Salinas Pueblo Missions "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions Historic Structures Report

STABILIZATION AT ABO

Only a general description of the stabilization of the ruins of Abó can be considered here. For most of the work up to National Park Service participation beginning in 1980, the level of recording was too low to plot changes precisely. After 1980, stabilization records are usually quite detailed, but only elevation drawings of individual wall surfaces could present the work at that level of detail. Instead, this chapter will describe the projects in terms of the kind of work done and the general area affected.

First Stabilization, 1938-1940

During 1938, Joseph Toulouse began stabilizing of the surviving ruins of Abó in conjunction with his archeology. The effort was necessary to prevent further collapse of the high-standing walls, and to preserve the lower walls uncovered during excavation. [1]

Toulouse started construction on scaffolding along the west side of the west wall of the nave on June 28. On July 6 his crew began work on the scaffolding against the east side of the west wall. On the same day, the work crews inserted new round lintel beams in the belltower passageway above the surviving floor beams.

The carpenters completed the scaffolding on July 18, and the stabilization crews began intensive masonry work. The masons used a mortar containing portland cement, but the actual mix is not known. They filled all the holes and reconstructed the veneer of the walls where stone had fallen out. On the east face of the west wall, Toulouse had the masons fill the lower of the two channels left by the burning out of the bond beams under the vigas, because he could not replace both beams securely enough that they would stay in place. The bond beam sockets on the west face were also filled, except for a short section of narrow beam placed in the opening below the viga socket visible from the west. On the wall top, the crew built up the wall adjacent to the northern buttress, recreating the south side and top of the viga socket against the east side of the buttress. Toulouse removed the wooden canal that formed a drain through the wall at the base of the notch between the two surviving crenels, and filled in most of the crenelations with new stone work, apparently under the impression that the notches were the result of stone collapse.

Toulouse's crew finished the west wall of the nave by the second week of August, and began moving the scaffolding to enclose the "tower," the surviving high section of wall at the west side of the clerestory. During this time they cut beams in the nearby National Forest to be used to refill the beam sockets on the north face of the side chapel wall.

The scaffolding was in place by August 19, and the masons began work on the north face of the wall. They rebuilt the west wall of the side chapel in a long rising curve to act as a buttress against the north side of the "tower," and repaired the edges and faces of the corner structures themselves.

On October 3 the crew began jacking the beams into place. Toulouse replaced the ends of the six beams and corbels of the lower clerestory vigas, but did not put in replacements for the pair of bond beams beneath the clerestory beams, or for the upper clerestory vigas and corbels. He replaced the facing of virtually the entire north side of the wall above the socket for the viga that supported the balcony, and in the process filled in the upper balustrade socket. Toulouse made the replacement clerestory beams thin enough that the facing of the side chapel wall continued across them, so that they were sealed within the facing stone as seen from the north rather than exposed as they are now. The last beams were placed on October 6. The masons finished the top of the side chapel wall, and capped the walls with cement on October 26. In the process of finishing and capping, they obscured the outlines of the crenels along the wall top in this area. The final height of the "tower" was 42 feet 10 inches to the thin concrete capping placed by Toulouse. This was within a few inches of the actual finished height of the wall as completed in ca. 1651--the estimated full height is about 43 feet to the tops of the crenels.

Meanwhile, in late September the excavation crew relocated the baptistry. Its walls survived to about the height of the sill of the south window around most of the room. When the masons finished the "tower" on October 26, they moved the scaffolding to the south end of the wall and began to rebuild the walls of the baptistry at the same time. By November 21 the walls of the baptistry were to the height of the lintel of the doorway. Toulouse replaced the sill and frame of the south window of the baptistry with new wood, and built a similar window into the west wall--this window was his own creation, since the wall itself did not survive to enough height to have preserved any trace of the opening. The masons left the west wall flat above the lintel of the baptistry doorway, and a raw edge of original stonework up the south face of the south buttress. Further work in this area would be carried out in 1939.

In the 1938 season, Toulouse carried out stabilization work only on the west wall. The masonry replacement extended from the southwest corner of the nave and baptistry to the northwest corner of the west side chapel. None of the walls of the front terrace, porteria, choir stairs, east or north sides of the church, or any part of the convento received any stabilization treatment.

After returning to Abó in the second week of February, 1939, the work crews excavated and stabilized the rest of the mission. [2] The stabilization of the east wall of the church took priority over everything else. While the trenching of the convento was carried out in the last two weeks of February, 1939, masons quickly built up and capped the walls of the church. Most of the east wall stood only to a height of about 4 feet, including the walls of the convento rooms built against it. Only in the area of the southeast corner of the east side chapel did the wall survive above the mounds of rubble. Here, a portion of the corner and the east wall face at the south edge of the second-story entrance doorway to the balcony of the side chapel stood almost to the height of the top of the balcony entrance. The masons raised all the lower walls to a height of about 10 1/2 feet. In the process, they installed replacement beams as lintels for the two east doors of room 18, and as the stair edging for the choir stairs. Wall stabilization and replacement of the porteria beams and wall stabilization probably occurred at the same time.

In the area of the sacristy, the work crews cut and inserted new beams into the bond beam sockets beneath the corbel and viga sockets of the sacristy roof, and rebuilt much of the southeast corner of the side chapel above the height of about 4 feet. During the reconstruction of the corner, Toulouse erroneously restored the beam sockets of the corridor roof as rectangles of the same size as those in the sacristy. In reality they were round sockets about eight inches in diameter at the same height as the corbels under the sacristy beams. They had no bond beams beneath them. [3] The square beam sockets of the corridor, the bond beam beneath them, and the heights of the doorways into room 18 are guesses on Toulouse's part--no physical evidence for these details survived in 1938-39. [4]

The stabilization ended at the south edge of the doorway from the roof of the sacristy onto the balcony in the east side chapel. The masons restored the surviving lower south corner of this doorway incorrectly. The doorway originally had two masonry steps at the sill, so that the inner or west edge of the doorway was about two feet higher than the outer or east edge, just above the roof surface of the sacristy. Toulouse rebuilt the south portion of the sill as a peculiar series of surfaces that obscured the steps. Northward from this corner of the doorway, no stabilization was carried out in February.

The remainder of the church and all of the convento were stabilized during the period from the end of June to completion of the project in October, 1939. Toulouse conducted a final cleanup of scattered stone rubble from in front of the mission on

October 30 and 31, and turned over the keys to the first custodian of the park, Martin Campbell, on the afternoon of the 31st.

Figure 58. Abó in 1939. The interior of the church in the final stages of cleanup and stabilization. Replacement beams have been cut and set into the floor along the edges of the side chapel altar platforms and in front of the main altars. Stabilization of the side walls of the sanctuary near the side altars has not yet been carried out. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 6365.

State Stabilization, 1940-1900

After the completion of Toulouse's initial stabilization in October, 1939, very little structural maintenance work was carried out over the next seventeen years. In the first half of 1956 the Museum of New Mexico became aware that the high side-chapel wall had developed serious structural problems since 1939, and was threatening a major collapse. On July 9, at the request of the Museum, Charles Steen of the National Park Service and Stewart Peckham of the New Mexico Highway Department Archaeological Salvage Division carried out an initial evaluation of the deterioration. In a written report dated July 10, Peckham reported that the restored veneer on the north face of the tower above the replacement beams installed by Toulouse was separating from the core of the masonry. The cause seemed to be the shifting of the northern of the two top beams. At the same time Peckham noted that the fireplace in the southwest corner of the convento ambulatory had been destroyed by vandals, the southwest area of the wall of the kiva had collapsed, partially filling the kiva, and the steps up from the campo santo to the front terrace of the church were deteriorated and unstable.

