Lake Scott State Park
Lake Scott State Park is the site of a ruined Taos Pueblo. The Taos arrived in western Kansas in 1664. After having escaped the Spanish colonial rule in New Mexico. They formed an alliance with a group of Plains Apache. The Taos Indians built the protective pueblos and an irrigation system from a nearby spring to water their crops. The settlement, known as El Cuartelejo, was occupied for 20 years before the builders returned to their home territory. The pueblo was reoccupied in 1696 by a group of Picuri Indians. The Picuris were compelled to retreat to their homelands in colonial New Mexico ten years later.
Ciénega
Ciénaga habitat in an otherwise arid, resource constrained landscape was the first source of water to be used by Hispanics and Anglos for their livestock. As early as the 1680s, Pima Indians in Sonora were complaining that Spanish livestock were so common that watering places were drying out. The effects of long-term, sustained grazing — particularly during drought episodes — caused reduced plant cover and vigor; increased runoff and sediment transport; fostered desertification, which worsened the deepening of incised channels; triggered water table declines and further loss of wetland vegetation, thereby making ciénagas and their surrounds among the most abused sites on earth.