An Honorable Man
In my spare time, I search for alternative (imaginary) careers. My all time favorite has to be archaeology. Heck, I wanted to be an archaeologist before Indiana Jones made it cool! I have been known to read archaeology articles from every possible source…even, yes, the Reader’s Digest. That’s where I found the story of rancher Waldo Wilcox.
For over fifty years, Mr. Wilcox kept a secret: his 4,200 acre ranch is one of the greatest store houses of American archaeology, untouched by looters and treasure hunters, and even archaeologists. It was not until he was too old to farm that he revealed his secret. He arranged to sell the ranch to the Trust for Public Land, which worked the Bureau of Land Management and others to preserve the sites.
Get this: with only half the sites mapped, archaeologists have found four pit house villages with five to 12 structures each, 16 individual pit houses, 50 sites with rock-art petroglyphs, anthropomorphs, and animals, and 38 granaries. All of them belonging to the mysterious Fremont culture that flourished for 800 years and then suddenly disappeared around the beginning of the 14th century. All pristine and perfectly preserved. There are archaeologists in every American university doing mad little happy dances.
Mr. Wilcox, one of those self-sufficient Westerners the Digest loves, has a simple reason for preserving the ruins: Would you want someone digging up your mom and dad and throwing their bones around, just so they could see what they got with them in the grave?
Bless you, Mr. Wilcox, and thank you. Whenever I read about some idiot pot hunter who managed to destroy a site, or some barbarian who delights in using petroglyphs for target practice, I will think of you. And I will think of you every time conservationists and ranching interests square off. There are ways to do this right.
Mr Wilcox says that his love for the relics was instilled by his father, another farmer and rancher. Eleven-year-old Waldo, like some many boys will, carved his initials into a stone and clay dome he discovered at the ranch. When he told his father, he caught holy hell: he raised me to show respect.
That’s a good place to start, isn’t it?
April 18th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
I’ve done some work for a local archaeology firm and have been in the office when someone will bring in an artifact for cataloging. Seeing a stone spearhead is an amazing thing, especially after you watch a lithics specialist demonstrate what it take to make one.
Many of the artifacts were obviously crafted beyond the point of usefulness, and were useful art.
April 18th, 2005 at 9:12 pm
Come on people! you can’t find one really honorable person in any part of our national or state governments, most people in government want one thing to be part of some political special interests groups like the hispanic lobby for mexico, the islamic and the israel stalinism special interests groups, Yes I mean Stalinism boys and girls who care nothing about this nation or its people, only about power and others in other nation states.
we live in a world of force and prisons and madness, and let us not forget ” orchestrating the scapegoats and that old programs of patridiot propaganda”, so much fun to live in a world of fools asking to be killed by the millions.
April 18th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
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