In August, Gordon Vivian of the Southwest Monuments Association conducted a second appraisal of the condition of Abó at the request of the Museum. His findings corroborated those of Peckham and Steen. Vivian decided that the upper portion of the "tower" above the bell platform had been rebuilt by Toulouse in 1938 or 1939, and should be removed to lower the stress on the original sections of the walls. [5] Based on the unanimous findings of the structural experts, the Museum decided that repairs must be carried out on the high walls.

A lack of funds delayed the project until 1958, but in that year the repair of the "tower" began under the supervision of Albert Ely. Ely removed the sagging replacement veneer and took out the top two beams of the six placed in the walls by Toulouse. He rebuilt the veneer a second time, resting on the second pair of beams. While at the mission, Ely repaired a few other deteriorating areas. For example, he removed the remains of the fireplace in the south corridor, rebuilt the southwest wall of the kiva, and reconstructed the side chapel altars in masonry, replacing the altars found by Toulouse with new versions built of masonry. Ely seems to have changed the shape of several doorways along the south row of rooms during this work, apparently because their original plan could not be determined from the surviving deteriorated walls.

Another thirteen years of little structural maintenance ensued. In late 1971 the Museum again noticed the development of major cracks in the high walls above Toulouse's beams. Charles Steen stripped off the higher portions of the new veneer above the beams during an emergency project in March, 1972, leaving the lower three feet of the 1958 stonework in place. This stopped further sagging until a major reconstruction could be conducted.

The Museum began a complete re-stabilization of the high walls in July, 1973. David Kayser supervised the work under the direction of Thomas J. Caperton of the Museum of New Mexico. After an appraisal of the condition of the surviving walls, the Museum decided to remove the top five feet of the "tower," thereby reducing the weight on the lower sections of wall. All involved seemed to agree that the upper fifteen feet or so of the "tower" had been rebuilt by Toulouse, so original fabric would not be affected by the removal they believed. On July 24 the crew began disassembling the stonework, and by July 27 had reduced the height of the walls by five feet to a height of 37 feet 10 inches. On the shortened wall Kayser later roughly reconstructed the features that had been on the original wall top so that the profile of the wall as seen from the ground would look about the same as before the removal. This reconstruction raised the wall to the present height of 38 feet 10 inches above the floor of the nave.

Kayser and the crew filled the cracks in the "tower" with stone and a soil and cement mixture. Inside the cracks, Kayser used a mixture of 4 1/2 parts screened soil to two parts cement. As a grout between stones and for setting veneer into place on the exterior surfaces of the walls, he used a mixture of nine parts soil to one part cement. All repaired surfaces were coated with a concrete adhesive mixed with portland cement and clean soil. A similar coating painted the concrete capping on the top of the shortened "tower." In areas where the new stonework was poorly supported, the crew tied it to the older work with 3/8-inch iron reinforcing rods.

Major stabilization work on the high walls was completed by August 1, and Kayser began replacing the veneer on that day. After the new veneer had reached a height of about four feet, funding ran out and the work stopped. The remainder of the unveneered surface was finished with a soil-cement mixture and left as an irregular surface.

While carrying out the repair to the "tower," the main purpose of the stabilization, Kayser patched and repaired several other areas of the mission, using crewmembers with nothing else to do during slack workperiods. Most of the work consisted of the rebuilding of corners of doorways and replacing loose or fallen stone into holes in the walls. Kayser finished the stabilization project on August 22.

Although the emergency work saved the high walls of the "tower" in a sense, by preventing further collapse, the ruins of Abó were far from stabilized. The deterioration of lower walls continued, and the State was never able to acquire sufficient funding to conduct a thorough, complete stabilization and an ongoing maintenance program. As the stones loosened they began to fall, and posed an increasing threat to visitors. Finally, the State closed the National Monument in 1975, enclosing the ruins in a six-foot-high chain-link fence to keep visitors from entering the collapsing walls. The deterioration and the inability of the State to fund sufficient maintenance was a powerful factor in favor of putting the ruins of Abó under the management of the National Park Service as part of Salinas National Monument.

Figure 59. Abó as it appears today. The bell tower area is about 5 feet lower in this picture than in the previous photograhs, but its top has been reconstructed to have the same general appearance as it had before the removal of the upper masonry. This demolition and remodelling occurred in 1972. The lower four viga stubs set in the north face of the tower by Toulouse are still in place, as are the viga sections in the east face of the west wall and under the sacristy roofbeam sockets, but the upper pair of viga stubs in the tower are gone, removed in 1958. The wall for the first four feet above the surviving viga stubs is refaced, the result of the work of 1972. Courtesy National Park Service.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE STABILIZATION, 1980-1987

The 1982 Season at Abó

Salinas National Monument was created on December 19, 1980, but the National Park Service did not assume management of the sites of Abó and Quarai until October 2, 1981. Stabilization crews could not begin work at Abó until May, 1982.

The 1982 work was the first phase of a four-year stabilization project designed to pull the ruins into a safe, easily maintained condition for the first time since 1975. The first year was to cap walls and correct problems that could result in severe collapse or threaten visitor safety, with the goal of allowing visitation of the ruins beginning in 1983. The subsequent years would address lower priorities, but would find stabilization solutions to long standing problems of wall collapse and decay. One such solution was the installation of a drainage system to stop the pooling of water in some areas of the church and convento. The pooling was contributing to the decay of mortars and the sandstone itself in the lowest courses of masonry. [6]

Although Abó had not been stabilized since the work in July and August, 1972, a period of almost ten years, most of the damage that had occurred in the interval was mortar erosion and some loosening of stone in areas untreated since 1938-39. No major cracking or wall shifting had become apparent since the desperate measures undertaken on the "tower" in 1973. Apparently the repairs carried out by Kayser and Caperton had succeeded in stopping the separation of the various buttresses of the corner. The "Assessment of Effect" (XXX form) for the stabilization of Abó specified that the mortar would be a mixture of earth fill, natural clay, and calcium aluminate cement, mixed in the ratio of one part calcium aluminate, two parts screened earth, and two parts screened clay, with the earth and clay components selected so that the final dry color would match that of the original clay mortars used in the construction of the building. In the field, the stabilization crew experimented with various mixes and found that the calcium aluminate made the mortars too grey or pale for the proposed mixing ratio to be useable. Finally, a good color match was achieved with a mixture of fourteen parts screened earth, one part sand, and one part calcium aluminate. This made a weaker mortar than intended, but still stronger than the natural clay mortars used in the original construction. [7]

Stabilization in 1983

The stabilization crew changed the mortar mix for work in 1983. The mixture of fourteen parts earth to one part calcium aluminate used in 1982 was found to erode too easily, and a stronger mixture of seven parts earth to two parts calcium aluminate (a ratio of 3.5:1, close to the mixture proposed in the 1982 "assessment of effect") was tried in 1983. Again, the earth component was carefully selected so as to closely approximate the color of the original mortar. [8]

Stabilization in 1984

In March, 1984, the National Park Service carried out an intensive inspection of the ruins of Abó. With the completion of the initial stabilization the previous year, the Park Service could begin planning for long-term maintenance of the ruins. The 1984 inspection had as its primary goal the identification of probable future trouble-spots. One clear indication was that basal erosion of both mortar and the stones themselves was a continuing problem. The method of construction used by the Franciscans was a principal cause of this problem. Because they levelled the site by constructing an earthen platform with vertical stone retaining walls, they created a situation where earth fill was higher on one side of many of the wall bases. After the loss of the roofing over the platform and the later excavation of the ruins, the earth fill began to hold water and allow it to percolate through the retaining wall. This has caused the faces of the retaining walls to remain damp far longer than the higher masonry, encouraging mortar and stone decay. As a result, the wall faces along these areas of higher interior soil have tended to deteriorate more quickly and collapse sooner than the walls with no fill on one side. [9]

STABILIZATION OF QUARAI

First Stabilization, 1934 to 1935

On June 1, 1934, the Museum of New Mexico and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began the stabilization of Quarai as part of the excavation of the ruins. Edgar L. Hewett directed the stabilization, with graduate student Donovan Senter as field director of the archeology and Sam F. Hudelson as the field supervisor for the labor. A month later, on July 8, Paul Hudelson became the field supervisor. Frank Woodall served as foreman throughout the stabilization, heading a crew averaging twenty men. The men worked six hours a day, five days a week. [10]

The CCC began excavating along the north, west, and south outside wall surfaces of the church, where the facing stone had been removed. After they relocated the remaining solid structure below the grade of the fallen rubble, they began repairing the facing. By the end of July the veneer on the entire west and probably the north face had been repaired to a height of ten feet. Restoration of the window through the west wall of the nave began in the last week of July, and the lintel beams were replaced in early August.

