Robert H. Rose, Park Naturalist

On the evening of November 2 returned from Berkeley where I have been investigating Bancroft Library records of the Kino Missions. I also gave assistance to the Field Division Staff in drawing up museum exhibit plans. Junior Naturalist Charlie Steen has been at headquarters the entire month with the exception of a few days among northern Arizona and New Mexico with Fanning Hearon and Paul Wilkerson of the Division of Motion Pictures, and approximately one week of relief duty in the latter part of the month at Tonto National Monument. Junior Naturalist Dale Kink continues on leave in connection with his scholarship at Yale University. The vacancy incurred by his absence remains unfilled to date.

Gifts and Accessions

A number of bulletins and periodicals from duplicate sets in Field Division of Education were delivered to the Headquarters Library and have been taken up on our records. From that Division we have also received a 1200-capacity lantern slide cabinet, a consignment of 200 slides sent for color work, and a lot of 12 slides of old mission records.

Bird Banding Notes

Only 23 new birds were banded at the Casa Grande station during November. Two factors account for this very low number: there is a large amount of natural feed in this area and the birds have also learned that they can get out of a trap through the same aperture through which they entered. It is both amusing and annoying to see one or more birds hopping about the first compartment of a sparrow trap then turn and fly through the entrance as soon as the eager bird bander nears. Six returns have been recorded so far this season. One return is of particular importance for the bird was not banded at this station. 35/6502, a Gambel Sparrow was taken on November 12 but has not repeated. The band number has been sent to the Bureau of Biological Survey for information.

One other Gambel Sparrow, three house finches and a Bendire Thrasher have been registered as returns. Gambel Sparrow 35/38215 which was caught and banded October 26, 1935, was captured on October 13 this year. Bendire Thrasher 34/256919, banded October 22, 1935, returned on October 28. During the evening of November 18, 23 house finches were taken with nets from the picnic ramadas; three of the birds netted proved to be returns, all were banded in the same area last year.

Louis Caywood at Tumacacori reports that he also is having trouble getting birds into traps because of the abundance of natural feeds.

The station that has really banded birds this month is Pipe Spring. Leonard Heaton has banded 71 Gambel Sparrows, 9 Rocky Mountain Song Sparrows and 2 Canyon Wrens since November 4. He has recorded three returns, all banded during the first five days of last April.

BIRD BANDING TOTALS

Bancroft Library Research

I arrived at headquarters with some 250 to 300 pages of transcripts in Spanish from the missions records most of which were already translated. About two weeks were spent in revising the translations and in organizing this material for use in some two or three articles of 20 to 25 pages each for the Supplement. In this month's Supplement will be found the first of the series which deals with Cocospera, San Ignacio, Magdalena and Imuris. Particular attention is called to the reproduction of the original Kino burial record. This is probably the first time that photographic reproduction of this notice has been published. Prints from these negatives have been supplied to the custodians of Tumacacori and Casa Grande. Cocospera burial and baptismal records running as late as 1836 have also been photostated and prints supplied to Tumacacori.

Outside Lecture Contacts:

The following outside lecture contacts have been made and have not been previously reported in this section:

l. Illustrated lecture on Southwestern Monuments before CCC Spike Camp, Strawberry Canyon Camp, Berkeley; attendance 35.

2. Illustrated lecture on Southwestern Monuments 12:00 noon Thursday, October 22, before the California State Hotel Greeters Association, convention in Oakland; attendance 400.

3. An illustrated lecture on Southwestern geology on November 6 before the geological honor society, San Diego State College; attendance 20.

4. An illustrated lecture at 9:00 a.m. on the morning of November 7; Southwestern Archeology and Geology; combined science classes of San Diego State College; attendence 180.

Miscellaneous work:

The 1200 spaces in the lantern slide cabinet have been numbered and letters of the alphabet assigned to the individual racks. This project will continue until the slides have been assigned their numbers and a catalogue of them prepared.

About 135 photographic negatives of Sonora Missions were loaned to Bancroft Library. They secured prints for library and research purposes, then returned negatives and prints to this office for captions and identification. Some eight pages of detailed notes were supplied which required about one and one half days in compilation. The notes and prints were then returned to the Bancroft Library to have a place in their collections.

