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A Note from the Director
After over two and a half years of effort, last week, the Lower Pecos National Historic Landmark Nomination team submitted the final nomination to the NPS Heritage Partnerships team to be added to the fall docket of the Landmarks Committee's considerations. This is an exciting milestone and an important step in the continued protection of the unique cultural heritage of our country.
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Panther Cave
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The nomination document itself is impressive with 82 pages of single-spaced content plus another 50+ pages of maps, figures and images. It nominates 37 outstanding archaeological sites in the Lower Pecos region for designation within the Lower Pecos Canyonlands Archaeological District.
Twenty nine sites have beautiful Pecos River Style rock art and the rest are well-preserved archaeological deposits or outstanding excavated collections. Twenty one of the nominated sites are on National Park Service or Texas Parks and Wildlife property, like Panther Cave, shown here. Sixteen are owned by private landowners who elected to participate including Texas Tech University, The Nature Conservancy and ranching families.
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Nancy Kenmotsu
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This was a collaborative effort between agencies and landowners across the region. We are so grateful to all. A very special thanks must go to our incredibly knowledgeable, talented and hard-working author, Dr. Nancy Kenmotsu. No one could have created a more thorough nomination that will almost certainly succeed in achieving a designation. We could never have managed this long, arduous process or produced such a fine product without her.
The next step is...to wait. If we are indeed considered at the fall Landmarks Committee meeting, we may know the result by the end of this year. If we are not included in that docket, we will have to wait until spring 2018. We will keep you posted!
Successfully achieving a designation will, frankly, not change much in our everyday lives. There won't be star-studded fanfare or throngs of visitors. What it will do is raise the credibility and recognition of the ancient heritage of this region to allow those of us who care for it to more easily garner funds for it's preservation, protection and study. And that's what we care about. We all love this land. We love it's heritage. We are here to learn from it and preserve it. This designation will help us to do just that.
Please join me in thanking all who traveled this long nomination road with Shumla. Fingers crossed!
All the very best,
Jessica Lee
P.S. If you have any questions about the nomination, feel free to reach out to me at jlee@shumla.org.
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