Bandelier celebrates its 90th anniversary By RICK NATHANSON | Associated Press

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1906 Antiquities Act, which protects historic and prehistoric sites and artifacts on federal lands, and allows the president of the United States to declare public lands as national monuments.

It is also the 90th anniversary of President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of Bandelier as a national monument. In recognition of those milestones, the National Park Service, the federal agency that operates the monument, will host a series of events throughout the year.

Adolph Bandelier, a self-taught archaeologist from Illinois came to the New Mexico Territory in 1880. He lived among the Cochiti people, who first showed him Pajarito Plateau and Frijoles Canyon, site of the modern day monument. He declared it “the grandest thing I ever saw.”

The pueblo’s ancestral people, sometimes referred to as Anasazi, came to the area about 1,100 years ago. Holes in the volcanic tuff of the south wall, deposited by volcanic eruptions 1.6 million and 1.2 million years ago, were enlarged to create living and storage spaces.

At its peak, about 700 people lived in Frijoles Canyon and nearly 20,000 in the overall Pajarito Plateau, Shields says. About A.D. 1550, the ancestral people of Pajarito Plateau, including Bandelier, left the area and relocated to other places along the Rio Grande. They settled in what are now San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, San Felipe, Santo Domingo and Cochiti pueblos. It is believed that drought and population growth beyond what the land could sustain led to the relocation ….

Bandelier National Monument
http://www.nps.gov/band