Bandelier Administrative History

As the Park Service built its physical plant during the 1930s, Frank Pinkley and others began programs to protect the monument and present its features to the public. From the outset of agency administration at the monument, these two programs were symbiotically linked. In the ensuing half century, the programs, practices, and policies of the Park Service changed dramatically, reflecting the evolution of agency policy and technological advances in resource management. Three distinct periods of management, each embodying a different administrative philosophy and addressing the specific problems of successive eras, have defined the management of Bandelier National Monument.

These periods mirrored the evolution of Park Service priorities at the area. Frank Pinkley's initiative shaped the first phase, which began in 1933 and ended when the CCC camp closed in 1941. Beginning with the onset of World War II in the early 1940s, a "hold-the-fort" or consolidation philosophy dominated NPS policy at the monument. This second phase continued during the massive influx of visitors throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s. In the mid 1960s, the Park Service itself underwent a transformation. While Mission 66, a ten-year capital development program initiated during the 1950s, provided new facilities to counter problems such as overcrowding at beleaguered parks like Bandelier, a new concern with preservation of the resources of the system took hold. An ethic that singled out preservation as the primary agency obligation emerged. The emphasis on cultural resources at Bandelier became part of a more inclusive concept of resource management.

Like many other archeological parks in the Southwest, Bandelier National Monument was excavated before the National Park Service existed. Edgar L. Hewett was the most important early excavator and one of the few who made any record of his work. Beginning in the summer of 1897, he led a group that surveyed the Frijoles Canyon ruins. Hewett dug at Otowi in 1905, and in 1907 initiated work in Frijoles Canyon. Excavations at Tyuonyi and the Ceremonial Cave began in 1908, as did limited work at Long House, the Great Kiva, and the House of the Water People. The following year, Hewett began work on Talus House while continuing to excavate Tyuonyi and other sites in the canyon.

Under Hewett's direction, his associates followed his lead on the plateau. In 1910, Jesse L. Nusbaum, Hewett's long-time assistant who later became the Superintendent of Mesa Verde National Park, completed the restoration of the kiva in Ceremonial Cave. Between 1908 and 1914, Alfred V. Kidder, who briefly studied under Hewett and became the most important American archeologist of the first half of the twentieth century, excavated Frijolito Ruin, on the south mesa of Frijoles Canyon. During the same period, Yapashi and San Miguel pueblos were also excavated by Hewett and his associates.

But for an empire-builder like Edgar L. Hewett, the Pajarito Plateau was only a base of operations. After 1912, when the Tyuonyi excavation was completed, his interests began to shift away from the Pajarito Plateau. By 1914, Hewett's School of American Archeology summer school, which usually ran for about three weeks in August, was doing what little work was accomplished in the ruins of Frijoles Canyon.

The most visible achievement of the summer school program was the reconstruction of Talus House in the main canyon area. Nusbaum and Kenneth Chapman, another of Hewett's associates from the New Mexico Normal School, supervised the crew of Tewa Indians from San Ildefonso Pueblo that did the actual digging. They gathered building stone from talus slopes and the dumps left from the excavation at Tyuonyi, mixed soil from the canyon floor with clay to create mortar, and made plaster for the interiors. Although Chapman and Nusbaum used some modern materials, such as tar paper and newspapers, the reconstruction offered a clear view of the prehistoric home. [1]

Despite such restoration work, by the time the Park Service took over in 1932, many of the ruins in Frijoles Canyon were falling apart. Like many early archeologists, Hewett was more interested in artifacts than structures. He did little stabilization work, and the techniques of his era were inadequate when implemented. Nor was the Forest Service expert at archeological management. Catering mostly to Hewett and other specialists, the Forest Service did not use the ruins to try and attract tourists. By 1932, Tyuonyi had crumbled badly. Many walls had collapsed and those that remained were visibly unstable. [2]

For the Park Service, the protection of the ruins and their presentation were intrinsically linked. From the inception of the agency, Stephen T. Mather stressed visitation, and visitors who came to archeological areas like Bandelier wanted to see tangible evidence of the prehistory of the continent. To protect the structures and offer interpretation, the Park Service developed policies that straddled the preservation-use dichotomy embodied in the organic legislation that established the agency.

