05/27/2026
We love AEC stories, especially the kind hiding in plain sight — in walls, walkways, foundations, and finishes most people pass by without a second thought.
That’s exactly what Amy Jagaczewski found while traveling through the Southwest. Everywhere she stopped, there was another story waiting beneath the surface.
At Montezuma Castle National Monument, she learned that the women of the Hisat'sinom maintained the plaster coatings on the limestone cliff dwellings, finishing them with vibrant painted washes.
At the Painted Desert Inn in the Petrified Forest National Park, she learned that bids to rehabilitate the inn in the 1930s exceeded available funding (a common story in AEC) – leading to use of the Civilian Conservation Corps to stabilize foundations damaged by swelling clay.
And at Grand Canyon National Park, Amy encountered the work of Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the visionary architect who spent more than 40 years shaping buildings and visitor experiences across the Southwest beginning in 1905.
From ingenious water-management systems carved into 12th-century cliff dwellings at Walnut Canyon National Monument to the artist-designed terrazzo floors at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, storytelling is everywhere.
