State Archeology Fair comes to Grants this weekend

By Mike Marino
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — This Friday and Saturday the city park in Grants on Santa Fe Avenue will be filled with mountain men and women, arrowheads, bones, live music, demonstrations and food. It’s the 14th annual event, but the first time it has been held in Grants, and titled appropriately, Archeology Kicks on Route 66. It’s being put on in part by the New Mexico State

Archeologist/Historic Preservation Division of Cultural Affairs and co-sponsored by the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance, the Cibola Arts Council/Double Six Gallery, the Grants/Cibola Chamber of Commerce, and the Grants Mining Museum.

Eva Peets, who is chairman of the Cibola Arts Museum is excited to have the event here.

“In addition to all the events outdoors at the city hall park, at the Arts Council building we will have a series of lectures on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. with different archeologists making presentations and answering questions. At the park for the two-day event they have will mountain man demonstrations and a lot of booths and vendors, so it is pretty exciting for Grants to be able to have this event held here,” she said.

The Arts Council Board met for meeting on Wednesday to select and approve a name for the museum inside the gallery. The board members chose the name the Cibola Art and Artifacts Museum. The museum will have lecturers on hand Friday evening to discuss atlatls, Los Ventanas, Lee Ranch and also weapons and tools.

The admission is free, and it starts Friday at noon until 5 p.m., then on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Among the demonstrations will be the art of arrowhead making, pottery making and firing and how to chop trees using only a stone ax just as ancient people did before the advent of the industrial age. For those into fabric arts, there will examples of how to dye yarn utilizing only plants. The event that kids especially seem to enjoy, the atlatl competition of spear throwing, dates back through the ages to times long forgotten.

The Mountain-Man Rendezvous will be set up and the mountain men and the mountain women will give a glimpse of life in the wilderness before the age of modernization. A raffle will also help benefit the fair, and the Van of Enchantment will be set up on the grounds.

Local archeologists and historians will be on-hand to give insight into the area and its beginnings.

There will be vendors, food and live music at the event.