Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1920 — ZION-Beautiful and Mysterious [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ZION-Beautiful and Mysterious

ZION NATIONAL PARK»-The newest of the national park system, established last No- # vember —is likely to have many visitors this season. Some will go because it is new. Others will go because of the claim of Utah that Zion equals Yosemite in beauty of form and far excels it in beauty of color. And still others will go because of the story of a mysterious cliff-dwelling that has been discovered —and is believed to be Inaccessible and untouched by the hand of modern man. Moreover, a second canon, with many ramifications, has been discovered in Zion National park. White men have been In it —or at least have looked down into it from the piateau thousands of feet above —but they are few. And who knows what relics of the mysterious prehistoric people of the great American Southwest these unexplored canons may contain? Exploration parties are already getting ready in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It’s no wonder. The story of the discovery of the Inaccessible cliff-dwellings is one to whet the interest of the keenest mountaineer. Thus the story goes: Eyre Powell of Venice, Calif., pointed his telephoto at a high perpendicular cliff in .a side canon about three-quarters of a mile away and squeezed the bulb. A certain quarter of an inch in the print attracted his attention. He enlarged it as much as possible. It then showed what is apr parently a cliff-dwelling something like 400 feet long and 60 feet wide. The cliff-dwelling Is in a shallow cave about 400 feet above the talus at the foot of the cliff. Below it are apparently traces of ledges once used as ah ascent and now almost eroded by. the elements. Hence it is a fair guess that this particular cliff-dwelling has been unvisited since modern men entered this region.

And if this mysterious, long-hidden abode of the Cliff-dwellers proves to be a reality and Is reached by some daring climber, will it yield something new? Tnat of course is the question that adds zest to the quest. For, though here and there are archaeologists who believe they have solved the mystery of the prehistoric people, it looks to the common people as if the scientists were still guessing at the answers to the questions: Who are they? How long did they live there? What became of them? So the possibility that this Zion Cliff-dwellers* Inaccessible refuge, untouched by the hand of the spoiler, may contain something that will throw light on these unanswered questions is fascinating. Curiously enough, the many relics of this prehistoric people throw little or no light on these questions. This is the more strange, since the village sites of the ancient inhabitants, with all the accessories of village life—kivas, shrines, burial places, fields, irrigation works, lookouts, stairways — preserve a pretty complete picture of life in this-ancient Southwest Moreover, buried under the debris of buildings and in the graves of the dead are various artifacts of stone, bone, wood, fiber and clay, which, indicate tb ® In " dustrial and domestic life of the people. Ceremonial objects, such as pipes, fetiches and medicine stones, together with the symbolic ornamentation of domestic and mortuary pottery, give glimpses of the social and religious Rfe of the times. Such structures as are above ground have been pretty thordhgbly examined" and an astonishing variety has been found. For example, there are many cliff-dwellings, of which those in Mesa Verde National park in southwestern Colorado are probably the finest in all the Southwest On the Jemez plateau in the northern central part of New Mexico —a part of which it. is proposed to set aside as the national park of the elite cities —there are both pueblos and diff-dwellings of the excavated type called “cavate dwellings." The pueblo ruins are many-chambered community bouses, found upon the mesa-tops and In valleys. The smaller ones are of one story; the larger ones have from two to four stories. The cavate dwellings vary widely. Some are enlarged natural caves. Others are wholly artificial excavations in the face of the eliff, the front wall being formed of the natural rock la situ. Some are

excavations with a front of masonry. Others are complete houses on a sloping talus, with excavated rooms at the back. In the Hovenweep region on both sides of the Colorado-Utah Une and between Mesa Verde and Zion —this area is likely to be established as the Hovenweep National monument —are many remarkable towers* of varying shape. The archeologists consider them among the, most Interesting and important of the prehistoric relics. Casa Grande National monument in the Gila valley of south central Arizona contains Casa Grande —Great House —which was discovered in 1697 by the Spanish. It was even then a burned-out, dismantled- group of walls. It was plastered within and without. It was probably the last of an indefinite number of such houses, as all around it are the ruins of older structures. Excavation in this prehistoric Southwest is only beginning. The results have attracted the attention of archeologists the world over. Possibly the most important work to date is that of Dr. J. Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution in' Mesa Verde. There he has excavated and restored in part the temple of the sun and Far View house. These are large and pretentious structures on the mesa above the cliff-dwellings. They are apparently buildings for religious ceremonials. It is guessed that they were abandoned about 1300 years ago. The archeologists are confident that sooner or later they will find something that will answer one or more of the three great questions about this mysterious people of the American Southwest. Will they find It some such ruin as Casa Grande beneath the dust of centuries or will it come to light in some cliff-dwelling now unknown and untouched by vandal hands, such as those suspected to exist in the unexplored depths of Zion?

Sinawava Temple on the Floor of the Canon.