But when Park Service Custodian Edgar L. Rogers arrived in the summer of 1932, the ruins in Frijoles Canyon were poorly prepared for visits from the general public. Although the atmosphere of the canyon conveyed the mysteries of long-departed civilizations, the condition of the structures made it difficult for the uninitiated to grasp the nature of prehistoric life. If Bandelier was to serve as the gateway to the southwestern national monument group, the agency had to improve conditions at the park. [3]

Before the Park Service acquired Bandelier, Frank Pinkley had planned a broad-based program of development for the area, based on his work elsewhere in the Southwest. The program focused upon three facets of administration: ruins stabilization, capital development, and interpretation of the area for visitors. Pinkley's program called for vast commitment in all three areas. When the Park Service acquired Bandelier, Pinkley simply put his programs into action.

Pinkley's first archeological priority was the stabilization of the ruins. By 1933, conditions had deteriorated so badly that some of Tyuonyi was only one course of stone high. Pinkley needed more substantial structures to attract visitors. As soon as he could get clearance from the Civil Works Administration (CWA), he brought in archeologist Paul Reiter to supervise a crew of CCC workers.

After the initial excavations in Frijoles Canyon, the majority of ruins were not stablized. By the time the Park Service assumed administrative responsibility for the monument, exposed ruins like Tyuonjyi had crumbled.

Although they performed some restoration and a little excavation, Reiter's crew focused upon stabilization and preservation. In 1934, the workers excavated two additional rooms and began restoration and stabilization work in Tyuonyi. Reiter also removed the plaster from a preserved section of painted wall in Long House and installed a glass plate to protect it from vandalism. The program made the park more attractive to visitors. Travelers could begin to see the outline of prehistoric life in the ruins of Frijoles Canyon. [4]

Stabilization programs continued throughout the 1930s. In 1937, Jerome W. Hendron, a seasonal ranger with archeological training, began the NPS ruins stabilization program at Bandelier. He directed a crew that replaced the roof in the kiva at Ceremonial Cave and continued stabilization efforts at Tyuonyi. Much of the mortar holding the rocks together had disintegrated, and Hendron's men reset the stones with a mixture laden with Portland Cement. They also reset fallen walls and rebuilt the lowest portions of the excavated semi-circle.

The large kiva, east of Tyuonyi in Frijoles Canyon, also received Hendron's attention. By 1937, its mortar had washed away, and the inner of the two walls of the structure had fallen. The crude outer wall seemed in danger of collapse. Previous excavators had left large mounds near the kiva that posed drainage problems. Brush and trees had overgrown the site, and windblown dirt and other debris covered the floor of the kiva to a depth of thirty inches. Hendron and his crew re-excavated the kiva and stabilized its walls. The upper levels of the outer wall were taken down and reset. Hendron used a cement mortar—five parts sand, one part fill, and one part cement—to set the stones adjacent to the inner wall. He and his men also rebuilt the ventilator shaft, forced mud between the stones in the inner wall to chink them, and treated much of the interior with a solution that stabilized adobe plaster. [5]

These two photographs show parts of Tyuonyi prior to and during stabilization.

Since Bandelier was a priority area in Pinkley's scheme, he continued to support the stabilization program. During the 1930s, ECW allocations made workpower easily available. In 1939, Robert F. Lister, an NPS archeologist, brought a crew to Bandelier to continue stabilization work. He stabilized the remaining walls of the Otowi ruin, caves on the Otowi Mesa, and 181 cave dwellings on the south side of Tsankawi Mesa. He also treated fourteen caves in Frijoles Canyon and remortared walls and reset stones at Long House in 1940.

Lister's work completed the first phase of stabilization at Bandelier. Its primary purposes were to prevent the ruins from further decline and give visitors a visual insight into prehistoric life. Some of the work was cosmetic in nature, but much was critical to the survival of the ruins. Most important, the first phase of stabilization gave Frank Pinkley the ruins that helped tell the story of Frijoles Canyon.

With stabilization programs in place, Pinkley turned his attention to his primary focus—programs of education and interpretation. From his point of view, the stabilization and management of archeological ruins was only a prelude to an interpretation program for the public. This philosophy led to the initiation of programs for visitors to Bandelier. Pinkley remained dedicated to the concepts he promulgated throughout the Southwest. He insisted upon guided tours through all archeological areas under NPS administration, and Bandelier was no exception. [6] As soon as Custodian Edgar Rogers and his wife Gay arrived in Frijoles Canyon in the summer of 1932, Pinkley demanded that they show visitors through the ruins.

