Swedish immigrants Neil and Emma Erickson built a homestead here in 1888. By the 1920’s, their daughter Lillian, along with her husband, Ed Riggs, turned the homestead into a guest ranch, drawing visitors to this wonderland of rocks. Armed with photographs, they lobbied for the area’s protection, which came when President Calvin Coolidge created the Chiricahua National Monument in 1924. Today, members of the Erickson family rest below large boulders in a tiny cemetery near the entrance station for the Monument. I built this image around a splash of light on a spray of flowers, left here in memory of the pioneer family’s founding father, Neil Erickson.