At 35 days, the partial federal government that just ended was the longest in American history.
The Verde Valley’s federal lands were unstaffed, meaning closed gates at Montezuma Castle and Tuzigoot national monuments, as well as no one working at the Verde Ranger District office of the Prescott National Forest in Camp Verde.
On the evening of Friday, Jan. 25, the long halt in federal appropriation finally came to a close as President Donald Trump signed a bill passed by both houses of Congress funding the government until Friday, Feb. 15, without the president’s request for wall funding.
The next morning, at 7 a.m., employees at Montezuma Castle National Monument received notice that, after more than a month off the job, the monument would be opening at 8 a.m. and that they were expected to show up for work that morning.
“We had to be here by 7:45 a.m., so the get-up-and-move this morning was nuts,” Clara St. Germain, a park ranger at Montezuma Castle, said on Saturday, Jan. 26. “But once we got here, everybody is really pumped. Everyone who is coming in the door is just so happy and grateful that they can visit our site, and we’re open. People are happy for us that we get to do our job, and there’s just this general kind of sense of relief. We’re totally pumped to be here.”
Altogether, about 30 employees were furloughed of the combined staff of Montezuma Castle, Montezuma Well and Tuzigoot National Monument.
Unlike many national parks and monuments around the country, the Verde Valley’s archaeological sites have gates, allowing them to be kept free of visitors when they were unstaffed. At Tuzigoot, some law
enforcement personnel continued working through the shutdown. For staff at the area’s national monuments, going back to work meant seeing the precious lands mostly as they had been left in December.
“It’s actually weird how fast every- thing is back open,” St. Germain said. “It’s awesome but weird.”
Even if the monuments them- selves were left undamaged, the shutdown played a more serious toll on the lives of the federal workers who had to go more than a month without getting paid. Though federal employees were hesitant to speak of the specifics of their experiences during the shutdown, they acknowl- edged the difficulty.
“For some people it wasn’t a big deal and for some people it was a huge deal,” St. Germain said. “I think it was the indefiniteness that was stressful.”
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