When it came to visitor service, Pinkley dictated strict policies. As long as visitors still used the winding foot trail, Pinkley insisted that Rogers greet visitors as they reached the canyon bottom and stay with them throughout their tour. At first this caused few problems. With only intermittent visitation, Rogers could easily fulfill the demands of his superior. After the completion of the road to the canyon bottom, however, his successors had a more difficult time keeping up with the increased traffic. In practice, later custodians did not always adhere to Pinkley's rigid standards.

Pinkley also needed a museum to facilitate the interpretive program at Bandelier. The ECW program made it easy to fund such a project. In 1934, Pinkley added museum plans to the development in Frijoles Canyon. In 1935, Robert H. Rose, Pinkley's assistant at Casa Grande, followed up on Pinkley's initiative by drawing a plan for a museum at the park.

From Rose's perspective, the museum provided a major avenue for reaching the constituency of the agency. The State of New Mexico relied upon tourism for much of its economic base. Bandelier attracted the best class of visitors, Rose intimated, because it took special effort to make the forty-mile trip from Santa Fe. Residents of Santa Fe also promoted Bandelier, believing that the ruins were a "cultural and economic asset." [7] The promotional efforts of the Indian Detours guide service, established by the Fred Harvey Company during the 1920s, also helped bring interested and educable visitors to the site. Echoing Pinkley's long-established perspective, Rose argued that the Park Service needed specific programs to serve this constituency.

At the same time, Frank Pinkley challenged the Educational Division of the agency. The Educational Division had grown out of efforts to broaden the appeal of the Park Service. In 1929, Director Horace Albright hired a number of museum specialists as advisors. These men became the core of the new division that promoted the educational possibilities of the park system. Pinkley believed that such "arm-chair" experts did not understand the nature of visitor traffic through museums. He fought Dr. Harold C. Bryant, the head of the division, and his assistant, Ansel F. Hall, over museum plans for Tumacacori National Monument. Pinkley attacked Bryant and Hall in the pages of the Southwestern National Monuments Monthly Report, a magazine that offered detailed information about the activities of Pinkley and his staff. The Educational Division responded, and relations between the two cliques deteriorated. Museum development became a heated issue. [8]

The museum at Bandelier escaped much of the rancor. Although the debate concerned traffic flow within museums, the experts in the Educational Division were not yet powerful enough to challenge Pinkley's domination of the archeological areas. They were more comfortable designing plans for a Spanish-era mission like Tumacacori. While fireworks flew in southern Arizona, the museum at Bandelier proceeded along the lines suggested by Pinkley and Rose.

The museum at Bandelier showed much more than the archeology of the Riò Grande Valley. Rose suggested displays that explained the geology, ethnology, natural features, and flora and fauna, as well as the archeology of the Pajarito Plateau. This broad view indicated how central the development at Bandelier was to the southwestern national monument group. Pinkley wanted the museum at an archeological area to explain the gamut of features visible throughout his group of monuments. The museum at Bandelier provided another way to do what Pinkley did best: attract and maintain the attention of intelligent visitors. Not only was Bandelier the gateway to the southwestern national monuments, it also became a central point for disseminating information about all the monuments.

In contrast, the early interpretive programs at Bandelier had only limited scope. They focused directly on Frijoles Canyon. During the 1930s, archeological science and analysis were still developing, and great gaps existed in knowledge of the prehistoric Southwest. The custodians and seasonal rangers relied heavily on the interpretations of early southwestern archeologists such as Edgar L. Hewett and Alfred V. Kidder. Kidder developed stratigraphy, the analysis of layers of soil and its relationship to various cultures. Its implementation at the Pecos ruins led to the first chronology of prehistoric pueblo culture. Astronomer Arthur E. Douglass developed dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, which became another crucial tool for the interpretation of prehistory. [9] Park Service personnel gradually incorporated the information from these new methods to show how the inhabitation of Frijoles Canyon fit into the larger picture of the prehistoric Southwest.

