Southwest Archaeology Today for July 16, 2007

Southwest Archaeology Today – A Service of the Center for Desert Archaeology.

– City considers moving El Paso Museum of Archaeology: Castner Range preservationists and fans of the city’s Museum of Archaeology on Trans Mountain Road are organizing to oppose a plan to close the museum and move its exhibits to the new history museum Downtown. The proposal by City Manager Joyce Wilson to close the museum is also opposed by the superintendent of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department system in El Paso who wants to see the headquarters eventually go up next to the museum.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/search//ci_6384760

– Suit challenges tribe’s sovereignty: New Mexico’s Hopi Indians are worried a lawsuit filed by their ousted chairman could affect the sovereign immunity of all American Indian tribes.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/4btx (United Press International)

– Gorgeous new Heard North an enlightening destination: The new Heard Museum North satellite gallery does two things that the mothership museum in Phoenix has always done well: a well-thought out exhibit in a first-rate facility. The satellite museum is meant to serve that area of Scottsdale, Cave Creek and Carefree north of Loop 101, out where the desert used to sit but which now is intermittent between high-dollar shopping malls. With its expanding population, the area could well use a museum of the quality that the Heard provides.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/9c2 (Arizona Republic)

– BLM offers reward: The Bureau of Land Management is offering a $500 reward for information that leads to a conviction in the recent vandalism of several popular prehistoric rock art sites near St. George.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/hjdd (The Spectrum)

– Museum asks Rio Nuevo to help create plaza: The Tucson Museum of Art will ask for Rio Nuevo to pay for its vision of creating a cultural plaza that ties together the museum, El Presidio Plaza, the old Pima County Courthouse and the west side of the main library plaza.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/local/57301.php

– Travelogue – Springerville, Arizona Road trip: “A sight for sore eyes” is a dusty old expression, but there’s no better way to describe the views along the stretch of U.S. 180/191 from Springerville to Lyman Lake State Park at the foot of the White Mountains in eastern Arizona.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/9wn8 (Arizona Republic)

– Where to eat and stay in Eagar and Springerville: Like Springerville, Eagar once was home to the Mogollon people, ancestors of the Hopi and Zuni tribes. The ruins at Casa Malpais – “house of the badlands” – are evidence of their lives in Round Valley before they scattered about 1400. Spanish explorers came next, and the verdant area eventually was homesteaded by brothers William, Joel and John Eagar, who in 1888 donated land to start the town. It was first called Union, then Eagarville, and finally Eagar.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0712eagar0715-ON.html