Pave or No? Chaco Road Fight Costly

By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
CHACO CANYON — Stand here on a winter's day, and it's easy to ignore the emotional and seemingly unending debate over whether to pave the road that leads into the national park that holds the treasures of Chacoan culture.
It's quiet here. The high desert has put on its tan coat for the winter, and the pre-Puebloan ruins are able to find cover in the landscape. And besides you, there are only a couple of dozen other people in the entire park.
The journey here has taken you off velvety smooth U.S. 550 and onto CR7950, where the pavement ends and turns to dirt 13 miles from the park's entrance.
Whatever your reason for being here, you have now become part of the argument concerning improving this road with something called a chip seal, a technique that produces a smooth surface that looks and drives like pavement.
County officials and the state's Indian Affairs Committee are on the paving side of the argument. Environmental groups and Friends of Chaco and the Chaco Alliance are against paving but in favor of making the road safer with grading, gravel and maintenance.
The park's managers won't take an official position, but it's obvious from comments in the public record that they fear that a smooth road capable of handling tour buses would overrun and harm a treasure trove of delicate ruins that has been named a World Heritage Site.
San Juan County Commissioner Ervin Chavez calls the road as it is now "real nasty" during bad weather. The county's manager, Keith Johns, calls it "terribly unsafe."
Neither produces statistics to back up that assertion. But you can find them in the report the county paid for: three accidents in three years.
So, with statistics in your favor, you turn your car westward toward the park on a melting post-snowstorm morning and bump along those last 13 miles of dirt road.
You know this: It's not a superhighway. It's got all of the limitations of a poorly maintained country road, which means it's best to stick to the speed limit, take it easy on the curves, and lay off the brakes on the washboard ridges and mud spots.
You do that, creeping along at about 30 through snow, ice, slush and mud, and you arrive just fine, along with the folks in 13 other vehicles that have made the trip to visit Chaco this day.
If you haven't already noticed, the road that leads you here is a critical part of the Chaco experience. It forces you to slow you down and prepare yourself to visit one of the places in the world where ancient history reaches out and grabs you.
The national park at the end of CR7950 has become the focus of the debate, but it's only one of the addresses along CR7950. Commissioner Chavez says he wants the road improved for the Navajos who live in the nine houses along the route and who have to rattle their cars and trucks along the washboard every day to go to jobs and school and the store.
After you've made the drive in and settled into your campsite or gone for a hike and left, you're done with that road. But the people who live here deal with it every day, and it should come as no surprise that they would prefer an easier ride.
But three out of every four roads on the Navajo reservation are unpaved. Navajos live all along every one of them and suffer daily inconveniences. Why pick out this particular 13 miles for such a dogged and costly fight?
That is the $1 million question. Almost literally.
On Thursday, we'll look at the $1 million of your money that's being shelled out to date on the fight over this little stretch of road and try to get to the bottom of the burning desire among some public officials to pave the way to Chaco Canyon.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com and read all of her columns at www.abqjournal.com/upfront.