One of the people instrumental in developing an interpretive program at the monument was Custodian L. Earl Jackson. Pinkley had trained the tall, gangly young man at Casa Grande, and Jackson closely followed his superior's guidelines. Before coming to Bandelier, Jackson had been the first paid custodian at the Montezuma Castle National Monument in Arizona. When Edgar Rogers committed suicide in October, 1933, and subsequent administration at Bandelier deteriorated, Jackson repaid Pinkley's faith by stepping into the breech. He was the most enthusiastic of Pinkley's custodians and became quite adept at the innovations his job required.

As visitation increased, it posed problems for Jackson. Pinkley wanted him to guide each visitor through the ruins. Jackson and his seasonal rangers were often busy with different tours while visitors continued to arrive at the administrative station. During the summer of 1937, Jackson found himself swamped with visitors. In order to uphold Pinkley's standards, Jackson enlisted a number of the brightest members of the CCC camp as guides. According to Jackson, the men served admirably.

Under Pinkley's very visible guidance, Jackson sought new ways to serve the visitor at Bandelier. He kept a record of every question that visitors asked for an entire month and tried to incorporate the answers into the interpretive strategy. Jackson also followed Pinkley's lead in other areas. He collected artifacts, compiled complete descriptions of where he found them, and used them in the museum. [10]

The first eight years of NPS administration at Bandelier transformed the monument. The Park Service acquired a monument with untapped potential in 1932. When the CCC camp closed in 1941, the excavated ruins in Frijoles Canyon had been stabilized, and Bandelier had become an important interpretive showplace. Besides building interpretive facilities such as the museum and administration building, the CCC presence freed some uniformed agency personnel from maintenance work. Custodians like Earl Jackson had the time to concentrate on resource management and interpretation. By the end of the decade, they had developed a program equal to any in the Southwest.

But the termination of the CCC project and the impending involvement of the U. S. in the growing European war slowed the development of cultural resource management programs at Bandelier. The exquisite structures the CCC built required maintenance. Without 200 pairs of hands to take care of details, Custodian Art Thomas spent his time fixing leaky roofs, unplugging drains, and working on electrical malfunctions. Throughout the tense year that preceded American intervention in World War II, Federal policies that limited travel, and gasoline and rubber consumption, meant a decrease in tourism all over the nation. The dismal condition of roads on the plateau further impeded travel. Cultural resource development seemed futile in the face of diminishing visitation and a leaking, crumbling physical plant.

The war itself and the coming of the Project "Y" division of the Manhattan Project also hampered the development of Bandelier. A "hold-the-fort" mentality developed. Custodian Thomas tried to minimize Park Service losses in response to the demands of the Los Alamos project. Representatives of the Los Alamos project leased Mrs. Frey's Frijoles Canyon Lodge to house physicists, further inhibiting visitation at the monument. In the face of restrictions from the Government and the war abroad, the Park Service retrenched and sought to hold its ground for better times. [11]

Yet J. W. Hendron continued his excavations at the monument. In 1943, he excavated five masonry rooms and cavate dwellings in Group M and a large cavate pueblo on the north wall of Frijoles Canyon. In 1945, Hendron excavated Potsui'i II, a ten-room one-kiva site in the Otowi section. [12] During the war, these piecemeal efforts were the extent of archeological investigation.

After the end of the war, the removal of travel restrictions and the massive influx of visitors that followed changed the role of cultural resource development at Bandelier. In 1946, visitation totals were five times those of 1940, and throughout the late 1940s, the numbers grew. The number of staff members remained constant, and the seemingly endless stream of cars entering Frijoles Canyon kept park rangers busy. The new realities at Bandelier seemed insurmountable. The ruins required intermittent stabilization, but the Park Service had little money for such programs. Maintaining the physical plant in the face of dramatically increased usage took considerable energy. Since most Park Service areas faced postwar visitation levels with prewar staffing, there was little time for innovation. Rangers told visitors the same story they had a decade earlier.

In order to keep pace, the agency needed the support of scientific and educational institutions. The preservation vs. use balance that characterized the prewar era at Bandelier had slipped away. To fulfill their objectives, Park Service officials looked outside the agency. At Bandelier, this led to a new excavation, conceived and directed outside of the Park Service.