Before any major excavation on the interior of the church, the workmen built a massive buttress against the east wall of the east transept. A major crack had developed in the north wall of the east transept, and the east transept wall threatened collapse. On July 9 the workmen began the excavation of a pit in the area selected for the buttress at the northeast corner of the transept. They found the crosswall dividing the sacristy into two smaller rooms, and at ten feet below the surface of the rubble mound they reached the flagstone floor. Using this as a foundation, they constructed a buttress 7 1/2 feet wide east to west, 10 feet long north to south, and 15 feet high. The upper 5 feet sloped steeply down away from the wall to encourage drainage. The crew completed the buttress on July 17, 1934. [11]

On July 18 the workmen began clearing out the western half of the sacristy in order to stabilize the doorway into the east transept. A few days later the CCC inserted new lintel beams over the transept doorway and rebuilt the section of wall that had fallen out above it.

Preparation for stabilizing the remains of the east nave wall began on July 20. However, the surviving stub of wall had weathered severely and the excavators had to dig into the rubble, searching for solid masonry. They soon found that the east wall had fallen into the church, and realized that the entire church had to be emptied of rubble before the surviving lower portion of the east wall could be uncovered and stabilized.

On July 23 the workmen began clearing the loose rock along the facade, looking for the edges of the main entrance. They needed the doorway open and stabilized in order to have an opening at the floor level of the church through which to haul the rubble filling the nave. As the crew cleared away the rubble, they found the rooms of the baptistry at the southwest corner of the church. Hudelson immediately decided to rebuild the western room of the baptistry and make it into an office and tool storage area. It could later be used as a visitor center for Quarai.

By July 31 the baptistry room had been built up and roofed, and the facade and main entrance of the church stabilized. The baptistry walls had been raised to a height of about 10 feet, and a roof built supported by 8 round vigas running north to south across the room. Hudelson put windows in the south and west walls of the church, and built a doorframe into the east doorway. On the interior, the south half of the room received a flagstone floor, while in the north half the carpenters built a floor of pine boards. The masons built a fireplace in the southeast corner of the room with a round chimney penetrating the roof.

The masons rebuilt the entrance doorway of the church. They reconstructed the sides of the door, building up the walls from the surviving stubs about 2 feet high. At 9 feet they place new lintel beams on the walls, but this was an estimated door height because no recognizable beam sockets survived. The masons added about one foot of stonework above the lintels, curving this masonry up at the sides to help support the overhanging broken edges of the front wall to either side. At the same time, they repaired the lower ten feet of the veneer on the east face of the southeast tower. This repair covered the scars where the choir loft stairwell room and bell tower had attached to the tower, and made a false opening through the wall from the southeast corner of the tower to the southwest corner of the convento.

At the end of July the workcrew began the removal of rubble from within the church. [12] By August 15 they had cleared the southern 40 feet of the nave to the flagstone floor. They were removing the last of the huge mass of rubble left by the fallen east wall of the nave. Once past this, the work of removing the debris speeded up considerably, because the fill dropped to a thickness of only about 6 feet with a much lower percentage of rock in the volume.

During the first half of August stabilization on the church walls continued slowly. The east wall face was cleaned off as it was uncovered, but the mound of rubble outside the wall prevented the beginning of stabilization of the wall top until most of the church was emptied and crewmen could be shifted to remove it. On the west wall, the workmen set the lintel of the window in place and built up the wall above it to within a few feet of the height of the surviving wall to either side, leaving a lower section of wall over the window.

Archeologist Donovan Senter left Quarai in the last week of August. Replacing him as field director of the excavations was Albert Ely, also a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. From mid-August, 1934, to May, 1935, the progress of the stabilization work cannot be given specific dates. However, Ely's photographs and excavation report allow a general narrative.

On the church, the lower half of the walls had been repaired. The crew rebuilt the veneer where necessary on the east side of the building, capped the east wall with concrete at a height of eight feet, and then rebuilt it with a concrete core to a height of twelve feet. They added a little more of the wall over the new lintel of the main entrance to fill the last overhang. The floor of the church was cleaned so that the flagstones, the surviving fragments of the stairway, and the side altars were all visible. The 5-foot-wide hole through the back wall of the apse had been filled, and at the same time the crew filled the beam sockets in the apse wall and at the mouth of the apse.

In the convento, the crew did very little stabilization as they emptied the rooms. On the west side, they inserted new lintels into the small window-like opening through the south wall of room 24, and rebuilt the veneer of the upper two feet of its west wall. In the patio, they rebuilt a portion of the north wall at the northeast corner. The badly deteriorated north and south walls of the convento were capped and built up to a level top four feet above ground level at the midpoints of the walls. At the southeast corner of the convento, the south wall reached a height of eight feet as a result of this capping, because of the sloping ground level down the hill to the east.

Figure 60. The nave of the church of Quarai in the fall of 1937. The photograph was taken after the completion of the first excavation and stabilization of the building. All of the surviving flagstones of the church floor remain undisturbed. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 87730.

The rest of the convento was left as it was found, with no rebuilding, remortaring, or capping. When Ely left in late April or early May, rooms 11, 19, 20, and the northern 20 feet of the east hallway remained unexcavated in the main area of the convento, and the kiva in the patio had not been found. The eastern and southeastern groups of ruins remained buried.

In May, the CCC crew found the kiva in the middle of the patio, and began removing the fill. This work may have been under the direction of Reginald Fisher, who mapped the church and convento during this month.

Ele Baker arrived at Quarai in August, 1935, and directed the excavations through the end of March, 1936. No photographs from Baker's excavations are available, but a series made in the fall of 1937 show the stabilization changes made during the eight months he worked in the mission.

Baker took up where Albert Ely and Reginald Fisher had left off. He directed the excavation of the last foot of fill from the kiva, uncovering the features on the floor and the ventilator shaft. He then turned the crew to the finishing of the main convento, emptying rooms 11, 19, 20, and the north end of the eastern corridor.

Baker and the crew excavated all the terrace steps and rooms of the east courtyard, "rooms" 28-40 and 69. In the process they found a circular kiva, room 31, over which the Franciscans had built one of the retaining walls for the first terrace. Baker excavated the west half of the kiva to its floor level, and then built a wall across the center of the structure to hold the fill of the east half of the room in place, while supporting the remains of the Franciscan terrace wall above. He began the excavation of the east half of the kiva, but stopped at a depth of about 3 feet. At this level he built a square drain hole through the dividing wall so that the eastern half of the kiva could drain rain and snowmelt into the west half.

