Vandalism and Capitalism vs Historical Artifacts: Defacement in the NPS

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Sitting at the confluence of Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, Harpers Ferry National

Historical Park provides spectacular views of the mountains, the two rivers flowing through

the park, the quaint town, and the railroad tunnel that cuts through the rock.

Amidst all the history preserved there, the park draws many visitors just for the scenery,

which is punctuated by man-made artifacts.

There's a certain thrill in walking across the pedestrian bridge with the waters of the

Potomac and Shenandoah rivers rushing below.

The footbridge runs alongside the train trestle, and up on the boulders above the railroad

tunnel is a bit of an odd sight.

The faded painted sign of an old advertisement for Menin's Borated Talcum Toilet Powder.

The sign is controversial.

Is it history?

Is it an eyesore?

Indeed, that very conundrum is raised on the official Harpers Ferry National Historical

Park website.

Some people want it removed because they feel it mars the natural view, and others wish

to protect it because it's a historical artifact.

Harpers Ferry is not an isolated example.

At the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska, another such sign

disrupts the view of the boulders.

A large painting of a pocket watch advertising Kirmsey's Curios.

Immediately below that ad, just to the right, are the big block letters, Moe's Frontier

Bar.

In fact, Skagway is known for this mountain graffiti, for better or worse.

One of the most memorable is a fairly large graffiti painting of a skull.

Local lore says that the Klondike Gold Rush is responsible for much of the seemingly random

graffiti that greets visitors arriving by cruise ship near the entrance to the park

that the prospectors took to the rock face with their buckets of paint.

Again, this raises the question, should an effort be undertaken to remove such graffiti

from a historical area, or is the graffiti now part of that history?

The Skagway Alaska Tours blog says, quote, if you were to start painting skulls on rocks

for no reason, you would make people angry and likely get arrested.

However, once the skull graffiti is 100 years old, it becomes very interesting and makes

for a great photograph.

I'm Jason Epperson, and today on America's National Parks, vandalism and capitalism versus

historical artifacts, defacement in the national parks.

The defacement at national park sites goes beyond graffiti, and each layer peeled back

raises more questions regarding whether this is destruction or historical artifact.

As we rewind the clocks and travel backward through time, we encounter etchings and paintings

that stretch all the way back to ancestral Native Americans.

Clearly, petroglyphs and pictographs are revered.

They capture evidence of cultural history dating back thousands of years.

Parks like Dinosaur National Monument and Petrified Forest National Park preserve ancient

rock art within their boundaries.

In fact, a landmark called Newspaper Rock in Petrified Forest National Park contains

over 650 ancient Puebloan petroglyphs on a single surface.

It is considered a mark of a highly significant location.

Although the petroglyphs have not been translated per se, studying them has given the rise to

themes of clan symbols, calendar events, territory boundaries, and migration routes.

Petroglyph National Monument is an entire National Park Service site covering several

different areas in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

It protects one of the largest collections of Native American petroglyphs in the country,

estimated at over 25,000 images.

Unlike pictographs, which are painted onto the rock, petroglyphs are chiseled or etched

into the rock face, exposing a lighter color under the weathered patina, or surface, of

the rock.

Three eras of petroglyphs are found at Petroglyph National Monument.

The vast majority, estimated at 90% of the petroglyphs, are from the Puebloan period

between the years 1300 and 1680.

A small number predate the Puebloan period, presumed to date back as far as 2000 BCE,

but the last grouping, carved by early Spanish settlers who began arriving in 1540, led to

a concept we don't often consider – that the petroglyphs are not exclusively ancestral

Native American artifacts.

Somewhere in between the ancient rock markings from the Native Americans and the brash, purposeful

defacement by current-day visitors lies an entire spectrum that comprises a very gray

area for interpretation.

At Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Arizona, the letters A-E-D-Y-E, carved into

the face of the structure, are permanently visible.

In the surrounding area of the façade, other etchings, less prominent, perhaps due to the

erosion or simply the age or depth of the carvings, form an irregular texture and pattern.

These etchings permeate a vast proportion of the walls of the great house, and many

are above eye level, above the height a person could reach while simply standing on the ground.

Hundreds of years after Casa Grande had been abandoned, pioneers, conquistadors, and missionaries

began visiting the ruins.

Recorded history of Casa Grande is captured in the journals of Padre Eusebio Francisco

Quino and the military explorations of Lieutenant Colonel Juan Bautista Dianza and Brigadier

General Stephen Watts Kearney.

Once articles regarding the ruins began appearing in common publications, public interest

peaked.

By the 1860s, when a railroad line passed just 20 miles from Casa Grande, with a stagecoach

line providing transport for the remaining segment of the journey, visitation began to

flourish, and the visitors couldn't resist leaving behind permanent evidence that they

had been there, etching their names onto the casa.

So much damage proliferated that Casa Grande was declared the first prehistoric and cultural

reserve in the United States in 1892.

However, actual protection of Casa Grande and other important American cultural sites

was not enacted until 1906 with the passage of Theodore Roosevelt's Act for the Preservation

of American Antiquities.

