Aztec Ruins Administrative History

1981-1988

Meantime, in 1981, a permanent historic preservation position was added to the Aztec maintenance roster. A trained masonry worker, James D. Brown, was named to supervise the continual upkeep of the monument's Anasazi communities. Stabilization experts, exhibit specialists, and archeologists in the Southwest Cultural Resources Center, continued to monitor and evaluate the work performed at Aztec, to introduce new methods when applicable, and to take care of jobs beyond the capability of the local maintenance force. By 1983, Brown's crews were conducting routine annual maintenance of Aztec's vulnerable archeological remains. Each summer, based on a Scope of Work Plan usually formulated by the Southwest Cultural Resources Center, three to five experienced laborers work for six or seven months on cyclical and emergency stabilization designed to keep the ruins at status quo (see Figures 12.6-12.9). At times, the National Park Service crews are supplemented by young men and women enrolled in summer training programs, such as the Youth Conservation Corps, a federally funded plan, or the Summer Youth Employment Training Program, sponsored by the State of New Mexico.

Figure 12.6. Routine maintenance stabilization at Aztec Ruins being done
in connection with regional training exercises, May 1989.

Figure 12.7. Routine maintenance stabilization at Aztec Ruins being done
in connection with regional training exercises, May 1989.

Figure 12.8. Routine maintenance stabilization at Aztec Ruins being done
in connection with regional training exercises, May 1989.

Figure 12.9. Routine maintenance stabilization at Aztec Ruins being done
in connection with regional training exercises, May 1989.

Brown's tenure at Aztec is marked by still another new additive in preparing soil mortar for grouting, pointing, capping, and plastering original construction or repairing previously stabilized units. This is called Rhoplex, an acrylic polymer solution. Although the formula of sand, soils, water, and Rhoplex has been modified several times in seeking a fortified soil mortar that will meet preservation standards and endure through time, this combination of substances seems to be proving satisfactory. However, past experience shows that it is too soon to know whether Rhoplex will be the mortar additive of the future.

Between April and September 1983, Brown's crews took care of two large projects. One was repair of the wall veneer of Kiva L, a Chaco kiva with high quality masonry. The other was the rebuilding of an extensive section of one wall of the long corridor Room 151. In addition, the men restabilized three additional rooms and four kivas by recapping tops of walls and replacing weathered sandstone veneer elements. [149]

During five months of the summer of 1984, the local Aztec ruins stabilization team returned to work remedying the worsening condition of 21 rooms. The men and their youthful helpers removed discolored cement wall cappings and supplemented them with coatings of soil mortar, and they replaced some eroded original building stones with sound stones. They also reconditioned the masonry of three kivas and the Great Kiva. [150]

A special preservation job done in the summer of 1984 by experts from the Southwest Cultural Resources Center was the replacement of the spoke-like beams that supported the Great Kiva roof over the outer surface rooms. The decaying condition of these beams was so advanced by the late 1970s that their ends projecting beyond the exterior wall were cut back three feet. This was done in hopes of forestalling further rot but was not successful. By 1984, the deterioration reached the wall sockets, threatening the stability of the entire roof. Therefore, a team headed by Exhibit Specialist John T. Morgart placed temporary supports beneath the room roofs and replaced 18 weakened beams with new members. The new beams extend four feet out from the exterior kiva wall, as did the original stringers put in place by Morris 50 years earlier. The next season a new ballasted membrane roof replaced an earlier elevated roof that shifted off some of its vertical supports because of vibration. [151] This was the fourth roof since the 1934 reconstruction.

In a second Southwest Cultural Resources Center project in 1984, Archeologists Larry V. Nordby and James Trott led the study of surface grades, differential soil levels in adjacent rooms, and surface runoff and ground water percolation in various parts of the ruin. They corrected seepage along a stretch of the north wall exterior by connecting a new length of below-ground tile drain to the French drain put in by Adams in 1982. Elsewhere in the West Wing, they attempted to solve water problems by backfilling some rooms, excavating others, and installing drains between rooms. They channeled water into the northwest section of the courtyard, from where a subterranean drain carried it to the main courtyard drainage line west of the Great Kiva. The Nordby-Trott crew also backfilled several small kivas located away from the interpretive trail, including Kiva B roofed in 1916, in order to provide them with greater protection. [152]

In 1985, the Aztec stabilization team reconditioned and then backfilled a portion of the cobblestone wall of the southern arc of rooms in front of the Great Kiva. This feature was particularly difficult to keep intact. Workers also recapped, regrouted, and replaced stones in walls of approximately 33 rooms of the West Ruin. They repaired parts of the East Ruin, whose exposed walls were battered by heavy rains. [153]

A very wet summer and fall in 1986, when Aztec recorded 17 inches of precipitation, caused surfaces of several walls to expand or fall and eroded the tops and bases of other walls. Some of the crew restabilized 12 rooms and four kivas in work ranging from rebuilding downed and insecure walls to recapping or replacing decayed stones and dislodged or discolored cement. Workmen directed by Morgart replaced one of the eight primary beams in the Great Kiva roof. [154]

Unfavorable weather continued to whip the time-worn remains at Aztec with expected results. In the winter of 1986-87, it was unusually heavy snows, which developed veneer bulges and eroded joints in 30 rooms and four kivas. Men resigned to the fact of perpetual repairs rebuilt fallen and weakened walls. They removed decomposed stones and redid 2,632 square feet of masonry. They treated some original roofs with wood preservatives. At the East Ruin, they reworked most of the exposed walls and protective roofs. [155]

The inability of the Aztec Ruins stabilization workers to keep abreast of the mounting difficulties afflicting the monument's archeological resources had remained a matter of great concern. Recently, this led the Southwest Cultural Resources Center to engage the services of professional archeologists to assess the present condition of certain features of the ruin and to determine specific emergency requirements. Their report was a Scope of Work Plan, which it is hoped will serve as a guide for local workers to help them incorporate such stabilization into their regular round of annual duties. [156] The battle for survival of one of America's outstanding archeological treasures goes on, even with the realization that much of the modern work on the great house has compromised the building's integrity. To attempt to halt that trend and in time return the West Ruin as much as now is possible to its appearance prior to any stabilization, an intensive search through all relevant surviving written and photographic records is being made. The goal is to compile a wall-by-wall record of the original architecture and all the modifications made to it over the past three-quarters of a century. These data will guide future stabilization activities.

Because of an activity other than ruin repair, alteration of the aboriginal landscape undoubtedly has occurred. Preservation should have been expanded to include that aspect of the site but was not. Environmental change has come through the development of the monument to make its setting attractive in modern terms and supply it with facilities for visitors and staff. Recent reconnaissance of Anasazi villages on the bordering mesas believed to have been coeval with those in the valley bottom suggests the possibility of a number of adjunct manmade earthforms, such as embankments, platforms, berms, or roadways. [157] If these constructions actually are proved by archeology as having been existent in the outlying communities, they also very likely were in the immediate vicinity of the hub complex. If so, those that might have been present near the West Ruin long ago were eradicated through modern tilling of the soil, leveling around the ruin, landscaping, and construction. Such lost resources cannot be reclaimed, but their possible verification may come through more cautious future development of other parts of the monument. Native vegetation has restored some feeling of the aboriginal scene.