Committee to discuss Cibola historic markers

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Helen Davis
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — The December meeting of the Cultural Properties Review Committee will look at historical markers planned for Cibola County, as well as review permits, cultural preservation nominations and business for the upcoming year.

The committee will meet Friday at 1 p.m. in Room 309 of the State Capitol Building, 490 Old Santa Fe Trail in Santa Fe.

Tom Drake, public relations spokesman for the N.M. Historic Preservation Division, said a scenic marker for Old Acoma Sky City and a marker for Matilda Coxe Stevenson under the New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative will be considered. The Sky City marker is a replacement for an existing one that has been lost, damaged or stolen, Drake said.

The markers would be the brown wooden kind that can been seen along highways and other places around the state, he said.

Stevenson, nee Evans, was an ethnologist, or student of cultural structures and traditions, for the Smithsonian Institution, but is best known as the first woman to work in the Southwest and for her studies of the pueblo cultures, particularly Zuni. She was so the co-founder of the Women’s Anthropological Society of America.

Stevenson died in 1915 in Maryland.

The New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative began in 2006 to honor women and their contributions to the state’s history. Before the initiative, none of the 620 historical markers in New Mexico represented women’s achievements, Drake said. With financial support from the 2006 New Mexico State Legislature and through the work of Pat French, Beverly Duran and Alexis Girard of the New Mexico Women’s Forum, the first marker, honoring the Sisters of Loretto, was erected December 2002.

Drake said that to date, 33 markers have been approved. Ultimately, he added, each county and pueblo will have 54 women’s markers.

The initiative remains a project of the forum and is overseen by the Historic Preservation Division, Drake said.
In addition to handling historic markers, the committee, which is the policy advisory committee of the Historic Preservation Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, lists sites on the Register of Cultural Properties and recommends sites for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. They also handle permit requests for archaeological exploration and excavation of unmarked human burials. The meetings are open to the public.