‘Progress,’ Petroglyphs on a Collision Course in N.M. : Monument: Proposed 6-lane highway would divide the park, which Native Americans consider sacred. Interior Department objects, and city rejects an alternate route--which could put plan on road to nowhere.

On the west side of Albuquerque, an irresistible force has encountered an immovable object.

The force is progress, in the form of a proposed six-lane highway that would open the way for this booming city to expand farther west.

The steadfast object is the 17-mile-long Petroglyph National Monument--about 17,000 religious etchings on volcanic rock, created by Native Americans through the centuries.

Authorities want to cut a 300-foot-wide, quarter-mile-long band through the monument’s lava rock, destroying between two and 10 petroglyphs to build the extension of the Paseo del Norte roadway.

“In the Anglo world, a busy road can bump into a golf course and it will stop,” said Bill Weahkee, executive director of Five Sandoval Indian Pueblos Inc., a coalition of tribes from neighboring Sandoval County.

“We don’t understand why this road can’t stop at the petroglyphs. Being here is like going to church. There is a very solemn feeling. Why destroy a place like this just to take 15 minutes off the trip around?”

But Mayor Martin Chavez says the area’s long-term needs are paramount.

“This is not Indian land; this is public land. There is a big distinction there,” he said.

“They say it’s a 17-mile-long church. Well, the Vatican has a road going through it. I respect their concerns, probably more than any other group. But, again, nobody ever envisioned it as a 17-mile barrier to Albuquerque’s orderly growth.”

The 7,200-acre monument encompasses five ancient volcanoes and their lava flows. Forming a rugged black escarpment at the end of the flows are volcanic stones inscribed with the petroglyphs.

Many of the petroglyphs are estimated by anthropologists to be from 300 to 600 years old. But Weahkee says most tribes believe some of the drawings are at least 3,000 to 5,000 years old, linking today’s Indians to their ancient ancestors.

Although secrecy prohibits Pueblo Indians from disclosing details of their religion, Weahkee concedes the area still is used by tribes from around the state for ancient ceremonies. Tribal leaders worry that factors such as traffic noise could harm their traditions.

“The ceremonies, they can’t be changed,” Weahkee said.

But Albuquerque, with a population more than double the 200,000 residents in 1960, has grown to a point where it is landlocked except to the west. To the city’s east are the Sandia Mountains, to the north is the Sandia Indian Reservation and to the south is Kirtland Air Force Base.

City officials maintain the road is needed to reach empty land to the west. At $12 million, a 1.6-mile extension including 1,300 feet through the petroglyphs is favored by City Hall over an Interior Department alternative estimated to cost between $39 million and $47.6 million.

But Chavez puts the cost of the 5.3-mile alternative north of the monument between $80 million and $100 million. And city planners recently approved a subdivision on land where that route would have gone.

“The city . . . had the ability to decide which route to pick,” said Stephen Whitesell, the monument’s superintendent. “They made their choices. Now, there may not be any alternative except to go through the monument, and that might not be an alternative.”

Chavez began meetings in January, 1994, with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Both men said they hoped to resolve the matter within one year.

But Tom Collier, Babbitt’s chief of staff, said last January that the department’s position remained that a road through the park “is an unacceptable option, and our position has not changed.”

Regardless of whether the road goes through, the monument faces threats from development. Subdivisions are sprouting along its sides, with some back yards just inches from the monument. Graffiti vandals have struck. Some petroglyphs have been chipped by gunshots.

Standing near a petroglyph in a small canyon at the site of the proposed road, Weahkee scanned the encroaching growth with a look of concern.

“In the Indian world, once something is placed here it can only be changed by the powers of the Great Spirit: the rain, the sun and the wind,” he said. “We do not like to see men changing things just to change them.”