Baker traced the south wall of the east courtyard and the east wall of the campo santo. In the process he found the group of rooms south of the east courtyard, and began excavating them. He cleared rooms 41-42, 44-51, 56, 58-59, and 68. In the small courtyard west of these rooms, designated room 43, he emptied all but the northwest quarter. Like his predecessors, Baker did little stabilization of the church or convento. In fact, no reconstruction or stabilization can be attributed to him.

Other Changes in 1934 to 1937

Several major changes to the ruins and the surrounding area occurred during the first series of excavations, but cannot be attributed to any one person. One of these changes was the construction of a second modern dwelling in the ruins. This may have been built by Baker or by a crew under the direction of someone else between early 1935 and the fall of 1937. [13] The workmen converted rooms 17 and 18 to a residence for the caretaker assigned to Quarai. [14] They raised the walls to a height of about 8 feet, cut a hole through the east wall of the convento, and installed doors and windows. The workmen set vigas running east to west across the walls, and constructed a roof on the rooms. In the northern room (17), they built a fireplace into the southeast corner.

During the same period work was done west and north of the mission complex. Between the summer of 1934 and fall, 1937, Mound J was excavated, revealing the Spanish structure on top of the pueblo foundations. Meanwhile, workmen built the main entrance road from the north, with the earliest construction taking place during the work by Senter and Ely, 1934-35. The road required a raised causeway about 3 feet high and 20 feet wide extending from the north gate to the northwest corner of the mission, to carry cars over the lower areas north of the church where bogs formed every time it rained. The road was improved several times between 1935 and 1940.

By the fall of 1937 the entire mission had been excavated to its original floor levels, and rubble cleared from around the walls. Some stabilization of the walls of the church had been carried out. However, most of the wall surfaces of the church and convento had not been repointed, nor had any walls been capped except the north and south exterior walls of the convento, the top of room 24, and rooms 3, 17, and 18, capped in the process of converting them to residences. The freshly exposed convento walls quickly began to deteriorate, and the high walls of the church continued the slow decay that had characterized them for almost three centuries. By 1939 it became obvious that the ruins needed a full job of stabilization to remain standing.

Second Stabilization, 1939 to 1940

After a pause of almost three years, Wesley Hurt arrived at Quarai to continue the excavations and to stabilize the ruins of the church and convento. He had trained under Joseph Toulouse during the first year of excavation and stabilization at Abó. On January 25, 1939, he and a crew of Works Progress Administration workmen began the excavation of the pueblo of Quarai. [15] For the next five months they cleared the plaza west of the church while delineating the exterior walls of the pueblo buildings. In May, 1939, Hurt and the crew turned to the mission buildings.

Figure 61. Quarai during the stabilization by Wesley Hurt, October, 1939. At this date the terrace in front of the church had been restored and the north wall of the west transept stabilized and built up to the height of the adjoining tower. The scaffolding has been moved into the apse. One strut of the scaffold is visible at the left edge of the tower at the south side of the east transept. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 6666.

During the second week of May, the crew stabilized the Spanish ruins west of the baptistry and began work on the convento. During the third week the crew repaired the porteria and the kiva. As part of the stabilization of the kiva, Hurt rebuilt the adobe-lined ventilator shaft in stone.

At the end of May, Hurt and the crew began excavating the remaining rooms extending south from the southeast corner of the east courtyard. They started where Baker had left off, at the south side of rooms 58 and 59, and the midpoint of room 51. Over the next seven months, Hurt carried the excavations to the south end of room 53 and two-thirds of the way across room 54. South of this point an irrigation ditch prevented further work in 1939. As the walls were exposed, the crew began capping and stabilization of the ruins.

In late May, while work continued on the southeastern rooms, Hurt had some of the crew begin work on the east courtyard. The crew built up the retaining walls and hauled dirt to fill behind the raised walls, levelling the terraces. They cleaned out the remaining fill and the crosswall from the round kiva, room 31, and cleaned up and stabilized the rooms along the east side of the courtyard.

By the end of July, most of the eastern area of the mission had been finished. The eastern courtyard and its associated rooms had been cleaned and stabilized, and most of the rooms in the southeastern area had been emptied of fill. In the southeast, the crew was still tracing some of the single walls enclosing what Hurt called "Patio 3," the open area between the east campo santo wall and the west side of the southeastern buildings. Hurt moved most of the workmen up to the church to begin final stabilization of its walls.

In the last week of July, the crew began with landscaping at the front of the church. They removed the irregular earth fill in the area of the front entrance, and capped the stone steps marking the edges of the platforms here. [16] From September, 1939 through the end of March, 1940, the workmen patched and stabilized the western convento and various portions of the church that had deteriorated since 1935, and then began capping all walls in the western convento, the eastern courtyard, and the southeastern rooms. They levelled the wall tops and built a capping of stone on top. The capping tapered to a narrow edge, making a stone crest or ridge along the walls to encourage drainage and keep people from climbing on the structures.

In September, 1939, the workmen built a scaffolding in the church and began capping and stabilizing the upper walls of the building. They began at the northwest corner of the interior. Here they capped the north wall of the west transept, the northwest tower, and the west and north walls of the apse. Hurt believed that the walls in these areas stood to the height of the tops of the towers, and raised the walls on either side of the tower to that height. Apparently the effort in this area indicated that to raise the rest of the transept and apse walls to the same height would take up too much time, so the "reconstruction" of these non-existent wall tops was discontinued and the walls capped at their surviving height around the remainder of the west side of the transept and north side of the apse. The masons then repaired and refaced the areas around the west beam sockets in the apse and the north sockets of the west transept. They filled the socket for the transverse viga above the mouth of the apse, and reinserted a beam into the lowest socket of the beams for supporting the retablo.

Moving the scaffolding, they capped the tower at the south side of the west transept in December, and again repaired and refaced the wall around the south beam sockets of the west transept and the sockets at the northwest corner of the nave. In this area they restored two beam sockets and part of a third at the south face of the tower, and filled most of the sockets of the upper and lower clerestory beams. They reinserted a beam in the lowest clerestory socket, as Toulouse had done at Abó. Above the restored sockets south of the face of the tower, the masons built the wall up to within 1 1/2 feet of the original height.

Moving the scaffolding again, the workmen began capping the top of the west wall of the nave. They built up the stonework above the west window to the height of the surviving wall, and then raised the wall south of the window to about half the height of the beam sockets. At the south end of the nave wall, the masons stabilized the tower and repaired and refaced the surfaces, both exterior and in the nave around the first two beam sockets. North of the tower along the nave wall, they raised the wall to its original height, rebuilding the upper half of the next two beam sockets. The fifth and sixth sockets were stabilized at half their original height. North of the sixth socket, only the lower two or three inches of the sockets survived--these were stabilized out of existence when the walls were capped.

By the first week of February, 1940, the crew had completed the stabilization of all walls of the convento and the entire west side of the church, and were working on the front of the building. They set up the scaffolding at the center of the facade and prepared to rebuild the doorway from the choir loft through the facade. About February 9, a storm blew the scaffolding over, damaging it enough to halt work on the high walls of the church for a few weeks while it was repaired.

While the carpenters repaired the scaffolding, Hurt built the visitor contact station, although he referred to it as the "headquarters building." Hurt had this structure built of the same red sandstone as that used in the church. It was a rectangular building about 24 feet long and perhaps 12 feet wide, with a roof at a height of about 7 1/2 feet supported on vigas extending six inches beyond the exterior faces of the walls. It had two large doorways, one on each of the two long sides. The doorways were approximately four feet wide and seven feet high. The masons built a fireplace with a rectangular chimney in the south end of the building. Finally, they constructed a retaining wall along the east side with two steps down to grade, and filled behind the wall to create an artificial platform around the kiosk, level with the parking area a few feet to the west.

