Little Known National Parks to Explore the Ancient Indigenous Past

When Mesa Verde National Park became the seventh unit to be created in America’s national park system, it created a brand new type of national park. Previously, all national parks from the subterranean Wind Cave to the alpine Yosemite had protected scenic wonders. Now, with the ancient cliff-dwellings protected, national parks could be tools for historic preservation.  

While the National Park Service now protects and interprets dozens of historic sites—including battlefields, presidential estates and civil rights monuments—it has always been involved in the protection of America’s indigenous history, from the most ancient days to more recent history. Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park is well known, but it is just one of many NPS sites preserving the ancient indigenous past.

November is Indigenous People’s Month—here are some suggestions for parks to visit and learn about ancient American cultures.  

The Southwest

For those living near or visiting Phoenix, a handful of outstanding Ancestral Puebloan sites are right at your doorstep. To the south sits Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, which was the first southwestern archeological site to receive funding for its protection and restoration from the federal government in 1892.

North of Phoenix, four national monuments—Wupatki, Walnut Canyon, Tuzigoot and Montezuma Castle—can be strung together to form an excellent Indigenous Peoples Day road trip. 

The Southeast

While the Southwest has an incredible density of superb indigenous archeological sites, the Southeastern United States is certainly not lacking.

10,000 years ago, Alabama’s Russell Cave was home to some of the earliest inhabitants of the American Southeast. It was preserved as a national monument in the 1961 by John F. Kennedy.

Both the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park and Poverty Point National Monument preserve exquisite ancient earthworks built long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. They are engineering marvels—the Southeastern equivalent to Mesa Verde’s Cliff Palace and Chaco Canyon’s Casa Bonita. 

The Midwest

The “Cliff-dwellings of the East” aren’t just found below the Mason-Dixon line.

Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Ohio and Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa protect ancient earthworks, role-players in the National Park System that protect the full geographic range of the ancient Mississippian civilization.

Within the Hopewell mounds, implements fashioned from Great Lakes copper have been discovered, revealing the vast trade networks utilized by the ancient people of the Ohio River Valley.

Isle Royale National Park is the location of ancient copper mines that may have supplied the Hopewell culture. 

While North America isn’t world-renowned for its antiquities in the way that Greece, Rome or Egypt are, it is nonetheless home to rich cultural resources that help us understand the roots of human civilization.

National Park units like Casa Grande, Russell Cave and Effigy Mounds remind us that the human past of the Americas is as deep and complex as anywhere else in the world. 

Visiting National Park sites like these is an excellent way to recognize the history and culture of Indigenous Americans, which stretches back thousands of years.