Existing comment:
Making of the Monument:
Grace Sparkes was a woman with a mission. As a member of the Yavapai County Board of Public Welfare, she realized that support from civil work programs, which had achieved the excavation of Tuzigoot and construction of this museum, was neither stable nor guaranteed. In 1934, Grace began lobbying for a national monument.
In 1937, a National Park Service-sponsored proposal for a Tuzigoot National Monument was approved, but there would still be hurdles. The land, originally owned by the United Verde Copper Company, had been sold to the Clarkdale School District for the sum of $1 to pave the way for the civil work projects. The school district in turn deeded the site to the government. However, an Arizona State statute prohibited a school district from doing just that.
Undeterred, Sparkes got the state legislature to sponsor a bill to authorize the deed. It passed in three days. On July 25, 1939, she received notice that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the proclamation creating Tuzigoot National Monument. The National Park Service took over the protection and management of the fully developed site.
Grace Sparkes was inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 1985. |