Gila Cliff Dwellings An Administrative History

Stabilizations At Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was established to protect what in 1907 was a single and very remote archeological site, and the withdrawal of a mere 160 acres was deemed sufficient for that purpose. Despite an expansion in 1962 to include additional archeological sites, the monument still comprises only 533 acres. As a result of the monument's original purpose and its small size, most attention applied to the management of resources has focused on cultural ones—specifically, stabilizing the cliff dwellings and mitigating the potential for damage to the prehistoric architecture that might be inflicted by visitors.

A brief overview of stabilization and interpretation activities—which overlap in their mission to protect the ruins—divides easily into four periods: 1907 to 1933, when the Gila National Forest initially administered the monument; 1933 to 1962, when the Park Service administered the monument prior to its expansion; 1962 to 1975, when the Park Service administered the monument after the expansion; and 1975 to the present, when administrative responsibility was returned to the Gila National Forest.

Stabilization I
1907 to 1933

Unfortunately, designation as a national monument in 1907 entailed no funds for halting the effects of time and vandals at Gila Cliff Dwellings. Nor was protecting prehistoric sites a clearly defined mission during the early years of the Forest Service, the agency responsible for administering that remote archeological monument until 1933. Protection of the site relied on posted cloth signs that designated the legal status of the cliff dwellings, the incidental patrols of the McKinney District ranger, and a wire fence that the ranger built with the help of cowboys from the TJ ranch. No stabilization activities were undertaken, although in 1917 the district ranger did obscure some graffiti with a mud slurry and occasionally with soot from burning pitch. [1]

Stabilization II
1933 to 1962

In June 1933, responsibility for Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was transferred to the Park Service. Nearly two years later, G. H. Gordon, an assistant engineer for Southwest National Monuments, drove 53 miles from Silver City, New Mexico, over increasingly worse roads to the Goforth Ranch on Sapillo Creek. There he mounted a saddle horse to cover the next 20 miles to the monument in the heart of the Gila Wilderness. The first employee of the Park Service to see this isolated monument, Gordon reported that the ruins were in fact worthy of recognition [2] and he drew up a brief plan for developing the monument. [3] Among his recommendations were the inclusion of the prehistoric dwellings in "the plan for Ruins Stabilization" and the construction of a fence in Cliff Dweller Canyon. The fence was built as a cooperative gesture by the Gila National Forest Service in 1938, but the first activities to stabilize architecture at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument did not occur until 1942.

In March of that year, "Doc" Campbell was hired as a nominal custodian and directed as his primary duty to monitor the condition of the cliff dwellings. Four months later, Charlie Steen, a junior archeologist with the Southwestern National Monuments staff, arrived at the cliff dwellings to begin five days of stabilization work at the prehistoric site. With the help of a hired man, Steen chinked undercut sections of wall, built dry masonry supports under a few breached walls, and supported a cavity that threatened to undermine yet another wall. [4] Afterwards, the men measured for a ground plan using a Brunton pocket transit and a steel tape, dug two trenches to recover sherds, gathered and burned trash from the ruins, and cleared the trail leading to the ruins.

Unfortunately, activities by the Southwest National Monuments program were dramatically curtailed as funds were cut and staff joined the armed services during the Second World War. Gila Cliff Dwellings was not officially revisited until 1948, at which time Steen reported some structural damage that would require stabilization. Seven years passed, however, before funds were allocated for repairs.

Impetus for the next round of stabilization work at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument began in June 1954, when Marjorie Lambert, the curator of archaeology at the Museum of New Mexico, wrote to Erik Reed, who was the archeologist for Region III of the Park Service. [5] Accompanied by members of the Grant County Archaeological Society, Lambert had recently visited the ruins, which were managed as an uninterpreted reserve unit, and she was writing to express concern about damage to the prehistoric architecture caused by people walking on the tops of walls and otherwise touching the masonry. Lambert also expressed dismay about the defacing presence of graffiti on walls and pictographs.

In response to a subsequent inquiry by John Davis, general superintendent of Southwestern National Monuments, "Doc" Campbell acknowledged the prevalence of graffiti, adding that this problem could not be controlled without supervising visitors. [6] He observed that some structural wear and tear did occur, especially in Cave 4, where people tended to walk on walls to avoid a dangerous ledge on the outside. Campbell's observations about access and safety drew attention. When Roland Richert, an assistant for the Ruins Stabilization Unit of the Park Service, arrived in July 1955 with five Navajo laborers to further stabilize the architecture of the monument, a wooden stile was built to facilitate passage over the east wall of Room 19, and two masonry steps were added on the far side of the wall. Along the dangerous sloping ledge outside of Rooms 21 and 22 in Cave 4, a three-foot-wide trail was built and stoutly supported by a steel-reinforced, tinted concrete retaining wall. [7] Providing safe and obvious paths through the ruin mitigated the most contemporary threat to the prehistoric architecture: people. In addition, Richert and his crew invested a little more than 10 work-days of labor improving the trail that climbed through Cliff Dweller Canyon to the ruins.

