"It makes your heart just sink," said Sharon Hatfield, who along with her husband, has monitored archaeological sites in Zion National Park, in southwestern Utah for the past six years. We want to see these sites protected and preserved so our great-great-grandchildren can see them," said David Hatfield, who is also the mayor of Rockville, a few miles from the park's southern entrance. "It makes me angry, and sad that people don't respect the past."
Although no one can explain the tantalizing mysteries conveyed by the petroglyphs, it is known they were made by the Anasazi, ancestors of today's Pueblo Indians, who built permanent structures and grew corn and squash when they inhabited the area from 700 to 1250 A.D. before mysteriously disappearing. Besides the rock art, remnants of their dwellings, tools, clothing and pottery have been found in the park.
Some rock art sites have been conceded to the vandals. One such location, is aptly dubbed "Sacrifice Rock," which is 200 yards from a campsite and easily accessible from the main road. Among the jumble of contemporary etchings is what the Hatfields and others speculate is an ancient summer solstice marker.
Once a year, on June 21, a jagged rock casts a shadow resembling the open jaw of a coyote onto the face of Sacrifice Rock. As the sun rises higher, the shadow "swallows" a petroglyph in the shape of a spiral. "I can visualize a Native American walking along here, at an important time of the year, and he sees the shadow that looks like a howling coyote," said David Hatfield. "It probably was extremely significant to him."
Unfortunately, this solstice marker must compete with other contemporary scrawls. Jack Burns, Zion's cultural resource specialist, said the vandalism is increasing. Next to a rock art panel covered with petroglyphs of undulating snakes and mysterious spirals, he observes a circle with two legs and two arms.
"That looks new to me," Burns said. But the vandalism of ancient rock art is not always new. The pioneer settlers that moved into the area in the last century often left their initials on the sandstone walls. But such markings, referred to as "historic inscriptions," are viewed with more tolerance than intentional desecrations today.
Perhaps the pioneers' scrawls were written in a moment of loneliness or in an effort to reach out across time, says Zion's archaeological technician, Matt Betenson. "You can just imagine the shepherds and cowboys using the alcove as their shelter, the same as the people before them, then leaving their mark on the wall." Betenson says.
Burns says that not only is adding graffiti to a rock-art panel not socially acceptable, it is also against the law. Preserving the rock art is likely to become more difficult. Amid swelling numbers of visitors, Zion and other national parks and monuments in the Southwest "are being loved to death," says Burns. Parks like Zion were not designed to handle the millions of visitors they now get every year. "It's like walking a fine-edged sword," he explains. "There's a chance of losing the resource by exposing it to the public."
Today, the mission of the park service, which is to preserve, protect and provide enjoyment, is an inherently contradictory one, without a clear solution, says David Hatfield. "You can't put a sign up and say `This is the park, don't go in,' " he says.
The number of visitors to Zion is close to 3 million. And this number has increased each year since the mid-1980s, partly due to lower gasoline prices, which make travel less expensive. To handle the pressure, steps have been taken to lessen human impact in parks and other popular areas of Utah known for their scenic beauty and archaeological sites. By 2000, Zion plans to have a shuttle system fully in place that will ferry visitors into the park from designated staging areas, reducing congestion and pollution.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which administers the 625-square-mile Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah, this spring will implement a reservation system to limit the number of people allowed in seven canyons, including Grand Gulch. BLM officials say the move is aimed to reduce pressure on the area and curtail vandalism and destruction to Anasazi sites such as theft of artifacts and damage to ancient structures.
At Bryce Canyon National Park in southcentral Utah, a shuttle service using buses is planned to take visitors into the park. Those who still want to drive their own vehicles will be charged more. In a further attempt to protect pristine sites from tourists, Zion's "site disclosure" policy encourages the public to visit only certain archeological features in the park, and not others. But even these "hidden" sites are nevertheless becoming well known, and frequented by the public despite the park's concealment efforts.
Zion spokesman Denny Davies says the main abuse is people carving their initials onto the art. "Others try to enhance the original image by digging it deeper or coloring it for better pictures," said Davies. Sometimes the peer pressure of larger crowds helps keep others from damaging a site, something usually done when no one is around except the vandals.
Davies says visitors can also damage sites unintentionally by taking rubbings of the images which wears them down. "Just the mere touch of a finger imparts acid from our skin that in the long term helps [the art] disappear," said Davies. Additional damage is done by nature itself. "In terms of rock art we can't preserve it forever," said Sharon Hatfield. "Ultimately the weather's going to get it, if people don't." In fact, some of her favorite petroglyphs in Zion are being threatened by "spawling," where the rock is eroded away by the elements.
Phil Hibbs, chief ranger at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which Lake Powell stretches through in southeastern Utah, says around the lake's developed areas, like the marinas, he has noticed an increase in gang-style graffiti from visitors spray-painted on the sandstone walls. Others, he says, use the ruins of ancient structures for campsites or dig them up looking for artifacts.
Most disturbing, is that some people who damage ancient sites do so thinking they are not doing anything wrong. "Some don't know any better," says Hibbs. "Both Americans and foreign visitors assume the graffiti is just from another person so they add to it."
David Hatfield realizes he and his wife have a lot of work ahead as the numbers of visitors keep growing. He says the desecration is analogous to an animal marking its territory. "I guess it's a trait of mankind to say, `I was here.' "
Anasazi Art Under Threat
ZION NATIONAL PARK -- It is a heartbreaking sight in a breathtaking place. A prehistoric petroglyph, chipped out of red sandstone to resemble a fat sheep, contends with a crude contemporary scrawl made by an unsupervised child, or an insensitive or unknowing adult. When Sharon and David Hatfield spotted the vandalism two years ago, they were sickened by the irreversible damage.
[TSLT headline: Vandals' Handiwork, Erosion Wearing Away Art of Anasazi
The petroglyphs of Utah's parks travel closer to extinction]
