Walnut Canyon

Today we started off with breakfast at a local place called Mike & Rhonda’s. The food was very good but there was so much of it. I ordered their Chicken Fried Steak and got the smaller portion with the biscuits and gravy. This is what the smaller portion is, I would hate to see what the big portion looks like.

We all ended up eating about half our breakfast and brought almost all the hash browns home. I am going to try and make a hash brown casserole with them.  

After breakfast we headed up the road to Walnut Canyon.  Walnut Canyon is a National Monument not a National Park. The difference between Monuments and parks is the reason for preserving the land. National parks are protected due to their scenic, inspirational, education and recreational value. Monuments have object of historical, cultural and or scientific interest. 

Walnut Canyon has dwellings sheltered by overhanging cliffs, were home to the canyons only permanent inhabitants over 800 years ago. Inside the canyon and around the rim and throughout the pine forests on its rims. The Sinagua people which is Spanish for without water, a tribute to their ability to turn a relatively dry region into a homeland. 

When they came to the canyon they saw the shelter that the overhanging rocks gave them and that they could put up walls to give them better shelter. They built wall that would keep them warm in the winter months and cool in the summer.

The Sinagua people were farmers and they built one room pit houses near their fields where they employed dry farming techniques to grow corn and other crops. They would use large sandstone rocks in between their rows that would help to keep moisture in the ground and would also heat up and keep the crops warm during the cool dessert nights. 

The cliff dwellings were occupied for a little more that 100 years. They are not sure why the people left but by 1250 they had moved to new villages a few miles away.

These dwellings remained un disturbed until the 1880’ s when the railroads brought souvenir hunters to the area. Theft and destruction prompted local efforts to to preserve the canyon and soon drew national support. In 1915 the area was declared a national monument. 

During the depression when the unemployment rose to 25 %, President Franklin D Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps ( CCC)in 1933 to employ young men. In ten years,, 2.5 million men  participated in helping to build numerous projects in numerous parks across the country. They helped preserve their nations history.

The CCC was made up mostly of 17 to 19 years of age and they had to sign up for 6 months minimum and were paid $1 a day. Most of them sent at least half of their salary back to their families. Although they earned little money, they gained valuable experience build roads, trails and facilities to last for generations. Most were happy to get three meals a day and a roof over their heads. 

After visiting a number of parks and seeing the facilities that were built, the CCC’s hard work has been a pleasure to observe.

They built the visitor centre and all the trails down to the dwellings

This is a design of one of the summer houses up o the rim

 This is one of the retaining walls along the trail.

We ended the day by doing a little shopping, I had to find some light weight capri pants as the weather is turning out a little bit warmer than it was supposed to be. Because of such a big breakfast, we finished off the evening with some vegetable and dip and some popcorn for dessert.