Bulletproof

California Welcome Sign Riddled with Bullet Holes

It’s absolutely true that people in the rural west will shoot at anything and everything they can, in addition to the sorts of run-of-the-mill vandalism and graffiti that are widespread everywhere, and it’s important to keep that in mind when making decisions about what sorts of signs to put where and what to make them out of.  Within national parks this is much less of an issue than elsewhere, given the presence of law enforcement on a regular basis at most parks, but some parks, including Chaco, have outlying units that are not regularly patrolled and are vulnerable to these risks.  (Depending on how things go with the new concealed-carry regulations if and when they go into effect, more isolated portions even of regularly patrolled parks may become vulnerable as well.)

Kin Ya'a

When I went down with some colleagues to Kin Ya’a, one of our outlying units, on a training trip not long after I started working at Chaco, one of our tasks was to replace a sign there that had been pretty badly pockmarked by bullet holes.  We carried out our duty, although it required a run into Crownpoint to get a screwdriver when we realized we didn’t have one in our vehicle.

Old Sign at Kin Ya'a, Riddled with Bullet Holes

This isn’t really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s an example of the sorts of small decisions that comprise preservation and management of resources that parks and other agencies have to deal with all the time.  The National Park Service has the resources to deal with this stuff pretty easily, but many archaeological sites are managed by state, local, or nonprofit organizations that have fewer resources and are often faced with tough decisions.  Management of cultural resources is a remarkably complicated matter on both the philosophical and practical levels.

New Sign at Kin Ya'a, Free of Bullet Holes