PACIFIC + SOUTHWEST. Home Decor / Kitchen Decor, Decorative Plate, Souvenir, National Park Travel, c. 1960.
Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico has been a United States National Park since its congressional designation on May 14, 1930, but evidence of the area being a site for human visitation goes back millennia. Pictographs from twelve to fourteen thousand years ago exist within the current boundaries of the park. Sixteen-year-old Jim White, who lived nearby in Lone Tree, New Mexico, arguably became the first modern day person to enter the caverns when he explored them in 1898. By 1923 White’s discovery was established as a National Monument, well on the way to status as a National Park with its environs made more accessible to tourism through the innovative work done in league with the National Park Service. The Carlsbad, New Mexico, Chamber of Commerce donated funds to install a stairway so visitors to the Bat Cave would no longer have to descend in a large bucket made for collecting guano. Surely the brightly painted people shown on this souvenir plate were visiting long after the days of guano bucket rides. Likely it dates from the early 1960s, and will make now as it did then a great way to remember New Mexico’s amazing Carlsbad Caverns.
Condition: Used Very Good. Local / Regional Attractions. Dimensions: 10" diameter / 1.35 lb
