Posted on 12/04/2014 1:08:12 PM PST by SJackson
EAST RIM OF THE GRAND CANYON, Ariz. — Renae Yellowhorse stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, 26 bumpy miles across the Painted Desert from the nearest paved road, not a glint of civilization in sight. Ms. Yellowhorse, 52, who has lived her whole life on this Navajo land, cast an arm over the gulf sweeping out to the horizon, pointing to where the Colorado River and the Little Colorado meet in a dazzling burst of deep blue 3,000 feet below.
“This is where the tram would go,” she said. “This is the heart of our Mother Earth. This is a sacred area. It is going to be true destruction.”
Ms. Yellowhorse was referring to the proposed $1 billion Grand Canyon Escalade development, a complex of restaurants, boutique hotels, stores and a trailer park clustered around a gondola that would whisk visitors down to a restaurant, an Indian cultural center and an elevated river walk on a part of the canyon floor that is Navajo land, just outside the park boundary. The proposed development, on 420 acres of rabbitbrush and grass with stunning views of the canyon, is the latest — and perhaps the most ambitious — in a long and contentious history of attempts by developers to build near a national landmark that draws 4.5 million people a year.
But the Escalade is hardly the only challenge facing Grand Canyon National Park these days. Indeed, this symbol of the national park system seems almost under siege.
A group of Italian developers is planning three million square feet of retail construction, plus 2,200 homes, in Tusayan, a newly incorporated village with a population of just 587 at the entrance to the park, posing what park officials describe as a major threat to the water supply for the Colorado River.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I was in that area this summer. There was an old church down off the main road. The area was closed.
When I was at a local gas station I asked one of the Navaho cops about it. (I wanted to go take pictures of it.). The cop told me it was closed to the public as it was “sacred” ground.
I told him we have Catholic Churches in the east too. They too are “sacred” ground. But we don’t lock them away from everyone.
He looked at the ground and laughed. Then he said that the teenagers were sneaking up there to drink on Saturday nights and the priest was sick of picking up beer cans and condoms off the front steps.
It is beautiful land...but I am no fan of the indigenous peoples.
I watch the program America Unearthed. It’s an educational US history/travelogue program with some gratuitous drama thrown in (History channel)
One of the programs was about a Grand Canyon cave where Egyptian artifacts were found. Basically the government (Smithsonian)took it over and blocked all public or investigative entry.
I’be been to the Four Corners. Didn’t pay anyone $10 for the “privilege” either.
In no way a criticism of your comment, but I have noted sites are a bit more remote in the west, even in rural areas east of the Mississippi. If they still had attendants at gas stations you could have asked him. Or perhaps checked a local bar or restaurant. Not to suggest either of us would trespass on a posted site. That said, old Churches are often fascinating, and are potential tourist attractions. When he say's sacred thus no entry, like you I've never heard of a Catholic Church with that kind of designation
I’ll have to check that out, thank you!
“This is where the tram would go,” she said. “This is the heart of our Mother Earth. This is a sacred area. It is going to be true destruction.” Ms. Yellowhorse was referring to the proposed $1 billion Grand Canyon Escalade development, a complex of restaurants, boutique hotels, stores and a trailer park clustered around a gondola that would whisk visitors down to a restaurant, an Indian cultural center and an elevated river walk on a part of the canyon floor that is Navajo land, just outside the park boundary.
According to the navajonationparks.org website, it is five dollars can per head to enter or photograph the monument. You can also look it up on footnote #4 of the Wikipedia article of the monument. Perhaps you went after hours when the money collectors weren’t there?
This was 30 years ago, and government theft wasn’t quite so rampant then. And it was fairly late in the evening, as I recall, after a few beers during Happy Hour in Durango.
Makes sense. Thirty years ago, we had a real president who actually loved the U.S.A. and had just completed a 49 state sweep and came within 3000 Minnesota voters of making it 50.
Indians are the ruin of nations. The USA had the least of them, and had the most developed culture and economy in the western hemisphere. Now they are flooding across the borders, and our country is doomed to become another mexico...
It is sad that it happens, and it is sad that no one admits that it happens.
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