Floodwaters threaten Native American ruins at Homol’ovi Ruins State Park

Levee design to be studied for $5.7M
By Ryan Reinhold · February 18, 2009

Homol'ovi Ruins State Park (Courtesy: Arizona State Parks)
WINSLOW – A flood control levee that protects 2,700 residential and business parcels in northern Arizona from the Little Colorado River has diverted water in such a way that it is threatening 700-year-old ruins built by Native Americans, a state archaeologist warns.

The threatened ruins at Homol’ovi Ruins State Park are part of a 4,500-acre preserve located about one mile north of Winslow. The ruins, which include two- and three-story pueblos built of sandstone and adobe bricks, were home to ancestors of the Hopi people who farmed and traded for 500 years along the Little Colorado River.

Rich Lange, an archaeologist at the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says that the 7-mile-long earthen flood control levee, built in 1989 to protect Winslow, has changed the natural flow of the river. In times of high water, the levee diverts the river away from Winslow and towards Homol’ovi, he says. The Little Colorado River has a history of flooding, but before the levee was built, the river jumped the east bank where Homol’ovi is located.

Recent rainstorms in Arizona’s high country have raised the issue again, but Navajo County Public Works Director Homero Vela disputed Lange’s claim that the levee is a threat to Homol’ovi. “The Little Colorado River, like other rivers in the Southwest, is classified as a meandering river and tends to randomly meander whether or not a levee is present,” he says. “It has been meandering for hundreds of years.”

Homol’ovi is a cluster of 300 archaeological sites. Lange said that among seven pueblo ruins at the park, the ruin known as Homol’ovi is the best example of adobe brick pueblo architecture in North America. The Little Colorado River runs by it on its 315-mile trek from the White Mountains in northeastern Arizona to Grand Canyon National Park in northwestern Arizona.

“It is this particular ruin that is most at risk from flood waters because the ruin is only 20 to 25 feet above the elevation of the river bed,” Lange says.

Homol’ovi was a trading center for different Native American groups, a migration route, and a sacred burial site for Hopis. It is a unique site because it features examples of both one-room pit houses and a multi-story, 1,200-room pueblo, says park manager Karen Berggren.

Pit houses built underground were the standard architecture in the period before 1100 A.D., but eventually Native Americans masonry techniques with sandstone and adobe bricks. These sites were occupied during three main periods: 620-850 A.D., 1050-1225 A.D. and 1260-1400 A.D. by farmers who grew cotton, corn, squash, and beans. Homol’ovi served as a crossroads of trade during pre-Columbian times where many artifacts, depictions of kachina, pottery, and petroglyphs have been unearthed.

In 1993, the Little Colorado River jumped the levee and flooded homes in Winslow, causing $1.4 million damage. In 2004, the river crested at 20 feet – twice as high as normal – and caused a four-by-six-foot break in the levee, which was repaired by state and local emergency crews. Since that time, flood control officials have begun a feasibility study to fix the levee.

On February 12, 2009, Navajo County asked Congress for $500,000 so that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could continue the study. It has been estimated the study would cost a total of $5.7 million, plus the cost of aerial photography and mapping.

But help for Homol’ovi is years away. Vela said the feasibility study by Navajo County officials would take four to five years. After that, an engineering study will take another two to three years. Construction would not begin until both studies are completed and funding is approved.

Vela says the study’s results could recommend channeling the streambed; tamarisk removal; channel realignment; elevation of the levee; or a combination of these projects. But archaeologists oppose elevation of the levee unless other methods are developed to protect Homol’ovi.

Vela says he has invited Berggren and Lange to attend a meeting of the Winslow Levee Feasibility Project committee on March 24, 2009. Agencies that will likely attend the meeting include:

The Hopi Tribe
City of Winslow
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
U.S. Geological Survey
Winslow Levee Advisory Committee
Arizona Game & Fish Dept.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Little Colorado Resource Conservation and Development
Navajo County Flood Control District
Homol’ovi Research Program
Arizona State Parks
For more information, the public is invited to call Navajo County Flood Control District Director Trent Larson for details at (928) 524-4387.

= = =

>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

http://zoniereport.com/2009/02/floodwaters-threaten-native-american-ruins-23441/