Books for the Nature Lover in Your Life

The appreciation of the Chimney Rock region goes back more than 1,000 years. Here in southwestern Colorado, the Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the northern San Juan River Basin as an outlier community of Chaco Canyon. Its function and use has created much conjecture. The site was abandoned by the early 1100s for reasons that some speculate were related to drought, resource depletion, warfare, migration, or a combination of these factors. Over the course of its recorded history, archaeologists, astronomers, regional historians, and visitors have celebrated the rocks, ruins, and landscape that make up this important feature in the Four Corners region. It has been called La Piedra Parada by Spanish explorers, Fire Mountain by Tewa-speaking pueblos, and Tupiwiniri by the Utes. Today, we know it as Chimney Rock National Monument due to a proclamation made in 2012 by Pres. Barack Obama.

The Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, Maryland, was established in 1948 to preserve the surviving 63 acres of the vast empire built by the Ridgely family beginning in the 18th century.

In its heyday, the estate covered 25,000 non contiguous acres and included agricultural fields, orchards, livestock, quarries, mills, and ironworks. Today visitors flock to the magnificent Georgian mansion, farm manager's house, slave quarters, dairy, agricultural buildings, formal gardens, and family cemetery. The story of Hampton National Historic Site extends beyond its buildings and setting to the people who lived and worked on the estate during the 200 plus years of Ridgely ownership, including the indentured servants, the enslaved, and the paid workforce. The legacy of Hampton National Historic Site is illustrated here through rich primary source material that was generated and provided by the Ridgelys, including written documentation, historic images, and physical artifacts.