In 1948, Frederick C. V. Worman of Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado, received permission to excavate ruins in Frijoles Canyon. In 1947, Worman had proposed a plan for the unexcavated mounds southeast of the administrative compound in the canyon. He planned a field school that would ascertain the boundaries of occupation in the area, determine the distribution of different groups, assist the Park Service with interpretation, and train students. During the excavation, Romalo Cordero, a Cochiti Indian on the NPS staff, named the ruins "Rainbow House."

The actual excavation at Rainbow House did not equal Worman's plans, and in 1950, after two seasons, it ceased. Only eighteen rooms had been excavated. A hired crew continued that summer, excavating thirty-six rooms and one kiva. Nor did the Park Service acquire much new knowledge from the project. The site map, notes, and other documentation disappeared. For unrelated reasons, Worman lost his job at Adams State. He moved to Los Alamos to work as the archeologist for the Atomic Energy Commission.

The excavation of Rainbow House solved none of the cultural resource management issues that faced the monument, and in fact increased the responsibilities of the Park Service. Its location outside the main compound area made it difficult to administer, and the public perceived it as less interesting than the ruins beyond the visitor center. Few visitors stopped to inspect it. Despite the lack of public interest, the newly excavated ruin required stabilization and constant maintenance.

The Rainbow House excavation revealed that the strict management policies of the 1930s would not work in the postwar era. Under the strain of new responsibilities, the rigid distinctions upon which Pinkley insisted began to blur. Changes in the way the agency regarded the monument were the result. Frank Pinkley would never have permitted the Rainbow House excavation. Located east of the main parking area, it was outside the barrier between the prehistoric and modern worlds that Pinkley so consciously erected. It violated his premise about controlled access. [13]

Pressure on the resources of Frijoles Canyon forced permanent changes in interpretive policy. The first postwar superintendent, Fred Binnewies, recalled that in 1952 he had to break Frank Pinkley's rule about guided tours in archeological parks. Except for himself and his secretary, his entire staff was ill. Faced with a usual summer day of visitation, Binnewies wrote out a facsimile of the daily ranger's tours, mimeographed copies, and handed them to arriving visitors. The self-guided tour idea caught on quickly at Bandelier. Soon as many visitors read the guide book as heard the rangers speak. [14]

During the 1950s, archeological investigation continued at Bandelier. In 1952, John F. Turney surveyed the Otowi section, locating and describing fifty-five separate sites. Between 1957 and 1959, Charles H. Lange conducted a horseback archeological survey of mesa tops within the monument and on the adjacent Cañada de Cochiti grant. Lange documented nearly 150 sites, collecting ceramic materials from the surface and cataloging sites. Again, the approach to investigation was piecemeal, while elsewhere, a new synthesis of southwestern archeology led to a refined vision of prehistory in the region. [15]

The new synthesis grew out of the evolution of southwestern archeology. Between 1930 and the late 1950s, archeologists performed a number of surveys in central New Mexico, and by 1955 Fred Wendorf and Erik K. Reed published articles that detailed a new chronology of the prehistory of the middle Rio Grande Valley. The framework that this research provided reshaped the way archeologists saw the prehistory of the region.

But the realities of the 1950s precluded the immediate integration of the new information into interpretation at Bandelier. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, retrenchment became the dominant administrative sentiment at Bandelier, and cultural resource management reflected the situation. Overworked and outnumbered, park staff held its ground in the face of hordes of visitors and a broadening range of responsibilities. The Los Alamos residents who used Frijoles Canyon placed additional demands upon park personnel. The influx of visitors increased the chances of accidental fire in the summers, and everyone had to be vigilant. With stabilized ruins, a guide book, and a status quo that barely sufficed, there was little chance for the staff to develop new programs. Relief for the besieged monument was a long way off.

The ascendance of Conrad L. Wirth to the directorship in 1951 spelled the beginning of changes throughout the agency that ultimately affected Bandelier. Wirth initiated the Mission 66 program in response to deteriorating conditions in the system. It began in 1956 with the goal of rejuvenating the park system in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Park Service in 1966. The Mission 66 program was popular on Capitol Hill. The most dynamic development for the Park Service since the New Deal, it funded capital development and personnel increases at most Park Service areas. Once again, the agency had funding for its programs. As it expanded, the agency renewed its earlier vitality.