The scaffolding was ready by the end of March, and work began again on stabilizing the church walls. During mid-April the crew rebuilt the facade above the entrance door, recreating an approximation of the original choir loft door opening onto the choir balcony. Then they lifted new lintels for the choir doorway and set them into place in the traces of the surviving sockets. Above the lintel they rebuilt a portion of the facade wall. This wall was left with a shallow V-shaped top profile. At the sides it reached to within 2 feet of the original height of the facade parapet, but in the center, above the choir doorway, it was only about two feet high.

At the end of April Hurt moved the scaffolding to the southeast corner and began work on the east wall. By mid-May the crew had rebuilt the choir loft doorway, replacing wooden lintel beams in the last traces of the beam sockets above the doorway. The masons capped the south wall of the nave and the southeast tower, and repaired the facing around the choir loft door and up the tower.

By the end of June, crewmen began work on the interior of the church. They removed and relaid much of the flagstone in the nave and transepts, probably because the original flagstones had shifted, making the flooring irregular. [17] This relaying of the floor destroyed the arrangement of flagstone outlining the altar platforms in front of the two side altars, and the platform for the stairs to the main altar. At the same time, the workmen removed the decayed traces of the main altar steps and built replacement steps inside the mouth of the apse. These replacement steps were located about 1 1/2 feet north of the originals and were of the wrong riser and tread sizes. With the completion of this construction in late June, Hurt reached the end of the time available for capping and stabilization of the church. He apparently assumed that the east walls of the church and many of the details would be finished in a later season's work.

Meanwhile, the first week of February the crew finished excavating the known rooms of the southeastern area of the ruins. They removed the fill from the last few feet of room 54 and stabilized the walls. At the same time they apparently moved the irrigation ditch a few feet to the south so that it passed just south of the ruins.

In the last week of May, Hurt and the crew began a few final details to clean up the site. This involved the removal of rubble and brush from various parts of the site, and the removal of the residence built into the baptistry a few years before. Hurt removed the roof, doors, and windows, and took down the walls to about half the height of the windows. In mid-June the crew removed the roof, doors, windows and upper wall of the residence built into rooms 17 and 18. He left the outlines of the two windows on top of the east wall, as well as the doorway cut through the wall. Finally, on August 9, Hurt and the crew packed up the equipment and left Quarai.

With Hurt's departure, Quarai entered a period of 32 years during which it received no further stabilization work. Most of the convento walls and the structural remains on the southeast side of the convento had been stabilized well enough to survive this period of neglect reasonably well. The high walls of the church along the east side of the apse, the entire east transept, and the east central tower never received any stabilization during the effort from 1934-1940, and in fact remained unmaintained until 1978. They stayed virtually unchanged during these years, apparently because they had reached a point of equilibrium some time before. In other words, although the building had been acquired by a public agency in 1932, much of it survived until 1978 only because of its sound original construction, rather than through modern preservation techniques.

Stabilization as a State Monument, 1940 to 1972

The State conducted occasional inspections of the ruins through the years from 1940 to 1972, but performed no further stabilization. In 1956, when sudden concern for the condition of Abó triggered a flurry of stabilization activity, Quarai was inspected and found to need only patching and a little maintenance. It was showing no major areas of deterioration.

Because of the part-time arrangement for a local custodian, Quarai went unprotected for days at a time during these 32 years. As a result, in May, 1963, treasure hunters again cut a hole into the north wall of the apse. The hole, 2 1/2 feet deep, 5 feet wide and 3 feet high, removed a portion of new masonry rebuilt by Ely in 1934-35, filling a similar hole that had been present since at least 1890. [18] The hole remained open, and in fact was cut deeper into the wall over the next few years, until by 1972 it had been punched entirely through the north wall of the apse.

The Stabilization of 1972

Finally, in 1972 the State was able to put together funding for a major stabilization effort at Quarai. The field work began on March 17, 1972, and continued to September 7 of the same year under the direction of Tim Valder, with his wife Linda making notes and keeping the records of the archeological work carried out in association with the stabilization. The work was stopped on September 7 more or less in the middle of the project, leaving a number of tasks unfinished. [19]

During this stabilization the workmen used "pencapsula" as the stabilizing agent mixed with local soil for most of the work. In some areas a mixture of soil and soil cement was used. Pencapsula was a "polyresin combined with mineral spirits." Within two years most of the pencapsula pointing washed out of the newly stabilized areas.

During the stabilization, the crew removed all the flagstone from the floor of the church, the porteria, and the front terrace. The project stopped before the flagging could be reset on the levelled floors. A planned drainage system for the church was not built.

Figure 62. Quarai in 1956, and generally as it appears today. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico, # 6669.

In the church, local sandstone and pencapsula-stabilized mortar were used to cap about fifty percent of the church walls. Only the west nave, west transept, and east nave walls were capped. The wooden lintel beams of the west window, front door and choir window, choir door and sacristy door were coated with pencapsula, as was the surviving white wall plaster high on the inner face of the west transept wall. The treasure-hunter's pit through the apse wall was not repaired.

The small chapel excavated by Stubbs in 1959, southwest of the church, was cleared of blown fill. About sixty percent of the wall top was capped, using local sandstone and pencapsula mortar.

In the convento, about half of the walls were capped and repaired. Four rooms were stabilized using soil cement, and the rest with pencapsula mortar. Most walls were not grouted, nor was the planned drainage installed in the square kiva.

Three rooms of the "east ruin," along the east side of the second courtyard, were capped with local sandstone and pencapsula mortar. Blown fill was removed from two rooms, and one undercut wall was repaired, but most rooms were left uncleaned, uncapped and ungrouted. In the "southeast convento," about one quarter of the rooms were capped and grouted, and emptied of fill. The drainage systems intended for these areas were not constructed.

In 1973 Charlie Steen reported that all the stabilization work of 1972 using pencapsula had completely failed and the work using soil cement was in bad shape. He attributed the failure to the severe winter. Worse, sections of four walls in the "southeast convento," completely stabilized with pencapsula, had collapsed. Steen stated that the entire stabilization project would have to be redone, using a better stabilization agent. [20]

The Stabilization of 1978

In 1978 the office of New Mexico State Monuments of the Museum of New Mexico carried out a complete stabilization of the ruins of Quarai. All wall surfaces of the church, convento, and associated ruins were pointed and capped. Within the church, the flagstone floor was rest with a slight slope to encourage drainage. The stabilization crew found only enough flagstone to cover the nave of the church, and left the transept as bare dirt. [21]

In the convento, the flagstone floor of the porteria (room 22) was not replaced. However, the crew removed blown fill that had accumulated, and found a few stones remained in place. In the sacristy storeroom, room 24, the original flagstone floor was found still in place after accumulated blown fill was removed. [22]

The crew removed accumulated dirt from the square kiva (room 27) and relocated its original floor surface, marked by a charcoal stain on an earthen floor. In the process the crew found the last traces of the fire pit in the floor, with a few small slabs of sandstone edging still in place. They replaced the sandstone slabs and rebuilt the tops of the walls back to the level of the grade in the patio. This made the walls a little more than seven feet high. [23]

In the southeastern rooms, room 52 was pointed and capped. Rooms 53 and 54 were backfilled to the same level as the surrounding grade, but their walls were not stabilized in any way. Four mixes of mortar were used for all the stabilization work at the mission, but its components were never specified in the stabilization notes. [24] However, the mortar had largely washed out by the time the National Park Service made its first inspection in 1983. The mortar may have been strengthened with soil cement, or it may have been unfortified adobe mortar.

