The Verde Valley Archaeology Center and Museum hosted a talk by author Nancy Dallett about her book “Crooked River: The Creation and Preservation of Tuzigoot National Monument and Heritage Tourism in the Verde Valley” on Thursday, May 9. Also in attendance were Lucas Hoedl, Natural Resources program manager at Tuzigoot National Monument, and Monica Buckle, executive director of VVAC.
Dallett’s book is an administrative history of Tuzigoot that begins with the decision made by residents, government bodies and the United Verde Copper Company to allow archaeologists from the University of Arizona to excavate a site in Clarkdale during the Great Depression, an excavation that led to the uncovering of Tuzigoot.
The book also addresses the history of the mining industry in Clarkdale and Jerome, which had negative environmental consequences for the area surrounding Tuzigoot; how Tuzigoot became a national monument; the role of the Phelps Dodge mining corporation; and the acquisition of Tavasci Marsh by National Parks Service to preserve its unique riparian habitat.
Dallett said that national parks and monuments all have official administrative histories and Tuzigoot was next in line to be covered. She has also written an administrative history for Tonto National Monument.
Kathy Davis, a former superintendent at Tuzigoot, said that it will be an asset for park staff to know the history instead of the hearsay behind the site.
“Tuzigoot offered such a great opportunity because it’s so much involved with the community,” Dallett said. “Everything about it from beginning to end is about civic engagement.”
The Tuzigoot pueblo was built and inhabited by the Sinagua between 1125 and 1400 CE. The site’s modern history began in the 1930s when Grace Sparkes, the secretary for the Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce, secured federal funding to hire a crew to excavate and recreate the hilltop pueblo at Tuzigoot. Hoedl said that the recreated pueblo contains more than 60% of the site’s original material, which is more than initially assumed.
Miners, farmers, local tribal members and anyone who found themselves out of work during the Great Depression became a part of the construction crew. Phelps Dodge also found their head engineers short of work and soon got involved by serving as the sponsor for Tuzigoot and providing both funds and manpower. Byron Cummings, head of archaeology at the University of Arizona, sent two of his students, Edward Spicer and Louis Caywood, to the Verde Valley to check out what was told to him to be an interesting ruin site.
The artifacts discovered at the site were brought to a vacant storefront in Clarkdale, owned by the mining company, where staff processed the sherds and pieced them back together. This was done primarily by women hired through the Works Progress Administration.
Dallett said that this partnership was wonderful at first but the environmental effects on the Tuzigoot site were devastating.
“Without knowing what was done in the past, it’s harder to move forward,” Hoedl said, adding that the NPS staff spend a lot of time looking through archives. He said that Tuzigoot has always incorporated American Indians in the work at the site. There is a strong push to hire American Indian youth in the parks and there are internship programs seeking to increase their numbers in federal service. The monument works with a number of tribes and Hoedl said there has been a large shift within the park service to incorporating tribal knowledge.
Dallett added that while writing the book, she consulted with Vincent Randall, the former Apache Cultural Director at YavapaiApache Nation. She also discussed how the smelter would release toxic waste over the Clarkdale area. According to John Tavasci, when the wind would shift and bring the smelter fumes across the area, the alfalfa would stop growing and paint would peel off of houses in Clarkdale. Dallett noted that a lot of the information for the book came from oral histories.
It was not until the 1970s that people began to take notice of the environmental issues developing in the Verde Valley. The pollution from the mining tailings was an impetus for the park to start pushing back at Phelps Dodge. At the time, Dallett said, the river was known as the “dirty Verde” and that the eventual cleanup occurred due to the will of the people in the area.
“The Verde is the lifeline of anyone who’s ever lived here and will live here in the future,” Dallett said.
Hoedl said that it was important to present this history to the public because the park didn’t have the best reputation for a long time, as he said that no one wanted to visit a park during a toxic dust storm.
