This morning in the paper there was this article on the closing of Homolovi Ruins State Park. I grew up in Winslow just a few miles from Homolovi and have made the trip there many times — as a school kid and as an adult. I’ve walked the trails, and marveled at the landscape that is always more like a dreamscape. I’ve gathered myself there more than once. Collected my personal thoughts while musing over ancient shards of pottery and clay. Giving myself a reality check by telescoping back to the past.
It makes me sad to think of this place closing. And one of the reasons for this sadness is because of the lost historical knowledge of the people who work there. Even if the park were to reopen in a relatively short time who knows where the employees who have accumulated this place-based knowledge over the course of a decade and more will be. They will have scattered to the winds.
And it’s happening all over the state. By June – 21 of the state’s 30 parks and recreation areas will be closed. Knowledgeable historians, archivists, park rangers and other “keepers of the flame” will undoubtedly be lost.
Another park slated for closure is the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park. March 29, is it’s closing date. And this one too has been very much on my mind. Though I’ve never visited, it’s been on my list for a while now because my great-great-great grandfather served time here in 1884-85. He was arrested and sentenced for polygamy.
Later this week I will make a trip to Yuma to check out the territorial prison and it’s grounds, speak to the park employees and try to gather myself and telescope to a different past. I’ll see what I can gather about this piece of my family’s past. Do any shards remain here?
Hopefully not everything has “scattered to the winds” – good luck!
More please. I expect to hear this story – if I can’t read it – on Saturday.
Your family has some fascinating deep roots in Arizona, Sativa. I don’t blame you for wanting to preserve that history before it may be lost. Love the picture with the shot out the window at the desert even knowing that not everyone might understand how beautiful that landscape is to us Arizonans.
i am so sad — homolovi was one of our stops on our winslow trip a year and a half ago. i can’t to hear what you discover in yuma!
If your interested I have some old haunts in Yuma you may enjoy while your there. I think you could get a good story out of one of them.
I love Homolovi as well!! My husband worked on a ranch that had cattle in the park at one time. My daughter who is 18 was 3 or 4 at the time. We would enjoy our lunch looking at the petroglyphs and and all the beauty that is Arizona. Thanks for sharing this Sativa. Have fun in Yuma, can’t wait to hear about it.