Stabilization by the National Park Service

After the Federal government acquired Quarai in December, 1980, it was another eleven months before the National Park Service took over the upkeep of the site in October, 1981. Since cold weather was possible at any time, no stabilization could be attempted in the new units of the National Monument until spring of the next year. The 1982 season was devoted to critically-needed work at Abó, closed entirely because of unsafe conditions until the repairs of highest priority could be carried out. Quarai, in somewhat better condition, had to wait until 1983.

The Stabilization of 1983

The first inspection of Quarai for stabilization planning purposes took place on May 10 and 12 and June 7, 1983. It determined the areas of deterioration and allowed the park staff to set up a schedule for future repair work. [25]

The inspection checked for mortar erosion, basal erosion, voids and wall bulges, and salt deposits. It examined the walls for architectural defects such as cracks, leaning wall faces, veneer separation, and loose capping. The inspection found that Quarai showed signs of serious deterioration. These signs included mortar erosion and salt deposition along the bases of the walls, and mortar erosion and loose or missing capping along the wall tops. These were the same problems that previous inspections had found as far back as the 1930s.

One cause of the basal erosion and salt deposits was the poor drainage in the convento and church. It was obvious that a drainage project was needed at Quarai almost as much as at Abó. However, the construction of a drainage system was considered a lower priority than the critical repairs needed on the walls of Quarai and the drainage project required for Abó. Eventually, when the maintenance of all the sites catches up with the deterioration, a drainage system will probably be installed at Quarai.

During the inspection of 1983, several wall sections were considered to be in danger of collapse or were a safety hazard. The most severe conditions were seen in the patio area of the friary. The square kiva and the walls of the patio and corridor were all badly eroded and sagging. Lesser problems were seen in rooms 15 and 16, the doorway to room 11, and most of the southeast rooms, 44 through 47, 50 and 51, and 58 through 65. In the church, the east wall of the nave was in the poorest condition.

Rooms 33 through 40 of the east courtyard had also lost most of their mortar, but were of lower priority. The entire east courtyard was closed to visitors, except for a path from the east doorway of the friary south to the campo santo and then west across the front of the church to the main trail to the visitor center.

Mound J, with the pueblo rooms excavated in 1959 and the outline of Mound J House excavated sometime between the summer of 1935 and the fall of 1937, probably in mid 1935 to early 1936 by Ele Baker, was also in bad shape. These ruins had been left almost untouched since they were uncovered, and were rapidly crumbling away. [26]

Under the supervision of Adelicio S. (Sam) Chavez, the stabilization began in June and continued for eight weeks. During the two-month period, the maintenance crew stabilized mound J and several of the convento rooms. These included most of the west half of the friary. The square kiva, patio walls, corridor walls, the porteria and sacristy, and rooms 9 and 21 were stabilized, but not capped except for portions of the patio. Rom 11 along the eastern row of friary rooms was stabilized, as was the upper terrace outside the east door of the friary. The two large courtyards in the southeastern area (rooms 43 and 55) were stabilized but not capped. During this year the mortar used for stabilization was a mixture of fourteen parts dirt, one part plaster sand, and two parts calcium aluminate. [27]

The Stabilization of 1984

In 1984, the plaster sand was left out of the mortar mixture. This produced a stronger mortar and a better color match with the original mortar. During this year the stabilization of the convento continued. In the friary, the porteria and room 21, only partially stabilized in 1983, were finished. The residence hall (room 10) and rooms 13, 14, 15, 16 and 19 were capped, but not pointed. In the southeastern rooms, a portion of the west wall of room 47 was repaired and pointed because it was about to collapse. [28]

In the church, the lowest few feet of wall were pointed. Part of the east wall was repaired and capped where runoff down the sloping top of the remaining wall caused a higher rate of mortar wash-out. During the stabilization work inside the church, the altar steps were incorrectly capped, producing a crosswall rather than steps. However, the three steps that had been here were the product of a previously incorrect stabilization by Wes Hurt in 1940. Hurt's work removed the almost totally eroded above-grade traces of the original steps found by Al Ely in front of the apse. Hurt built a new set of steps across the inner edge of the mouth of the apse, about 1 1/2 feet too far north. [29]

The Stabilization of 1985

The 1985 stabilization changed the mortar mix again. This time the mixture was sixteen parts red dirt, two parts "cliche" dirt and one part calcium aluminate for pointing. For capping, an additional part of calcium aluminate was included in the mix. [30]

Archeologist Jim Trott and Sam Chavez inspected the ruins in March, 1985. They determined that the rooms of the eastern and southeastern areas were in the greatest need of stabilization. Work began on April 29 and continued through July 1, when the stabilization crew was removed to Gran Quivira for emergency work. [31]

During the 1985 season, most of the rooms of the southeastern and eastern areas of the convento were stabilized and capped. Rooms 41, 52, 53, 54, 66, and 67, however, were not stabilized. Rooms 41 and 52 through 54 had fallen into such disrepair that they could not be salvaged without archeological work to determine their outlines. Rooms 66 and 67 had entirely disappeared since they were found by Wes Hurt in 1939 and 1940; apparently they had never been repaired since their first stabilization by Hurt.

The Stabilization of 1986

The 1986 stabilization work lasted from May 12 to September 27. During this season the mortar mixture and its color became a major point of discussion. At the beginning of the year, Anthony Crosby of the Denver Service Center, who was responsible for the creation of Preservation guides for the historical buildings of Salinas National Monument, suggested a new combination of components. The mix consisted of six parts dirt, two parts "caliche" clay, two parts plaster sand, and one part portland cement. [32]

Within a few days of beginning, Chavez realized that the mortar was too pale in color when it dried, so that it contrasted strongly with the masonry of the mission walls. He contacted Tony Crosby, who advised the Division of Conservation (PCC) of the Southwest Regional Office in Santa Fe. Doug Hicks of PCC came to inspect the project and evaluate the mortar problem. He was accompanied by Jim Trott, now with PCC. Crosby, Hicks and Trott all agreed that the 6-2-2-1 mortar mix should continue to be used as the pointing material until they had found a better material.

The stabilization crew finished rooms 35 and 36 in the eastern courtyard, and began on the north and west exterior walls of the church, while some crewpersons worked on repairing the severe basal erosion of the friary walls. In the church, the southwest buttress of the west transept was capped and pointed from the top down. Capping used a 6-2-2-2 mortar mix, with two parts portland cement rather than one part for added strength. The rest of the west and north sides of the church were pointed up to nine feet from the ground. The pointing on the church and the filling of the areas of basal erosion in the friary used a 6-2-2-1 mixture.

After some research, Doug Hicks of PCC advised Chavez to experiment with various mixtures of dirt and brown stucco. Chavez found that mortar using five parts dirt and three parts El Rey #116 Adobe Brown Stucco gave the best color match with the original colonial mortar. Terry Morgart of PCC examined the experimental areas pointed by Chavez and his crew, collected samples, and requested that Chavez continue using the 6-2-2-1 and 6-2-2-2 mixtures until a final decision could be made by the Regional Office and Tony Crosby.

When the north and west walls of the church had been pointed up to nine feet, the stabilization crew moved to the convento. They began capping the walls of the friary, using the usual 6-2-2-2 mortar. Included in the capping was room 29 of the eastern courtyard and the baptistry rooms. Before the capping had progressed very far, PCC gave Chavez approval to use his mortar of dirt and El Rey stucco mixed at a 5-3 ratio for the remaining work.

Using the new mortar, the stabilization crew pointed rooms 5-8, 17, 18, and 20 of the friary that had not yet been stabilized by the National Park Service. Rooms 9, 21, and 22 were repointed with the new mixture. Room 4, the sacristy, was partially repointed. During the season, the foundations of the 1829 church were also completely stabilized and capped with the 5-3 mixture.

