Aztec Ruins Administrative History

CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a third Depression-period agency to help improve Aztec Ruins National Monument through an extensive work program. Beginning in April and continuing through September 1935, 15 to 20 young men and three supervisors were transported daily by two trucks from a camp set up at Durango. Working in coordination, the National Park Service branches of Plans and Design and Engineering and the Emergency Civil Works program requested seven specific projects for Aztec Ruins at an estimated total cost, including supervisors' salaries, of $1,660. These were: (1) grade, gravel, and landscape a rear patio behind the administration building, put a foot bridge over the pond there, and install a drinking fountain; (2) remove an old shed still leaning against the ruin and the Morris garage in one of the ruin's rooms; (3) rework old farm fields and replant them with native trees and shrubs; (4) obliterate barrow pits, dumps, and exploration trenches and put debris from them in arroyos in the vicinity; (5) pave bottoms and banks of irrigation ditches to prevent erosion; (6) construct a 175-foot-long adobe wall from three to nine feet high around the residential area; and (7) install cement seats for public use along the patio wall. [123]

Because a permanent park ranger position was added to the Aztec Ruins National Monument staff, a second residence on the monument was needed. [124] Its budgeted cost was $3,900, with $1,500 in addition for a supervisor of the Civilian Conservation Corps crew. Work commenced on the house in November by making adobe bricks. Because the adobes froze and cracked in the winter cold, Pinkley received permission for substitute projects to build sewage tanks, cesspools, and a connecting line, and put a cattleguard at the entrance gate. [125]

Emergency Civil Works employee William H. Hart made an inspection of Aztec Ruins in March 1936. With the exception of the park ranger house, he found all the listed projects completed or nearly so. The proposed residence was not built until 1949. [126] Twenty years later, the surrounding land was incorporated into the Aztec city limits, and livestock were not allowed to roam freely. That made the cattleguard unnecessary. It was removed. [127] In 1961, the pond in the patio, fed periodically by the irrigation ditch running diagonally across the north yard, was a dry depression. It was filled and converted into a patch of lawn. [128]