DenverPost.com – LOCAL NEWS
Protected since 1889, Goodman Point Pueblo slated for initial mapping in April
By Electa Draper

A 142-acre high-desert parcel a dozen miles northwest of Cortez so impressed federal officials in 1889 that they set it aside and made it off-limits to homesteaders.

They gave this protection to the ancient Indian village more than 15 years before the great pueblos of Chaco Canyon and spectacular cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde were so protected.

The Goodman Point Pueblo thus escaped the brush clearings, crop plantings and excavations that stripped many other Ancestral Puebloan sites in southwestern Colorado, including a thoroughly ransacked Mesa Verde, archaeologist Kristin Kuckelman said.

This spring, for the first time, scientists will begin to comprehensively study Goodman Point. Active from about A.D. 1000 to 1280, it is one of the largest sites in a corner of the state renowned as a treasure trove of pre-Columbian culture.

The National Park Service will work on this six-year phased project with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, a private nonprofit with a long history of research in the Four Corners region.