The Stabilization of 1987

In 1987 the remainder of the interior and exterior of the church was pointed with the 5-3 mixture. The walls and buttresses were capped, the baptistry (rooms 2 and 3) pointed, and rooms 20 through 16, 23, 25 and 27 of the convento repointed. Room 30 was pointed with an experimental mixture of dirt and the stabilizing agent Rhoplex, and the southeastern rooms 42 through 49, 51, and 56 pointed with the dirt and stucco mixture. [33]

The monument and the Regional Office decided to experiment with a number of different mixtures of mortar to determine which had the best characteristics of resistance and color. Rooms 28 and 29 were pointed with various mixtures of dirt, sand, caliche clay, stucco, portland cement, and two new additives, Rhoplex and polyvinyl acetate (PVA). The mixtures were applied in test areas each about two feet across, and left to the mercies of time and the conditions at Salinas National Monument. This and similar tests at other parks should eventually result in an effective stabilizing material for ruins like those at Salinas.

STABILIZATION OF GRAN QUIVIRA

The United States Government made Gran Quivira a National Monument in 1909. It has been the responsibility of the National Park Service since 1919. Because of this, it has been stabilized and maintained under a more consistent policy than have Abó and Quarai.

However, National Park Service maintenance did not begin soon enough after it was given the site. In San Buenaventura, the doorway between rooms 15 and 14 fell in about 1920, and then the doorway from room 10 to 11. The last lintels to collapse were those for the window south from room 10 and those for the window west from room 15 into the sacristy, not long before excavation and a full stabilization program began in 1923. The National Monument was opened to the public in a dedication ceremony held on April 25, 1925. [34]

It is particularly painful to realize that so many lintel beams remained in place when the site was named a National Monument in 1909, but were then lost to theft or rot through neglect. A few limited areas of stabilization and repair in the convento can be detected in some photographs after 1919 when the National Park Service was entrusted with care for the site. At this date several window and door lintels survived, and still lintels were allowed to rot and collapse, taking sections of wall with them, instead of being removed and replaced with new wood. The Service could have a number of the windows of Las Humanas still in existence, and window lintel beams in curation, if the proper steps had been taken.

Initial Stabilization, 1927 to 1932

Hewett and his crew did little stabilization on the church and convento of San Buenaventura during the excavations of 1923 to 1926. Not until 1927, while W. H. Smith, the first superintendent of Gran Quivira, was directing the season's work, is there any mention of stabilization work in the limited documentation. This stabilization repaired only the most blatant areas of collapse or weakness, and used a mud mortar mixed from the local topsoil with no binding agents included, so far as is known. [35]

During the same year, the National Park Service, needing a museum and office at Gran Quivira, decided to rebuild room 1 in the convento. In March, 35 beams for the museum roof were cut in the Gallinas Mountains and hauled to Gran Quivira. They were cut to the correct length in May. During June and July, the room and the adjacent corridor were cleaned of rubble, the walls of room 1 built up to the original roof height, and roof vigas placed on the wall tops. These apparently reused the beam sockets left in the wall of the church. The roof was completed by the end of July.

Repairs to the walls of the mission buildings occupied the 1929 season, under the direction of Frank "Boss" Pinkley. In mid-May the crew worked on the walls at the northeast corner of the corral, the partition wall between rooms 7 and 8, the north door facing of room 10, and the northeast corner of room 12. Later in the season the crew worked on the west wall of room 3 south of the door, the northwest corner of room 2 and the northeast corner of the patio, the northeast corner of room 2, and the walls of room 15. They probably built the buttress against the south side of the south wall of room 6 during this year's work.

Stabilization work in unspecified locations continued through 1930 and 1931. The mission buildings were considered to be in acceptable condition by the end of 1932. The crew made further minor repairs in the sacristy storeroom (room 16) in April through June, 1933. Work in this area was mostly on the north wall, capping the church wall and repairing the viga sockets. At the same time the sacristy and on the main entrance of the church received some repairs. [36]

During this period the National Park Service built an employee's residence on the National Monument to improve the protection of the ruins and the museum. Before this employees apparently lived in houses at the village of Gran Quivira, just north of the Monument boundary. The construction lasted from July through September, 1932. [37] However, the improved surveillance did no good. Vandals broke into the museum room in 1935 and took most of the artifacts on display. [38] The room saw little use afterwards, until its removal in 1942. An additional employee's house was built in the early 1940s, and was in use by January, 1942. [39] This building was eventually remodeled and became the present visitor center after the construction of other residences at the west end of the Monument.

Maintenance of San Buenaventura

After the work ending in 1932, the National Park Service did no further stabilization of the ruins until 1938, when George Boundey, the custodian, did some repair work on "the walls." [40]

Joseph Toulouse became custodian of Gran Quivira in January, 1940, only two months after he completed the stabilization of Abó in October, 1939. [41] In April, Toulouse began planning on a major new stabilization when the weather improved, and took a series of "Before" photographs. [42] Stabilization began April 24. Started with the porteria, and rebuilding the wall between room 12 and the second courtyard, the "corral," and the steps up from the corral to the friary. [43] Toulouse also stabilized the west wall of the corral, and the south and west walls of room 8. [44] Work stopped in late May or early June, and Toulouse took "After" photographs in August, 1940. [45]

In October, 1940, Toulouse went over the ruins of the mission with "Doc" Smith, working out the areas of stabilization carried out by Pinkley and Smith in 1927 through 1933. This formed the basis of Toulouse's later detailed photographic analysis of the early stabilization of the ruins. [46] In December, Toulouse began planning for a continuation of WPA stabilization work on the ruins, hopefully in 1941. [47] As it happened, however, the project did not begin until early 1942.

The storm of September, 1941, demonstrated that the ruins of the church and convento of San Buenaventura were not as well stabilized as the Park Service had thought in 1932. The Park Service began a Works Progress Administration project in January, 1942, to repair the visible damage caused by the storm. Using portland cement mortar, the collapsed areas were rebuilt. Toulouse worked on rooms 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, the sacristy, and the short corridor at the top of the stairs to the second courtyard. Some repair work was done in the patio, the porteria, and the outside east wall of the convento. [48] The final major change to the structure was the removal of the museum from room 1, whose walls had partially collapsed in the storm. [49]

Toulouse carried out some other stabilization work during the repairs. He graded the floors and rebuilt some parts of the walls of rooms 12, 13, and 14 in the convento of San Buenaventura and installed drainage. Work continued through April, 1942. The 1942 stabilization of the convento was primarily emergency work to repair the obvious damage caused by the 1941 storm. The structures obviously needed a complete rehabilitation to fill voids and repoint where mortar had washed out. Large sections of wall were merely waiting for the proper stimulus from rain or frost to collapse. With the successful stabilization of the major problems in the church completed, the Park Service turned its attention to the convento, and to smaller details in the church.

The 1942 work, however, did not conduct a comprehensive program of capping, repointing, patching, or drainage, nor did it repair any part of the church itself. In November, 1948, Gordon Vivian directed a project to stabilize the church. Using cement mortar with soil pointing, repair and capping of the north wall of the nave of the church began. The inexperience of the crew, hired from locally-available labor, and bad weather allowed little progress during 1948. Vivian returned in 1951 to resume the project using Navajo labor, and successfully stabilized the entire church, interior and exterior, during March and April. Again, cement mortar and soil pointing was used for areas of major stress, such as wall capping. The remaining wall surfaces were pointed with a mortar made of caliche with a pink cast, similar to the mortar used by the masons who built the church in the 1660s. [50]

Figure 63. San Buenaventura in the 1940s. The lintle beam has been returned to the site, and is on the ground behind the flagstaff with two people sitting on it. Courtesy National Park Service.