The search for a solution to crowding in Frijoles Canyon shaped the development of cultural resources under the Mission 66 program for Bandelier. Park Service planners devised major innovations in an effort to shift the focus of visitors away from Frijoles Canyon. The development of the detached Otowi section headed the program, with plans calling for a new visitor center, ranger station, and museum. Under the plan, visitors would learn about another facet of prehistoric culture. Interpreting Otowi required a different point of view than the one rangers used for Frijoles Canyon. Otowi had a different chronology and different surface attractions.

But decisions at the highest levels of the agency squashed the Otowi development. From an administrative perspective, the proposal was inefficient. It called for nearly a million dollars of construction, a twofold increase in staff, and new facilities, all within fifteen miles of Frijoles Canyon. In light of encroachment upon the detached section during and after the war and the attendant deterioration of the ruins, the Otowi proposal seemed a great expense that offered little benefit.

Despite attempts to broaden the interpretive perspective at Bandelier, the programs that the agency offered during the 1950s changed little. The same information that the visitor of the 1930s heard had to satisfy his counterpart two decades later. Although planning for Mission 66 at Bandelier began in the 1950s, actual development did not occur until the early 1960s. Within the system, the national parks came first. Like many archeological areas, Bandelier lagged behind the recreation areas and parkways that Conrad Wirth had favored since he joined the Park Service during the 1930s. [16]

Plans to alter the boundaries of the monument during the late 1950s created problems in the management of cultural resources. The proposal to delete portions of the Otowi section bothered archeologist Charlie Steen of the Southwest Regional Office. He advocated keeping an unimpacted portion of the detached section, south of the truck road to Los Alamos. The area contained an aboriginal game trap, a mesa-top pueblo, numerous cave dwellings, and a well-preserved collection of fourteenth-century cave drawings. Steen believed that the collection of features in Mortandad Canyon offered the agency future interpretive options and was well worth keeping. Agency politics dictated otherwise. Mortandad Canyon was included in the transfer of the Otowi section to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Despite its failure to provide a way to protect the Otowi section, Mission 66 laid the basis for future plans to develop cultural resources at Bandelier. It upgraded the physical plant at Bandelier and gave park administrators a larger staff. It left the basic problem of overcrowding unsolved, opening the door to future proposals that broadened the interpretive program at Bandelier. Park Service administrators realized that if they were going to alleviate crowding in Frijoles Canyon, they had to offer the visitor something new to see. Site interpretation was the most effective tool for this purpose.

As the construction of the Cochiti Dam became a growing possibility in the early 1960s, the Park Service initiated an archeological survey of the areas that would be submerged by water from the reservoir. Along the southeastern boundary of the monument, Park Service archeologists surveyed 361 acres and recorded thirty-seven sites. The Museum of New Mexico directed surveys outside of the monument boundaries. Between 1962 and 1965, archeologists identified twenty-eight sites, and in 1963, Charles H. Lange headed a team that excavated three. [17]

Meanwhile, archeological stabilization became more sophisticated. In the 1960s, Park Service archeologists discovered that Portland Cement, the primary material used to stabilize ruins at Bandelier, was harder than the tufa with which the prehistoric inhabitants constructed their homes. As a result, when the material expanded and contracted in changing weather conditions, the mortar used to stabilize the ruins damaged the prehistoric stones. Archeologists worked to develop a new mortar that did not include Portland Cement. They also found that damage to the ruins could be minimized by more careful maintenance in bad weather. If the park could keep snow from covering the ruins in the winter, the damage from moisture was minimal. [18]

Cultural resource management at Bandelier also benefited from technological innovations at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory [LASL until the 1980s when it became the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)]. In the early 1970s, the lab developed a subterrene laser. This device could disintegrate rock beneath the surface of the ground, allowing water to drain away from the surface. Drainage had always posed problems at the monument. The roofless ruins required constant maintenance to protect them from moisture. A team from LASL used the subterrene laser at Rainbow House and Tyuonyi to bore holes in the ground that helped drain off excess water. This made the ruins less susceptible to damage from moisture. The subterrene laser solved a long-standing cultural resources management problem at the monument. [19]

In the late 1970s, the NPS planned to broaden the interpretive message of the monument by acquiring new areas. The 1977 master plan, created in response to the Cochiti Dam, was the culmination of these efforts. Park Service plans called for the acquisition of the Cañada de Cochiti Grant, the location of a stronghold from the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680 and numerous Spanish and Indian communities that had survived into the twentieth century. The new plan also included construction of a visitor center at the south end of the monument.