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In Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park, many of the surfaces inside the cave remain

pristine, still showing the natural color and texture of the rocks.

But long before Mammoth Cave became a national park, the site was a curiosity that attracted

many people, both travelers and locals, and they left their mark in the cave, literally,

although what some of it means is not entirely clear.

People etched more than their names on the cave.

One section of a wall is scattered with words, Chiropractic, Osteopath, Pontiac, Temple,

Jesus.

Dates intermingle with names and words, many from the 1800s.

The lower sections are illegible.

Layer upon layer of etchings scribbled over each other so it now looks like a labyrinth

of lines.

In total, thousands of signatures have been cast on the walls and ceiling of Mammoth Cave,

whether written in pencil or coal or etched into the rock.

To the casual visitor, the inscriptions can be distracting, but also curious.

On a gut level, it's not hard to understand someone etching their name in the date.

But Chiropractic and Osteopath?

What are we to make of that?

Furthermore, some groupings of names have historical significance.

The El Gor passage in Mammoth Cave contains a series of confirmed Civil War era signatures,

now believed to have been left by Confederate soldiers during the early months of the war.

In addition to the names, there's artwork, like portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew

Jackson, and paintings of birds and flowers.

Names are written in soot on the ceiling of the Gothic Avenue passage.

Tour guides in the 1800s wrote their names on the cave walls using candle smoke and almost

like the concept of a guest ledger, encouraged visitors to do the same.

El Morro National Monument in New Mexico features a site named Inscription Rock.

The base of the rock is covered in petroglyphs, over 2,000 of them, from the ancient Puebloan

and Zuni communities that established their villages at the site.

But Inscription Rock also contains etchings from later travelers, on many different kinds

of journeys with different types of purpose.

The Puebloans abandoned their villages at El Morro around the year 1400, long before

the Spanish arrived in 1540.

Others who passed through included U.S. soldiers and pioneers making their way west.

The inscriptions at El Morro are more than just names and dates.

Many people added the phrase, pass through, or paso por aqui.

The oldest non-Indian inscription is, Passed by here the Governor Don Juan de Onate, from

the discovery of the Sea of the South, on the 16th of April, 1605.

The longest, attributed to Juan Alvarez de Ulate y Ladron de Segama, the then Governor

of New Mexico, is, I am the Captain General of the Providence of New Mexico, for the King

Our Lord, passed by here on the return from the Pueblos of the Zuni on the 29th of July,

the year 1620, and put them at peace at their humble petition, they asking for favors as

vassals of His Majesty and promising anew their obedience.

All of which he did, with clemency, zeal, and prudence, as a most Christian-like gentleman,

extraordinary and gallant soldier, of enduring and praised memory.

In 1849, the United States sent a soldier-artist team to the Southwest as part of an expedition

to explore the new territories acquired in the war with Mexico.

Their contribution to inscription rock tells, albeit briefly, of the interest in such inscriptions

to record the history of exploration and travel across the vast lands that comprise the United States.

Lieutenant J. H. Simpson, USA, and R. H. Kern, artist, visited and copied these inscriptions,

September 17, 18, 1849.

Like the debate at Harpers Ferry over the presence of Menin's borated talcum toilet

powder painted on the boulder overlooking the railroad tunnel, the etchings at El Morro

stir up some controversy.

They represent a greater range of history at the site, covering the era of European

exploration as well as the Native American culture.

But many of the later inscriptions were carved without regard on top of existing petroglyphs,

as if the entirety of the rock had already been taken up with prior etchings.

Others say that the later Spanish and American explorers and travelers took inspiration from

the Native American petroglyphs, and that their inscriptions are an important contribution

to preserving the history of the Spanish exploration and Latino heritage connection to the region.

It's a discussion that will not be easily resolved as we try to place value on the artifacts

deserving of preservation.

So where do we draw the line?

Is graffiti folk art defacement?

The bottom line is that altering property that's not yours, regardless of whether

or not you view it as art or social commentary, is typically considered to be a crime.

Graffiti has been such a prevalent concern at Joshua Tree National Park that they established

a separate email address just for reporting such incidents.

The National Park Service's mission is to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural

resources of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration

of this and future generations.

We can all contribute to that mission.

Leave no trace is an important premise of the National Park Service.

This refers to more than just carrying your trash back out with you after you've camped

or picnicked in the park.

It literally means to leave the park exactly as you've found it.

Do not remove or damage artifacts, and do not introduce artifacts, including graffiti,

etchings, or carvings.

The National Parks are protected spaces meant to preserve what's already there.

We have many ways to preserve the art and commentary we create, and many platforms are

available today to record publicly where we've been.

Of course, the parks mentioned in this episode are not an exhaustive list of the National

Park Service sites that contain petroglyphs by far or later etched inscriptions, but are

meant to be illustrative and perhaps representative of the puzzle as to where we draw the line

between history and vandalism.

This episode of America's National Parks was hosted by me, Jason Epperson, and written

by Lauren Eisenberg Davis.

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Today's show is sponsored by L.L. Bean.

Follow the hashtag BeAnOutsider and visit LLBean.com to find great gear for exploring

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