Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Posted on by Thor

My favorite site that we visited in Nevada wasn’t the Las Vegas Strip but instead, The Valley of Fire located about 50 miles north east of Las Vegas. Cynthia Sanford the curator at the Clark County Museum took us on a road trip to the Valley of Fire. World-renowned for its 40,000 acres of bright red Aztec sandstone
outcrops nestled in gray and tan limestone, the Park
contains ancient, petrified trees and petroglyphs dating back more than
2,000 years.

The petroglyphs were etched into desert varnish, a layer of dark rock on
top of the sandstone. With the black layer carved away, the petroglyphs
reveal the orange rock underneath. The desert varnish is a patina of
iron and manganese that leached from the rock and evaporated over the
course of thousands of years.  The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, passed through the Valley of Fire in prehistoric times. Their approximate span of occupation has been dated from 300 BC to 1150 AD. Their visits probably involved hunting, food gathering, and religious ceremonies, although scarcity of water would have limited their stay.

A Visitor Center provides exhibits on the geology, ecology,
prehistory and history of the park and nearby region. Open year round, the park has
numerous campsites equipped with shaded tables, grills and water, as
well as many intriguing trails to tempt hikers.

I started hiking up a steep incline with Pam but she scrambled inside a cave and up through a gap in a series of rocks which I did not feel confident navigating. Instead of climbing up, I stayed in the shade of the cave and did this sketch. I placed a pencil on the ground at the edge of the cave shadow to see what direction the sun was moving. About 15 minutes into the sketch I could see that I would be safely in the shade for the duration of the sketch. Ive started using this trick more often since this trip to see what direction the sun is moving when I sketch outdoors.

People came and went walking along the trail at the base of the giant sandstone outcrop. At sunset this place must light up a glorious orange. The rocks are already a vibrant shade of orange.

Conservation after the Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Posted on by Thor

On the night of October 1, 2017, a shooter opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. He killed 58 people and wounded 413, with the ensuing panic bringing the injury total to 869. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the history of the United States. This horrible incident came just 16 months after the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people.

Cynthia Sanford the curator at the Clark County Museum took on the responsibility of having to archive the memorial items left for those lost. Volunteers sifted through items collected, took photos and carefully documented and archived every item that entered the collection. Pam Schwartz of the Orange County Regional History Center flew to Las Vegas to offer any advice she might have after collecting and archiving in Orlando.

The two collection sites were vastly different. In Orlando humidity, heat and daily rains soaked and degraded items left at memorial sites in Orlando. Las Vegas literally has no rain. The concert site however was next to the Las Vegas airport and Cynthia said that anything left on the site was literally blown over by planes as they landed or took off.

The Clark County Museum (1830 S. Boulder Highway, Henderson, NV) includes the Anna Roberts Parks Exhibit Hall and
Heritage Street which contains eight historic buildings from the county.  In a building that was once a railroad station behind the museum, volunteers were hard at work even 6 months following the shooting. The woman taking photos of each item choked up as she described how proud she was to be taking part in the process.

The October 1st collection at the Clark
County museum is made up of tens of thousands of artifacts that help to
tell the story of how the community reacted to the mass shooting at the
Route 91 Harvest Festival. The artifacts will be cataloged to record
information such as physical descriptions, dimensions, and conditions.
Each artifact will also be photographed or scanned for identification
purposes. As museum staff and volunteers process these artifacts, you
will be able to follow our progress by viewing identification
photographs.

Museum curators across the country have formed an informal support group. Knowledge gained after one mass shooting is passed on the curators in the next city overwhelmed by tragedy and the super human effort needed should that community decide to collect memorial items. It is a small community that no one asks to be a part of. 

On September 28, 2018 The Clark County Museum opened  “How We Mourned: Selected Artifacts from the 1 October Memorials“. Items put on display included flags, stuffed animals, rosaries,
artificial flowers, signs, letters, banners, candles, art works and a
portion of a Hawaiian lei that was used as a symbol to promote world
peace. The Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando has also mounted an exhibit each year to remember those who were lost.

KNPR Radio Interview in Las Vegas

Posted on by Thor

Pam Schwartz and I took a trip to Las Vegas where she was attending a National Council on Public History conference. This scheduling coincidence brought memorial experts to Las Vegas as their museums are continuing to collect and catalogued the items of remembrance that people left after the October 1, 2017 shooting that took 58 lives and had over 500 injured treated at area hospitals. With breakout segments like  “Documenting Resilience: Condolence
Collection Projects in the Wake of Violence,” the national gathering of
academics plans to discuss how communities such as Orlando, Newtown, Connecticut, and Isla Vista, California responded to mass casualty trauma.

KNPR Radio interviewed a panel of individuals who have had to collect in the wake of tragedy. Melissa Barthelemy is a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara who worked on efforts there. Pam Schwartz is chief curator of the Orange County Regional
History Center in Orlando, Florida and created and led the effort to manage the collection of items left at the scene of
the Pulse Nightclub Massacre. Cynthia Sanford is the registrar at the Clark County Museum. She is
heading up the effort to collect and catalog many of the items left at some of the
memorials in Las Vegas.

I sketched as the three fielded questions. Producer Doug Puppel set the tone of the interview. Barthelemy said the collection, archiving and exhibition of items from pop-up memorials are a new area of history research. These
kinds of memorials really only started to appear in the last few
decades. She said people point to the many impromptu memorials left
in the wake of Princess Diana’s death as a contributor to the rise of
spontaneous memorials. The fact that these mass memorials are visible on TV and social media contribute to the rise in items left in the wake of tragedy.

Schwartz said not every community is impacted the same way by a mass
casualty event and therefore not every community reacts in the same way. Those differences change what is collected and how it is exhibited. “The
biggest thing for people to understand, especially people who have not
been through a similar sort of situation, is that one size doesn’t fit
all,” she said. The focus of any exhibition should be on what will help the community with its healing process.

Sanford explained that her museum already has between 15,000 and 20,000 artifacts from the memorials. “Our
role as a museum is to preserve the history of Southern Nevada,” she
said, “Unfortunately, this event is now part of our history.” She
said the museum is planning an exhibit for the one year anniversary of
the shooting, but there is not a plan for a permanent home for the
items. 5,000 items have been catalogued so far. 50 years from now, 100 years from now those items will be in storage. Every item you work on is someone’s story. Sometimes when you get home, that is when it hits you. The three interviewees all explained that they are honored to be able to collect these events for their communities. You have to find a way to get through it.