Relic hunters stole America’s heritage when they left more than 100 holes around the Texas Memorial in the Vicksburg National Military Park, Patty Montague said Friday as archaeologists began surveying the damage.

&#8220The park is continually plagued by varying degrees of looting, digging and excavation,” Montague, the park’s supervising ranger, said. &#8220They’re stealing America’s heritage. This belongs to the American people.”

Archaeologists and historians with the National Park Service arrived from Florida to begin meticulously processing the crime scene, which extended west of the memorial near a Confederate marker to the Railroad Redoubt.

The Texas Memorial is on the south loop of Confederate Avenue at the Railroad Redoubt. It cost $100,000 to build and was dedicated on Nov. 4, 1961.

&#8220It was the only fort penetrated by Union forces,” Montague said.

She said the vandalism was found about a week ago by Virginia Dubowy, the park’s resource program manager, during a walk-through. Damage is estimated to be &#8220tens of thousands of dollars,” Montague said.

&#8220We are very upset about this,” she said, pointing at an area east of the monument where it appeared the vandals concentrated their efforts. &#8220We need the public’s help in finding who did this, and we will be offering a reward” for information leading to the arrests and convictions of the suspects.

Under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (ARPA), it is against the law to excavate, remove, damage, alter or deface archaeological resources on federal or Indian land. It’s also illegal to traffic materials or items found on such land.

&#8220What these people did is a violation of ARPA,” Montague said. &#8220This is classified as a felony, and we will work with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The park has a 100 percent conviction rate.”

Penalties for ARPA violators include being fined $20,000 and imprisoned two years. Subsequent convictions could result in $100,000 fines and five years in prison.

The relic hunters were looking for artifacts they could auction on Web sites, Montague said.

&#8220They’re selling them or keeping them for their private collections. You can go on eBay and find stuff from Vicksburg, which fetches a pretty penny.

For the artifact snatchers, vandalizing federal land is &#8220a hobby,” the ranger said.

&#8220It’s their main line of business. Our mission at the National Park Service is to preserve generations of history, and things like this make it very difficult for us to do that.”

The most noted vandalism at the park came in November 2003 when Mark Vincent Peterson, then 33, was accused of spray painting 11 monuments. Reports of vandalism found Nov. 20-23 included 12 locations inside the park’s boundaries and nine outside.

Six churches, a Jewish temple, an outdoor city restroom at Riverfront Park and the military park’s North Carolina monument on Confederate Avenue were vandalized. The spray painted messages read: &#8220Jesus is coming. Repent y’all.”

Peterson was taken into custody Nov. 25 at Navy Circle, off Washington Street near the Mississippi River bridges. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2004.

After two years of confinement at a mental health facility within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, Peterson was released to his parents by U.S. District Judge David Bramlette III.

Under state and federal laws, a person who is mentally incompetent when a law is broken cannot be held responsible.

Before that, in 2001, then-27-year-old Charles W. Morfin of Los Angeles faced a possible one-year prison sentence and $100,000 in fines for taking a piece of wood off the USS Cairo, the military park’s ironclad Union gunboat. He ended up spending three years on probation and paying $3,000 in fines. He was also prohibited from entering any national park during his probation.

Under Mississippi law, vandalism that causes more than $1,000 in damage carries maximum penalties of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

At the Texas Memorial, the 11 steps leading to its main portion honor other Confederate states. A live yucca plant, native to Texas and the southwestern United States, stands next to a bronze statuary that symbolizes those who served from Texas.

The memorial lists all Texas units on the defense line, in Johnston’s Army and in Walker’s Texas Division.