Repair and support of the architecture included the placement of integral or reinforcing members to span holes in the outer walls, capping some walls, resetting another wall undermined by pothunters, and patching large holes—one of which was also the product of pothunting. More than a dozen small holes gouged by visitors into other walls were also patched with tinted cement. [8]

The last stabilization activity before the monument was expanded and permanently staffed occurred in 1962, when "Doc" Campbell constructed a small buttress wall in Room 31 to support an overhanging rock slab that threatened to fall on visitors and the architecture. [9]

Stabilization III
1963 to 1975

In April 1962, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was expanded to incorporate more archeological sites, including the TJ Ruin, which became a detached unit of the monument. This expansion ultimately stemmed from brief explorations of Campbell, Richert, and Vivian seven years earlier. In 1962, construction also began on a paved road to the remote site that was expected to bring in a lot of visitors. As part of preparations for the anticipated increases in visitation, Vivian and Dee Dodgen excavated most of the site to salvage what archeological material remained. Although their work was primarily scientific, some stabilization work was performed. The excavation of Room 10 required that the trail entering the ruin be moved from that room to Room 9. Sani-soil, a dust palliative, was applied to the rest of the trail in Cave 3. A plate and turnbuckle was set in Room 27, anchoring the northeast corner to a large boulder across the room. [10]

By his own admission Vivian's stabilzation was stop-gap, but the archeologist felt that more thorough work should await the planned development of a better trail system through the ruins. [11] In August 1967, however, William Gibson, acting superintendent of the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, reported that the northeast corner of Room 27 was again deteriorating. [12] After visiting in November to assess the condition of the ruins, Richert, by then chief of the Mobile Stabilization Unit, recommended a general program that included repairing undercut areas, capping walls, tightening masonry around openings, some replastering, and trail work. [13]

Richert's major concern was controlling the flow of visitors, which had increased from 711 in 1955—the last time he had visited the cliff dwellings—to 25,000. He even suggested that staffing shortages might necessitate partially closing the fragile ruins to adequately protect them from further deterioration.

Trails and the control of visitors subsequently became a major topic of discussion as Richert's recommendations for stabilization were reviewed, and opinions divided on the issue of partial closure. In the regional office, some suggested that the visitors' trail terminate in Cave 3, with a viewing platform in Room 19. The wooden stile could be removed and the east wall raised to prevent entry into Caves 4 and 5; after looking into the farther caves, visitors would then turn around and exit through Room 9, the same way they had come into the ruins. [14] Other staff members—including Richert, who had raised the issue initially, and William Lukens, the new superintendent at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument—felt the proposal to close the ruins beyond Room 19 was too severe a measure, one that might aggravate bottlenecks in the flow of traffic and that would surely and perhaps unnecessarily compromise the interpretation of the prehistoric site. [15] They favored a one-way trail through the caves, beginning in Room 9 and exiting just west of Room 25 by means of steps cut into the rock or with a wooden ladder.

The archway in Cave 3 was stabilized with a metal rod and cement in 1963. Visitors enter the ruin through this arch. In 1968, the addition of a ladder descending from Cave 4 permitted a one-way path for people to walk through the ruins. Note the threatening cavity beneath the two-story structure.

Ultimately, staff at the regional office concurred with the trail recommendations of Richert and Lukens. The ruins were kept open, and the current trail through the architecture, with the wooden ladder descending from Cave 4, has remained essentially unchanged since Don Morris and a crew of San Carlos Apaches improved it in July 1968. Although soil cement had been proposed as a trail surface, a heavy application of Sani-soil to packed earth was found to sufficiently alleviate the problem of dust kicked up by visitors.

The ruin itself was extensively stabilized, [16] and Morris deemed the cliff site able to withstand heavy visitation for years to come, although he cautioned that the impact of visitors should be carefully observed, "particularly in Room 25, which could offer real difficulties should collapse ever threaten." [17] After stabilizing the ruin, the trail that had been built to pack construction supplies to the site was improved so that visitors leaving the ruins would not have to return the same way they came, reducing congestion on the canyon trail by half.

In November 1970, Lukens wrote to the regional director, requesting permission to stabilize the cave area below Room 25, where runoff from the mesa above had undermined four boulders. [18] These threatened to roll off the cliff onto the trail below. Since Lukens's proposal entailed some excavation, he suggested that it be performed by George Chambers, the archeologist at Wupatki National Monument, who was slated to visit Gila Cliff Dwellings soon. After fixing the boulders in place sufficiently to act as a retaining wall, Chambers reinforced with iron rod the lintel of the doorway in Room 27.

Stabilization IV
1975 to the present

Although administrative responsibility for the monument reverted to the Gila National Forest in 1975, the cooperative agreement specified that the Park Service would "furnish technical assistance and/or restoration crews in the event of major need for ruins stabilization...." [19] As a result of this clause, stabilization procedures and programming at the monument have not changed.

In late 1977 or early 1978, for reasons of safety, a short length of wooden railing was built south of Room 27, where the trail abruptly dropped 40 feet on one side. [20] At the same time, another wooden railing was constructed to block access through a collapsed section of the west wall into Room 17, where visitors had been marring the original plaster with graffiti and prying at the vigas. [21]

In 1987, four weeks of additional stabilization work at the cliff dwellings was supervised by John Morgart, an exhibit specialist with the Southwest Regional Office of the Park Service. [22] The scope of work was based on stabilization inspections in 1979, 1983, 1985, and 1986, as well as on a 1985 report by Bruce Wachter, a contract geologist who had examined the deterioration of bedrock in and around the caves. The stabilizations nearly 20 years earlier of Morris and his crew were still relatively intact, and the new work was largely devoted to reducing the hazard of rockfall along the trail through the ruins and to implementing preventative maintenance, including the repair of basal damage to walls caused by rodents and visitors. [23]

In 1989, additional work was done to reduce rockfall hazard along the trail that entailed the removal from near Cave 6 of a five-ton rock slab that threatened to fall. Currently, projects to stabilize the prehistoric architecture and the caves themselves are scheduled according to need. [24]