Hawkins Preserve


Hawkins Preserve is a property within the city limits of Cortez, Colorado. It is protected by a conservation easement held by the Montezuma Land Conservancy.
The property for the preserve was donated to the Cortez Cultural Center in the 1990s by Jack Hawkins which includes:
Hawkins Preserve is a natural museum on 120 acres including seven ecological zones:

Early people

Hunter-gather 8,000 B.P. to AD 1
Basket Makers AD 1 to 550

Hawkins Preserve residents

Modified Basket Makers 550 to 750
Developmental Pueblo 750 to 1100
Great Pueblo period 1100 to 1300

Post-Pueblo Native American tribes 1300 to 1700

After 1300 hunter-gatherers, ancestors of the Ute and Navajo, moved into the southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah and came to inhabit the region.
During this period, the Spanish colonial reach extended to northern New Mexico, where they settled in the 16th century. They introduced items for trade, such as guns and horses, new and deadly diseases, and cultural influence in the forms of religion, language, and forms of government. In the 18th century Spanish missionaries visited the area looking for a route to Spanish missions in California. One of the expeditions was that of Spanish friars Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Domínguez who traveled from New Mexico, through western Colorado to Utah.

European and American settlement 18th century to present

The first Anglo American people arrived in the early 1800s, starting with trappers. With the discovery of precious ores in the last decades of the 19th Century, miners and other settlers moved into the region.
The Hawkins Preserve includes land that was near a ranch owned by Henry Mitchell. On his land is an archaeological site of 9 medium-sized pueblos called "Mitchell Springs".
By the mid-19th century the United States government and Native American tribes were at war over land ownership. People were forced to leave their homelands. The Navajo had moved south and the Ute territory was significantly reduced.

Notable sites

Ruins siteTime periodComments
Hawkins Pueblo900 - 1250Hawkins Pueblo, occupied by several related groups, is the largest ruin within the preserve. It was most populated in the Pueblo II period, from about 1000 to 1150. The site contains several room block ruins and rubble that contains a kiva, mounds, and middens.
Cliff dwellingsPossibly pre-historic period, historic periodSeveral small cliff dwellings were found along McElmo Canyon, about 1 mile from the Mitchell ranch in 1878. The stone constructed dwellings had several small rooms and a nearby corral, likely for sheep or cattle. The site was occupied by European settlers and may have been built and occupied earlier.

Excavations

Lewis Henry Morgan

visited Montezuma Valley in 1878 during one of his trips through the American Southwest. At that time he made notes and maps of archaeological sites at the current Hawkins Preserve and nearby Mitchell Springs. Within the Hawkins Preserve he recorded cliff dwellings found along McElmo Canyon. The site included groups of several small chambers just above the canyon bottom. Nearby is a corral that held cattle, sheep or other livestock. It was clearly occupied some time after European American settlement, and possibly before then. The Mitchell Springs site, near Hawkins Preserve, consists of 9 medium-sized pueblos and believed to have occupied up to 1,000 people at its height. The site shows occupancy from the Basket Makers II period through late Pueblo III period.

J.A. Halasi

In 1977 J.A. Halasi conducted an archaeological inventory and identified 2 prehistoric scatters and a large pre-historic ruin. The large ruin was a rubble mound partially excavated to determine that were 2 kiva depressions, diagnostic pot sherds and midden deposits. The site seemed to be from the Pueblo II period.

Bruce Bradley

Bruce Bradley identified an additional 21 sites during an archaeological survey in 2000. The sites are from the Basket Maker II, Pueblo II, Pueblo II periods and unknown pueblo and pre-historic periods. In addition to dwellings, there were also an alcove room with pictographs, 3 check dams, a field house, grinding areas, hearths, and artifacts.

Mona C. Charles

Mona Charles led a group of Fort Lewis College students through an archaeological study in 2006. During that time they completed:
In 2006 a State Historic Fund Grant administered by the Colorado Historical Society was provided to study the main site in Hawkins Preserve.