A subdivision in southwestern Colorado encourages
buyers to build homes closely around the ruins of ancient Anasazi
dwellings. California developer Archie Hanson bought 1,200 acres of
the archaeologically rich land after visiting the area just six
miles east of Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colo. Now he’s
offering 31 “Indian Camp” lots of about 35 acres each for as much
as $200,000, AP reports. “Ultimately, they’re trying to do the
right thing,” says LouAnn Jacobson, director of the Anasazi
Heritage Center. Hanson says the covenants he has adopted to
protect the abundance of 700-year-old artifacts require
archaeologists to survey sites before any building begins, and any
artifacts found must not be sold. When a landowner dies, all
artifacts revert to a museum planned for the subdivision. Hanson
says 210 prehistoric settlements are documented on the property
already, and most lots have at least one subterranean, ceremonial
kiva. “It’s on private land so we have no jurisdiction,” says
Kathryn Bulinski, a land specialist with the San Juan Bureau of
Land Management, “but at least they’re conserving and preserving
(the ruins) reputably.” She says property owners in the area often
sell their land to pothunters for inflated prices. The Ute Mountain
Ute Tribe, however, has reservations about the subdivision. “If
anybody disturbed my bones,” says chairperson Judy Knight-Frank,
“I’d haunt them.”
* Ross Freeman
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Life among the ruins.
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