In 1962 Roland Richert and Charles Voll conducted a thorough stabilization of the convento and did some additional work in the church. In April and May, 1962, Richert and a crew of Navajo laborers capped the baptistry and south nave walls, and pointed all the wall surfaces of the church with tinted cement. The walls were then overpointed with soil cement. During the pointing, Richert restabilized several areas pointed by Vivian's crew in 1948 and 1951. Much of the caliche mortar used by Vivian had washed out in the eleven years since the previous job. [51]

As part of the stabilization of the church, Richert replaced the surviving lintel beam. This beam, removed in ca. 1905 and recovered in 1924, was finally identified as the outermost lintel beam in the Lummis photograph of the facade of the church. The knot and crack pattern on the beam is recognizable in the Lummis photo. The National Park Service decided to return the beam to its original location, and Richert was given the job. Richert's crew poured square concrete pads at the tops of the two door jambs, lifted the beam into place, and then built up stonework around the concrete pads. The beam had been treated and sealed beforehand.

The treatment of the beam consisted of several steps. The crew first filled the upper, heavily eroded surface with two gallons of plastic wood, then treated the entire beam with a material referred to as "Wood Life," with no other identification. Finally the upper surface of the beam was "treated and stained with linseed oil." [52]

In June and July, 1962, Voll and the Navajo crew stabilized the convento, except for rooms 1 and 16 already completed by Richert. The crew repointed all the wall surfaces, reset several doorsills, rebuilt the walls of room 9, and capped several other walls in the second or southern courtyard. The crew installed dry-barrel drainage systems in rooms 12, 13, and 14. Voll also did some stabilization of the porteria, rebuilding the bases of the splayed entranceway from the plaza. All the work in the convento used tinted portland cement with no soil cement over-pointing.

San Isidro

"Doc" Smith did a little stabilization work in San Isidro in April and May, 1932. His remarks indicate that he did enough work to remove a few obvious safety hazards, but little more. Joseph Toulouse later examined the ruins of San Isidro with Smith and was able to work out the extent of the stabilizations from 1923 through 1932. [53]

Jacobo Yrissari excavated through the area of the main altar in 1932 and 1933 as part of his treasure-hunting activities. In June, 1933, heavy rains caused a collapse of the area around the mouth of the shaft in the church. The collapse threatened the north wall of the apse. Toulouse backfilled the shaft in 1940. [54]

Toulouse did more work in 1942. He stated in 1949 that "the altars in the smaller mission [San Isidro] have not been completely excavated. They were partially excavated, however, during repairs in 1942, and each was in the corner of the nave at the sanctuary end." [55] Toulouse stabilized around the entrance and along the north walls and the apse of the church.

During March and April, 1951, Vivian cleared San Isidro of rubble and stabilized the walls and exposed features. No record of the actual stabilization of the ruins is available at present.

House A

House A is Mound 10 in the original numbering system. In 1923 through 1931, rooms 1 through 9 in mounds 10 and 11, using Toulouse's numbering system, were excavated. [56] Toulouse stabilized rooms 1 and 3 through 8 in 1942. [57] Gordon Vivian excavated most of mound 10 in March and April, 1951. Rooms 1 and 2 of Toulouse's system became rooms 31 and 23, respectively, in Vivian's new numbering system. In May, after the rooms were emptied of fill, Vivian capped the walls by removing the upper three courses of stone and resetting them in concrete. The original mortar was a mud made from the local highly organic topsoil, and had washed out wherever the walls had been exposed to the weather. The wall faces were repointed in soil mortar. Vivian predicted that in 10-15 years the walls of House A would need major stabilization work. [58]

The Stabilization of Mound 7

In 1965 Alden Hayes began the excavation of mound 7. He and his crew completed the work in 1968. The excavations left exposed all of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century walls of the pueblo, as well as some earlier structures beneath these walls for interpretive purposes. The opening up of mound 7 doubled the maintenance load for Gran Quivira. The Park Service realized that all the exposed walls had to be maintained, including 30 to 40 porch rooms fronting the plaza east of mound 7, and several kivas. [59]

The Stabilization of Gran Quivira After 1970

In 1971 the National Park service prepared for the stabilization of all the ruins of Gran Quivira. These estimates covered the period from fiscal year 1973 to FY 1977. [60] Richert stated that the church and convento had not been stabilized since 1962.

The Stabilization of 1976

The first stabilization of the ruins since 1962 began in June, 1976, and continued through December. [61] The stabilization crew decided to use caliche clay mortar rather than portland cement mortar. At first they used pure caliche, but found that it would crack as it dried and flake out of the joints. The next attempt tried five parts caliche and one part sand, but the mixture had the same problems. Finally, a mixture of five parts caliche and two parts ashy soil from pueblo middens was found to work. The stabilization crew pointed and capped the convento rooms, church, sacristy and baptistry of San Buenaventura. They pointed the walls of the pueblo rooms of mound 7; graded the floors; repaired kivas E, F, and K; and pointed and reset the walls of mound 15. The supervisor remarked in his report that because of the weakness of the mortar, repointing might be needed as often as every year.

The Stabilization of 1978

C. H. Fulfer directed the stabilization in 1978. [62] Using a mortar mix of three parts caliche clay, one part ashy dirt, and one part calcium aluminate, making a 3-1-1 mortar, he trained his crew by pointing the western rooms of mound 15, excavated by Hewett in 1923-27. Once the crew was proficient, they stabilized the northeastern area of mound 7. Most of the repair work was not extensive--the crew filled cracks and loose joints, replaced fallen stone, and recapped the walls where needed. Around mound 7 they pointed six kivas. In San Buenaventura, they repointed the base of the walls in the nave. The south interior wall of the nave was repointed to a height of about five feet. South of the church, the crew repointed the sacristy, hall, rooms 1, 7, 8, 16, the outside of the west wall of the patio and the north wall of the second courtyard east of the steps.

The Stabilization of 1979

This stabilization used the same mix of 3-1-1. The crew pointed the walls on the east side of mound 7, facing the plaza, and the fourteen rooms on the west side of mound 15. Kivas J and K were repaired. In addition to repointing, they repaired the capping and regraded the floors. As part of the stabilization, the supervisor inspected the northeastern area of mound 7, stabilized in 1978 year, and found that no work was needed in this area. The crew did some pointing and a fair amount of capping in San Buenaventura, but most of the walls were in acceptable condition. House A was inspected and rooms 1, 3, 6, and the north wall of the northeast porch repaired and pointed. [63]

The Stabilization of 1980

Using the same 3-1-1 mortar mixture, the 1980 stabilization crew spent most of their time on repointing. In mound 7 only six rooms needed extensive work. Five others received some stone replacement and repointing. In San Buenaventura, the east wall of the nave and baptistry, the lower south wall of the nave, the south transept, and the sacristy were repointed. In the convento, rooms 7 and 8 in the corral and 5 and 6 in the friary were repointed. The upper walls of room 15 and the south end of the sacristy were capped. [64]

The Stabilization of 1981

The 1981 season continued the use of the 3-1-1 mortar mixture. Most of the work of the season was concerned with San Buenaventura. In front of the porteria, the crew covered the flagstone area with dirt. The crew pointed the entire east exterior of the mission, from the baptistry on the north to the end of the second courtyard on the south. On the interior, they pointed rooms 12, 11, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 1, and the sacristy. The interior of the church was in good shape and no work was needed. In the rest of the pueblo, some repointing work was done in the rooms of mounds 13, 14, 15, 16, and 18. House A needed little work, but the kivas received some pointing. San Isidro received capping on its walls and some pointing. [65]