Women to the Rescue
Creating Mesa Verde National Park
Duane A. Smith
Who saved Mesa Verde? Women did.
Who created the national park? Women did.
Women to the Rescue is their story.
From the 1890’s into 1906, a group of determined, dedicated women did all in their power to preserve the ruins,
make the public aware, and arouse Congress to action to establish a park.
Then, at the moment of victory, they split into two factions and that is the rest of the story.
Duane A. Smith
Duane Smith received
his academic degrees from the University of Colorado and completed
his Ph.D. in 1964.
That year he began to teach at Fort Lewis College where he is a Professor
of Southwest Studies.
His areas of research and writing include Colorado history, Civil
War history, mining history, urban history and baseball history.
He is an extremely popular professor at Fort Lewis, and he is the
author of over thirty books on a variety of subjects including Rocky
Mountain Mining Camps: The Urban Frontier; A Colorado History; Horace Tabor: His Life and the Legend; Silver Saga: The
Story of Caribou Colorado; Colorado Mining: A Photographic
History; Fortunes Are for the Few: Letters of a Forty-niner; Rocky Mountain Boom Town: A History of Durango; A Land Alone:
Colorado’s Western Slope; Song of the Hammer and Drill: The
Colorado San Juans, 1860-1914; Mining America: The Industry
and the Environment, 1800-1980; Mesa Verde National Park: Shadows
of the Centuries; The Birth of Colorado: A Civil War Perspective;
and Sacred Trust: The Birth and Development of Fort Lewis College.
