Great Bend of the Gila
Archaeology Southwest has joined with a broad array of regional partners in support of the Sonoran Desert Heritage Campaign. The proposed conservation plan seeks to preserve the essence of Arizona by managing an 800,000 acre arc of Sonoran Desert west of metropolitan Phoenix as an integrated landscape.
Specifically, the plan builds on the Sonoran Desert National Monument by calling for two new National Conservation Areas and 500,000 acres of new National Wilderness Area. All of these areas would be on existing public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The management prescriptions of the plan balance permanent protection with public access and recreational use.
Why are we involved? The key word is heritage. This campaign encompasses the Great Bend of the Gila River, a cultural crossroads with a deep, rich, often overlooked past. Our role on the coalition is to raise awareness of the truly unique, nonrenewable resource that is the cultural landscape of the Great Bend. We produced a special issue of Archaeology Southwest Magazine introducing the cultural legacy of the region.
For thousands of years, the Gila River in this area sustained the lives of travelers and residents alike. The river was essential to an extensive prehistoric trail network, Hohokam and Patayan settlements, European explorations, Euro-American stagecoach routes, homesteaders and ranchers, and early twentieth-century cross-country motorists.
Significantly, and because of its unique geology, the Great Bend region is rich with fragile traces of ancient life: petroglyphs, geoglyphs, foot trails, and other patterns etched in the desert pavement. All of these expressions in or on the rock landscape are greatly endangered.
We believe that the Sonoran Desert Heritage Campaign’s proposal would help to protect these and other special places of our shared past in the Great Bend for future generations.
The Arizona Republic supported the proposal in an editorial on August 21, 2011.
The Bureau of Land Management released a draft management plan for the Sonoran Desert National Monument and lands managed by the BLM’s Lower Sonoran Field Office in September 2011. The Coalition applauds aspects of the plan but seeks further restrictions on off-road vehicle access to especially vulnerable places.
Read more about the comments Archaeology Southwest submitted to the BLM in late 2011 and the proposed designation of the Gila Terraces and Historic Trails Area of Critical Environmental Concern.
