El Morro: History Written on Stone

This photo taken Sept. 2, 2009 shows Inscription Rock at El Morro National Monument rising above the plateau of northwest New Mexico on. (AP Photo/Heather Clark)

(AP)

For centuries, Spanish explorers, U.S. Army troops, wagon train emigrants and railroad surveyors carved their names on a huge sandstone outcrop in what's now a national monument famed for those inscriptions.

But the softness of the rock that allowed names to be chipped into the cliff at El Morro National Monument also is letting those signatures erode — jeopardizing the history the park is meant to protect.

Over the years, officials have reattached fallen inscriptions, developed grout to keep moisture out of cracks and experimented with coatings to prevent signatures from wearing away.

El Morro — Spanish for headlands — became a stopping point because of its reliable water, a pool fed by runoff from the cliff.

Hundreds of travelers left their names — some famous; others with stories behind them.

"All those things together make them historic," said Steve Baumann, archaeologist at the northwest New Mexico monument.

"Pasa por aqui," wrote provincial governor Don Juan de Onate in 1605, "passed by here."

Onate's inscription, one of the earliest, partially covers one of the prehistoric American Indian petroglyphs also carved on the rock.

Don Diego de Vargas, who led the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico in 1692 after a Pueblo Indian revolt, signed his name that year, saying his conquest was "for the Holy Faith and for the Royal Crown ... at his own expense."

Twelve-year-old Sallie Fox — who came through in a wagon train — wrote her proper name, Sarah, in 1858.

The deeply incised, printer-like inscription of "P. Gilmer Breckinridge, 1859 VA," is marred by a chip biting into the C in his last name and edging up to the 9 in the date.

Breckinridge came through El Morro with 25 camels from a short-lived Army experiment. He would later resign, join the Confederacy and die in the Civil War.