Again the agency planned to develop new attractions to relieve the burden upon Frijoles Canyon, this time by acquiring land that extended the scope of its interpretation into the historic period. The Park Service planned guided tours to Kotyiti, the fortified rebellion-era pueblo, and Cañada Village, within the boundaries of the grant. Trails from the visitor center to two sites in the southern section of Bandelier, the Painted Cave and San Miguel Pueblo, were also planned. The increased ease of access required more intensive management on the part of the Park Service.

The southern tip of the monument offered a new realm of possibilities for the members of the interpretive staff. They finally had visible evidence to dispel the myth that abandoned pueblos were evidence of a lost civilization. Kotyiti and Cañada Village showed that pueblo culture survived the arrival of the Spanish and adopted elements of the incoming Spanish tradition. The new sites showed pueblo life in the historic period and validated the argument that the members of the other northern pueblos—particularly the Cochiti, Santa Clara, and San Ildefonso groups—were the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Pajarito Plateau.

A major environmental disaster disrupted Park Service plans on the Pajarito Plateau. During the summer of 1977, a vast fire of human origin destroyed much of the forest in the northwestern portion of the monument, adjacent national forest lands, and portions of Department of Energy land. The La Mesa fire began in the late afternoon of June 16, 1977. It raged for nearly a week, burning more than 15,000 acres of the plateau.

The La Mesa fire in 1977 also inspired innovations in resource management. Fire-fighting operations threatened archeological resources in the burn area. Archeologists and fire-fighters worked in concert to fight the fire without damaging subsurface remains. In this photo, archeologists precede bulldozers along the fire lines to indentify archeological resources.

As a result of quick thinking by regional office personnel and park staff, the cultural resources of the burning area were scrutinized by archeologists who preceded the fire-fighting bulldozers. This plan came about almost serendipitously. On his way to visit an archeologist friend at the Park Service regional office on Old Santa Fé Trail in Santa Fé, Dr. Milford R. Fletcher, the regional scientist of the Southwest Region, looked up and saw smoke on the Pajarito Plateau. He told Cal Cummings, the deputy chief of the Division of Cultural Resources in the region, that because Bandelier was an archeological park, the construction of fire lines required archeologists. Archeologists could locate buried archeological sites and direct the bulldozers away from the ruins. Cummings, Superintendent Hunter, and the Forest Service agreed; Cummings found and scheduled volunteers, and Fletcher provided on-site supervision. In the end, nearly forty archeologists worked in front of the bulldozers during the La Mesa fire. [20]

The fire cleared the way for cultural resource management on the plateau to expand into new realms. Prior to 1977, the Park Service, Forest Service, and LASL operated their cultural resource programs independently. The agencies had different management objectives, and often their perspectives seemed antithetical. The fire promoted new cooperation and awareness of the value of the ruins. There were, however, tense moments. In one case, Fletcher turned off a Forest Service bulldozer, telling its driver: "We don't care if the trees burn. They'll grow back. Ruins won't." But on the whole, each organization respected the primacy of the ruins. Veterans of the fire remembered the shared objectives as superseding the occasional conflicts. [21]

The concern with preservation set new precedents for Federal handling of fires in archeological areas. Superintendent John D. Hunter received one of the highest awards offered by the Department of the Interior, the Meritorious Service Award, for service that included his handling of the La Mesa situation. For other Federal agencies, the response of the Park Service provided a "consciousness-raising" experience. Fletcher and Park Service archeologists spoke to other agencies about the La Mesa fire and the ramifications of their response. Although the fire burnt surface ruins, it made a survey of the archeological resources of the park much easier. The Park Service also acquired a wealth of new information about patterns of plant succession after fires, and in the early 1980s began to organize it. [22]

After the fire, the agency shifted its focus to other cultural resource needs at the monument. Vandalism remained a problem. Despite the best efforts of the Park Service, graffiti regularly marred the cavates in Frijoles Canyon. To limit its affect on visitors, park staff burnt fires in the caves to cover the scrawl of insensitive vandals with a new layer of char. But this type of solution could only address the effects of callous behavior, not its causes.

