The Great Bend has long been a crossroads where people of differ-ent backgrounds came together in interesting and inspiring ways. This legacy of cultural diversity is literally written on the landscape in the form

of tens of thousands of petro-glyphs authored by Native

Americans, with later ad-ditions by Spaniards,

Mexicans, and Euro-Americans.

What Is the Great Bend of the Gila?The Great Bend of the Gila is a fragile stretch of river valley and surrounding lands in the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona. This rural landscape is nestled between the cities of Phoenix and Yuma. The Gila River flows through a series of pronounced “bends” here, past jagged mountains and extinct lava flows. It joins the Colorado River just north of the Sea of Cortez.

For millennia, communities flourished along the Great Bend. People from many different walks of life wove together a cultural landscape that fuses archaeological and historical wonders with a remarkable natural setting.

Families lived in villages along the lower Gila River, cultivating ances-tral lands for more than 1,000 years. They left a variety of architectural signatures, including pithouses, adobe and stone buildings, ballcourts, and irrigation canals.

The valley later served as an over-land route between Spanish settle-ments in Sonora and their missions along the California coast. Father Eusebio Kino blazed this trail in 1699,

What Is Special about the Great Bend of the Gila?

and Juan Bautista de Anza formalized it in 1775. It served as the foundation for many subsequent transcontinental trails and roads, including Kearny’s trail for the Army of the West, Cooke's Wagon Road for the Mormon Battal-ion, and the Butterfield Overland Stage Line. Stage stations and pioneer com-munities sprang up along these routes. One of these, Stanwix Ranch, was the site of the westernmost skirmish of the Civil War.

Top left and above: Petroglyphs in the Great Bend of the Gila. Left: The Great Bend also lies within the eastern range of geoglyphs. People created geoglyphs on the ground by removing gravels to expose lighter sediments, or by aligning rocks to form designs. These enigmatic features are usually abstract, but sometimes they seem to portray humans or animals. PHOTOS: ANDY LAURENZI

A Great Bend of the Gila National Monument would preserve this landscape and commemorate its deep hu-man history, now and for the future. PHOTO: ALLEN GILL

Most of the region’s archaeology attests to agricultural Patayan and Hohokam cultural traditions. These were contemporaneous yet contrast-ing ways of life that overlapped in the Great Bend area. Over time, those customs merged and diversified, ulti-

Whose Ancestors Lived along the Great Bend of the Gila?

mately becoming the Native Ameri-can traditions that continue today. At least 13 federally recognized tribes (see map on reverse) have cultural, historical, and ancestral ties to the Great Bend of the Gila.

In the 1870s, pioneers began to settle along the lower Gila River, bringing ranching, farming, and mining. Many families in the towns of Buckeye, Arlington, and Gila Bend are their descendants. These commu-nities also have ancestral connections to the Great Bend of the Gila.

The proposed Great Bend of the Gila National Monument comprises approximately 84,296 acres of federal public lands administered through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The area contains some of the BLM’s most significant and threatened archaeological sites. Petroglyphs and geoglyphs are particularly prone to theft and destruction. National monu-ment designation would empower the BLM to better protect these irreplace-able echoes of those who came before.

Why a National Monument?

Above: The Great Bend has long been a corridor for people and goods. An extensive network of ancient trails crosses the land-scape and converges in these valleys. These trails link the Pacific Coast to the Great Plains, and West Mexico with the Great Basin. The Great Bend of the Gila was central to ancient economies that circulated goods over vast distances. PHOTO: ALLEN GILL

Below: In 2016, Congressman Raúl Grijalva reintroduced a bill to establish the Great Bend of the Gila National Monument. Tribal representatives and archaeologists met with him in August 2016 to voice their support. PHOTO: EL IAS BUTLER

(520) 882-6946 | www.archaeologysouthwest.org

Designation would also celebrate the histories of many different Native American communities and honor their contributions to our nation’s culture. Associated tribes contend that stewardship of their ancestral lands, including those of the Great Bend, is critical for carrying their cultural identities forward. A na-tional monument designation would open the door for the tribes' greater involvement in managing and inter-preting the Great Bend of the Gila.

National monuments serve many communities—outdoor recreationalists, scientists, conservationists, local busi-nesses, and descendant Native Ameri-can communities, among others. All of us would benefit from a Great Bend of the Gila National Monument.

PHOTO: ALLEN GILL

13 TRIBES WITH CONNECTIONS

TO THE GREAT BEND OF THE GILA

MA

P: CATHERIN

E GILM

AN