PIPE SPRING NATIONAL MONUMENT

PEOPLE COME to Pipe Spring expecting only to learn about the cultures the monument's namesake water source sustained, primarily Ancestral Puebloans, Kaibab Paiutes and Mormon pioneers, who built a fort over the spring. But when visitors ask Paula Ogden-Muse, the chief of interpretation, what the place is about, she says it's about the creatures, too. “We're a pearl in a string of pearls” that includes surrounding tribal and federal lands, she says. And it's the birds, the monarch butterflies, the 18 species of bats and the desert bighorn sheep that string those pearls together. Birds and pollinators flock to the monument's demonstration garden, planted with sunflowers that acknowledge the “old ones”; corn and beans, cultivated by the Paiutes; and sorghum and melons, grown by homesteaders. Orioles, coyotes and foxes feast on grapes from a 100-year-old vine. Visitors nibble peas and beans in summer or take home a pumpkin in the fall.