PECO Cultural Landscape Report
Project ID: P17AC01422
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Partner Institution: University of Oregon
Fiscal Year: 2017
Initial Funding: $209,476
Total Funding: $209,476
Project Type: Research
Project Disciplines: Cultural
National Park: Pecos National Historical Park
Principal Investigator: Melnick, Robert
Agreement Technical Representative: McGilvray, Julie
Abstract: The project will create a Cultural Landscape Report for Pecos National Historical Park (PECO) in northeastern New Mexico. The project will partner the NPS with the University of Oregon’s Department of Landscape Architecture. Colorado Mesa University (CMU) will act as a subcontractor (through the University of Oregon) to provide archaeological expertise to portions of the project.
The park contains nearly 800 archaeological sites, as well as multiple historic buildings, cultural landscapes, and cultural landscape features representing thousands of years of human occupation dating from the Archaic period through the Developmental, Coalition, and Classic periods of Ancestral Pueblo cultures, the Spanish Colonial and Mexican periods, the Territorial Period (including the Civil War), and the early years of New Mexico statehood. Pecos Pueblo and Glorieta Battlefield are particularly significant cultural resources, but the park also contains other prehispanic pueblo sites such as pit houses, rock art, field houses, and small pueblos, tipi rings from visiting Plains peoples, early Euroamerican homesteads, segments of the Santa Fe Trail and three associated stage stops, the site of a Civil War Union encampment, and a historic ranch complex with a ranch house designed by noted architect John Gaw Meem.
The CLR will produce documentation, a historical narrative and context, a landscape analysis, and a treatment plan. The work will pull from existing documents (CLIs, Vegetation Management Plans, National Register Nominations, and other research) and new field and archival efforts to create a better understanding how the landscape evolved and how extant features reveal patterns of use and tie to the larger regional landscape. Treatment recommendations and management strategies will focus on the preservation of landscape character for the entire park unit. Specific and more detailed treatment recommendations will focus on historic agricultural land use and the delineation and protection of the Glorieta Battlefield, a Civil War site. The battlefield cultural landscape portion of the CLR will be completed through collaboration with Colorado Mesa University’s Department of Archaeology. The CLR project will partner with the NPS Southern Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network on ecological and vegetation management strategies along with ongoing park research on Pinon/Juniper management strategies. The project will pilot a deeper study of the NPS cultural landscapes standards and methodology for documentation and analysis and how this information is provided to park staff and interpreted for the public.
The CLR engages recipients and partners in shared environmental stewardship. The project promotes greater public and private participation in historic preservation programs and activities and builds resource stewardship ethics in its participants. The information, products and services identified and developed by this project will be shared through a variety of strategies to increase public awareness, knowledge and support for historic preservation and stewardship of the nation’s cultural and historical heritage. The principal purpose of the project is to support the Government’s objective to provide opportunities for youth to learn about the environment by spending time working on projects in National Parks. The NPS receives the indirect benefit of completing conservation projects. The project motivates its youth participants to become involved in the natural, cultural and historical resource protection of their communities and beyond. Students gain “real world” or hands-on experience outside of the classroom of natural, cultural and historical resource projects. The scientific community and researchers external to NPS gain by new knowledge provided through research and related results dissemination of natural, cultural and historical resource information.