"Pot-hunting" also remained endemic. The unstaffed Tsankawi Mesa was a particularly tempting target for thieves of prehistoric artifacts. Comparatively few people visited the mesa, and the park had no uniformed ranger stationed there. Except for occasional patrols, signs and guidebooks were the only evidence of the presence of the Park Service. The wilderness area in the main section also revealed scattered evidence of digging. As in the 1910s and 1920s, when many southwestern archeological areas were in a similar state, the unpatrolled parts of the monument remained vulnerable to both pilfering visitors and professional depredators. [23]

The CCC buildings constructed during the 1930s also attracted the attention of cultural resource managers. The structures became a historic resource. Park rangers had always received questions about the buildings, and informally, the story of the CCC and Mrs. Frey's Frijoles Canyon Lodge became part of the interpretive story at the monument. The buildings were nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, and two Park Service employees, Laura Soulliere Harrison, an architectural historian, and Randy Copeland, an historical architect, prepared an historic district nomination for the buildings in Frijoles Canyon. On May 28, 1987, the Secretary of the Interior designated the CCC complex as National Historic Landmarks, the highest level of significance authorized outside of congressional mandate. Yet the structures required cyclic maintenance. [24]

During the 1980s, the Park Service undertook a major rehabilitation program for the structures. The program began in 1979, when Robert Butcher, the Chief of the Division of Maintenance at the monument, began a fund drive to rehabilitate the Visitor Center. Russell Butcher of the National Parks and Conservation Association, no relation to Robert Butcher, spearheaded the fund raising campaign to which corporations and private citizens contributed. During a three-year period, the program raised nearly $60,000, approximately one-tenth of the entire maintenance cost. The money went toward an intensive program of repatching, repointing, and replastering the structures. Many vigas, the wood roof beams that protruded from the sides of the buildings, and canales, the open rooftop drains, had rotted, and these were replaced. During 1985-86, crews worked on many of the buildings.

Maintenance of the historic structures seemed a constant struggle. In the mid 1980s, park staff noticed dampness in the walls of many of the buildings. The staff found that runoff from the flat roofs of the buildings caused the problem. After the roofs and parapets had been foamed in 1981, some water ran down the outside of the walls, causing damage. In 1987, the park experimented with angling the parapets on the roof differently so as to channel the water from these to the inner roof. [25]

The desire for more comprehensive interpretation led to expanded archeological research in the 1980s. Most of the excavating done at Bandelier dated from the first two decades of the twentieth century, and since that time, southwestern archeology had matured considerably. Yet no one knew the range of archeological resources contained in the monument. Without that information, a coherent plan of administration was impossible. In the 1940s, superintendents began to clamor for a site survey. Until the 1970s, they had little opportunity to undertake such an extensive project, but late in the decade, developments within the Southwest Region set the stage for a site survey at Bandelier.

During the 1970s, the agency developed the Chaco Center to expand archeological horizons at Chaco Canyon. The excavations there broadened archeological knowledge and led to the enlargement of the Chaco Canyon National Monument and its reclassification as a national historical park. After the completion of the Chaco project, and at the request of Superintendent J. D. Hunter and staff, the archeologists turned their attention to a site survey of Bandelier National Monument. During the summer of 1985, they began fieldwork at the monument.

Between 1932 and the 1980s, the range of cultural resource responsibilities at Bandelier changed dramatically. In the 1930s, the NPS thought only of its obligation to preserve and protect the ruins. But in the subsequent fifty years, the methods of the agency became more sophisticated, new technology and ideas were implemented, and a wider range of cultural resources became important at Bandelier. By the 1980s, the management of cultural resources at the monument included historic and prehistoric facets.

Yet cultural resources were not the only important feature of the monument. The establishment of the Bandelier wilderness and the La Mesa fire helped show that Bandelier had two futures, one archeological and one natural. The new planning practices of the agency offered visible evidence of the interrelatedness of these two facets of management. By the middle of the 1970s, the practices of the Park Service revealed an increasing emphasis upon the natural resources at the Bandelier National Monument.