or later — hopefully sooner — wiser heads will prevail and a renewed dedication to this work will arise.

The thorny problems of Mesa Verde will be addressed. We must keep faith in this outcome and work to make it happen.