Wildfire nears Indian cliff dwellings
SANTA CLARA PUEBLO, N.M. -- A wildfire that forced federal employees to flee the birthplace of the atomic bomb neared the sacred sites of several American Indian tribes Saturday, raising fears that tribal lands passed down for generations would be destroyed.
More than 1,600 firefighters were trying to stop the northern New Mexico fire as it burned through a canyon on the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation and threatened pueblos on the Parajito Plateau.
The stretch of mesas run more than 15 miles west of Santa Fe and include the town of Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory .
The blaze reached the Santa Clara Pueblo's watershed in the canyon last week, damaging the area that the tribe considers its birthplace and scorching 20 square miles of forest. Fire operations chief Jerome MacDonald said it was within miles of the centuries-old Puye Cliff Dwellings.
Tribes were worried that cabins, pueblos and watersheds could be destroyed by the 177-square-mile blaze, the largest wildfire in state history.