Several small items of routine correspondence together with a few days on relief public contacts work concludes the resume of my activities for the three weeks since returning from Berkeley.

(click on image for a PDF version)

Visitor Contacts Figures

We had 14,283 visitors for the month which compares very favorably with 14,869 for last month (October), and with 11,204 for November of last year.

The largest gains as against last year are at White Sands and Casa Grande. The gain at Casa Grande is certainly due in great part to the heavy run of winter visitors from eastern states who have come to Phoenix and Tucson earlier and in larger numbers than for some years.

We gave 1,299 guided field trips as against 1,072 a year ago and 1,348 last month. Here again we hold up pretty well for November when we are generally expecting a drop.

These guided field trips handled 7,926 visitors as against 6,184 last month and 6,354 a year ago. Here is a nice gain over last month and over the same month a year ago. To handle this increased number of visitors, however, we dropped in our party time. A year ago this November our field trips averaged 48.8 minutes; last month they averaged 39 minutes and this month the average is 35.2 minutes. This drop does not come at the monuments of heaviest attendance. Casa Grande, Montezuma Castle show a slight gain in party time and Tumacacori shows only a slight loss. These three handled half the field trips for the month. The difference seems to come for the greater part among the monuments with smaller numbers of parties. Casa Grande handled one-fourth of all the guided field trips, 335; Tumacacori coming second with 222 and Aztec third with 127. Note that Aztec, Casa Grande and Tumacacori, all being on fairly level ground with trips of about the same length, averaged a trifle over 29 minutes per trip at each place. Montezuma and Tonto, with longer walks up steep grades, run 34 and 38 minutes. El Morro, Bandelier and De Chelly, Chaco and Chiricahua, with much longer walks, take a correspondingly longer time. Does this mean that a guide can hold his audience for about half an hour plus any extra walking that may be necessary?

Museum trips were 691 this November against 295 last year and 997 last month. The sharp fall from last month seems to be due to 154 parties which were not given the museum trip at Casa Grande, being turned loose in the museum without a guide, and about a hundred parties at Walnut Canyon who could not be handled at the headquarters because the man in charge was working on the trail under roads and trails money.

The average time of the museum trips fell from 20.3 minutes last year to 15.1 this year; the previous month being 16.8 minutes. Aztec, Montezuma and Tonto fell about four minutes each and Casa Grande remained about the same.

Further studies must be made at Casa Grande. The main trouble comes on Sundays and holidays when we have a peak load in the afternoons and the total attendance gets above about 200 for the day. The boys haven't developed a technique for handling the peak load.

By Zeke Johnson, Custodian

(Zeke's report reaches us just as the press starts to roll — last minute flash!)

I have been working all this month on the trails. Wish I could go back and put in about 20 more days but I have run out of funds. I have entertained 29 visitors this month and there is another small party going out tomorrow. The roads are still very good and nothing to hinder people from seeing that country yet.

I am very much thrilled over a discovery I made the other day. I was working about half way between Agusta and Caroline Bridges and at lunch time I was in the narrow canyon where the sun does not shine very much at this time of year, but I could see that about thirty feet above me the sun was shining warm and bright on the cliff. I crawled up a broken ledge thinking that it would be nice to eat my lunch there when to my surprise I saw a ledge full of houses, within 80 yards of the trail over which I have walked for more than twenty years. There is one large kiva with the roof almost complete and a fine ladder standing in the hatchway with the small willows still holding the rungs in place. I could not tell how many rungs are on the ladder because of the debris which the pack rats have piled up around its base; only three and a half feet show between the top of the pile and the hatch. Beside the kiva are two well preserved stone and adobe houses with no roofs but walls which are in a fine state of preservation. A small barrel shaped structure abuted against one of the houses. Six or eight rooms with walls of fine masonry but partly torn down are also on the ledge. There is a lot of broken pottery and flaked stone lying about. I picked up six arrow points and several broken ones. You know, I felt like a foolish kid to have passed so near these ruins for so many years and not know of their presence, but some one had found them before I did many years ago; a few pits have been dug in the ruins but the kiva has not been touched.

