Discovery
In 1854, William D. Huntington, on a missionary trip to the southwestern United States for Brigham Young, discovered the ruins of the present Hovenweep National Park. The ruins were already known to the Ute and Navajo guides who considered them haunted and urged Huntington to stay.
The name Hovenweep, which means "deserted valley" in the Ute language, was adopted by pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson and William Henry Holmes in 1878. The name is apt as a description of the area's desolate canyons and barren mesas as well as the ruins of ancient communities.
Concerned about the vandalism at the prehistoric ruins of the San Juan watershed in the Four Corner states, in 1903 T. Mitchell Pruden surveyed the ruins in those states and reported the following regarding the Hovenweep area:
- "Few of the mounds have escaped the hands of the destroyer. Cattlemen, ranchmen, rural picnickers, and professional collectors have turned the ground well over and have taken out much pottery, breaking more, and strewing the ground with many crumbling bones."
In 1917–18, ethnologist J. Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution included descriptions of the ruins in published archaeological survey reports, and recommended the structures be protected. Little archaeological excavation was done on sites until the 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Hovenweep National Monument
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