Nearly every group of people that makes the trip to the bridges wants to know if there are any prehistoric houses to be seen and I have always had to tell them that we were aware of just a few, and those not very interesting. Now, after I build two short ladders and clean up around the ruins I can say "Yes, some of the very best" and they won't have to travel more than one hundred yards out of the way. I am just as proud of those ruins as any man my age can be. They add one-third to the value of the trip.

In my September report I told you of a big flood that came down Armstrong Canyon. The greatest flood I have ever seen in this country came down White Canyon the last week in October; the Armstrong flood was just a garden stream in comparison. The scene all the way up the canyon is changed; three willow patches through which the trail went are gone and some large logs with which I talked each time I passed are washed away also. One of the big metal Park Service signs which I had nailed to an eight-foot log and then pushed as high as I could reach is gone and there are bits of water carried brush three feet above the top spike which held the sign in place. Nearly all the camp ground under the Caroline Bridge is gone. Thirty-five feet in the White Canyon side and 20 feet on the Armstrong side were washed out. I used to have six hitching poles in a row but only two are left and I wish the others had washed away too for the camp ground is ruined. These late floods have raised havoc with the trails but I have them pretty well fixed now except that the trail from Agusta Bridge to the ladder is very tough. I will try and do some work up there early next spring.

One Navajo came down to the Monument after his buck this fall but I put the bee on him. There were several hundred does and fawns within a few miles of the Monument after shooting began on the mountain but they are well scattered now. Five mountain sheep were still in White Canyon when I left this morning.

I may go back for a few days and fix things up for I wasn't satisfied when I left, but I could smell the roast turkey and pumpkin pie. There are three prospectors near the monument and I do not know what they will do with my tent and supplies if they find I am gone for good, so I'd better go back for a few days before locking up for the winter.

M. S. Sager of Washington, D. C., and Superintendents Jesse Nusbaum and M. R. Tillotson and D. H. Madsen of Salt Lake City visited me at the Bridges not long ago.

I have some letters from people asking if they can see the Bridges at the last of this month. I answered that the roads are all right now but that they may be blocked with snow at any time.

I think that this has been a very interesting year at the Monument. More people than ever before have visited the Bridges and practically all have been from states other than Utah. I have heard no bad reports of the other monuments and nearly everyone seemed very much pleased with the one I have the honor to represent. I wish everyone of our bunch the compliments of the coming season.

Another month has counted its days into the past and we have here made a record of its successes and failures. We hope the balance falls on the good side and there are not too many failures.

We seem to be in a period of considerable shifting of men and we might warn you that there is more to come, but it is all weaving a pattern of efficiency and the shifts are not without reason. The thing that is causing us about as much worry as any other, here in the office, is the lack of a register to choose from. We need an archaeological register the worst way and it may be several months yet before one is made up. That last archaeological examination proved to be the Waterloo of most of the students we have talked with. The hundred questions seemed to be about half eastern and half western archaeology and the eastern students missed the western questions and the western students missed the eastern questions. The highest standing I have heard of yet is in the low seventies.

Our work is now going into its winter phase; there is practically no let-up in the office work, but the visitor load lightens a bit and shifts from the north to the south part of the district. The work of the men changes in some cases from handling visitors to protection problems, research work and planning for the next season. The men in the south part of the district have their troubles intensified, peak load problems become critical and the general tempo of their work is stepped up well above normal.

A visit to White Sands National Monument the past month has built up quite a lot of enthusiasm between ourselves and Mr. Charles as to methods of handling that Monument after the completion of the headquarters area when we hope to be able to deliver some real service and get some real facts about the class of visitors we have there.

It was a very pleasant meeting we all had with the representatives of the Government of Mexico over at El Paso early in the month and especially pleasant from my own standpoint to get the visit with you, Connie, Herb, McColm, and all the others. It is a fine gang we have when you get them all together.

We are looking forward to a busy December. Phoenix, Tucson and El Paso are already filling up with winter visitors and the hotel men tell us they are expecting the best season for many years.