Bandelier Administrative History

By 1905, the archeological and anthropological communities made a serious commitment to the concept of preserving American antiquities. Scientists favored the idea of archeological national parks. At the Public Lands Committee hearing, such luminaries as Francis W. Kelsey of the University of Michigan and the Archeological Institute of America lined up to show their support of both the Mesa Verde and Pajarito park bills. Henry Mason Baum, whose views regarding the suitability of the Pajarito changed after a subsequent visit to the area in 1904, also addressed the committee. The professional community unequivocally supported the bills.

New Mexicans were less comfortable with the proposal. Although Edgar Hewett expressed reservations, in the end he favored the plan. The delegate from the New Mexico Territory, Bernard S. Rodey, felt otherwise. As a cattleman, Rodey resisted the intrusion of the federal government into state land matters. Hewett remarked that too much forest land in New Mexico was already withdrawn, and Rodey concurred loudly. The prospect of a law that allowed widespread reservation of archeological sites frightened him. If all the ruins were lined up, he said, an area ranging from Espanola to the Colorado border might be reserved and grazing in the northern half of the territory would end. To laughter, Congressman Eben W. Martin of South Dakota asked Rodey: "How would the size of the State of New York suit you as a limitation [on possible reservations for the preservation of antiquities]?" "Well, we have been reserving New Mexico for about sixty-eight years," Rodey replied. "[The Secretary of the Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock] might get in reservations of that size. [He] is pretty radical [and] is liable to do almost anything." [14]

Sounding the concerns of his constituency about the nature of antiquities legislation, Rodey damaged the case for the Pajarito park. He confused the Pajarito proposal with the move to reserve antiquities in general. His stance typified regional resistance to what westerners saw as the meddling of the federal government in state and local affairs. A national park was not a large enough prize to offset the animosity of local residents and New Mexico voters did not favor extending the power of federal bureaucrats.

Simultaneously passing a number of bills to preserve antiquities at proved a difficult proposition. Lacey's committee reported favorably on the Pajarito proposal and it went to the floor of Congress. Along with a number of measures for the preservation of American antiquities and the bill to establish the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, there it remained throughout 1905. With a variety of options, it seemed that Congress could not choose.

The spectra of Richard Wetherill, the self-trained rancher-turned-archeologist from Mancos, Colorado, continued to shape the evolution of southwestern archeology. An anathema to the professionalizing discipline of anthropology, Wetherill became the subject of a widespread campaign to condemn him as a "pot-hunter." American archeologists discounted Wetherill's discovery of the Basketmakers, the prehistoric peoples that preceded the Anasazi, and Baum regularly defamed him in print. Edgar L. Hewett also complained to the Department of the Interior about Wetherill's digging. Places that Wetherill worked, such as Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, became priority locations in the scheme of institutional preservation. The consensus among government officials and accredited archeologists was that Wetherill had to be put out of business once and for all. One of the best ways to restrict Wetherill was to reserve the sites where he excavated.

When it became apparent that only one of the two archeological national park bills was going to pass Congress, Lacey made the choice that the near-hysteria regarding Wetherill dictated. He threw his support to the Mesa Verde project. When he heard that Theodore Roosevelt added forty-seven square miles, including the Puye ruins, to the Santa Clara reservation in July 1905, Hewett publicly followed. He complained that the proposition was dead. [15] Without either Puye or the El Rito de los Frijoles ruins, the archeological potential of the Pajarito Plateau national park was minimal.

Enthusiasm for the project waned. On March 26, 1906, William H. Andrews, Rodey's successor as the delegate from the New Mexico Territory, introduced another measure to establish the Pajarito National Park. The bill, numbered H. R. 17459, made little headway. Hewett's "Act For the Preservation of American Antiquities," which allowed the President to proclaim any section of unreserved Federal land of significant pre-historic, historic, and scientific interest as a national monument, passed both houses and became law in early June, 1906. Mesa Verde National Park was authorized later the same month. There was no sign of a national park on the Pajarito Plateau.

In Congress, 1906 became the year of archeology and it offered the best opportunity to create an archeological national park. The passage of the Antiquities Act and the Mesa Verde park bill within three weeks of each other revealed a greater interest in establishing archeological national parks than before or since. As it stood in 1906, the park proposal for the Pajarito Plateau lacked a significant archeological component. The most important archeological sites on the plateau were within a forest reserve, an Indian reservation, and private land. Ironically, the archeology of the plateau was beyond the reach of park advocates at the best moment for the creation of an archeological national park. The series of compromises deprived the park bill of its primary features as well as the opportunity to be included in a unique moment in the history of American preservation.

As the pre-eminent archeologist of the Southwest in the early 1900s, Hewett should have been able to orchestrate the establishment of a national park on the Pajarito Plateau. Between 1904 and 1906, his influence over the GLO and the Department of the Interior was at its zenith. He served as an advisor to GLO Commissioner Richards on archeology and preservation and drew up a survey that identified four distinct river basins brimming with archeological remains. Hewett also wrote the Antiquities Act and received the approval of the American Archeological Institute and the American Anthropological Association for the project, testified frequently in front of Congress on archeological questions, and remained a close friend of John F. Lacey. In 1906, he was as close to the centers of power in disputes over land as any man in the country.

After Lacey's death, Hewett contended that the congressman abandoned the Pajarito project in favor of the Mesa Verde bill. Hewett was a capricious man, however, and a stronger likelihood was that after he inspected Mesa Verde for the Department of the Interior in March, 1906, Hewett himself gave up on the abrogated Pajarito project. Without either Puye or Frijoles Canyon, from Hewett's perspective, there was little point in establishing a national park. Better opportunities would certainly arise, but there would be no national park on the Pajarito Plateau in 1906.

With much of the earlier national interest dissipating, Hewett tightened his hold upon the ruins of the Pajarito Plateau. Following the lead of earlier archeologists, he came to see the area as his personal project. The failure of the first proposal strained local support badly, and advocates of the project needed time to regroup. Hewett stepped into this void and consolidated his position in the professional world. In 1903, Territorial Governor Miguel Otero forced him to leave the New Mexico Normal School, and Hewett changed careers. He pursued graduate work in archeology at the University of Geneva, where he received a Ph.D in 1908. He developed his power base with professional anthropologists and archeologists, and in 1907 became the director of the newly founded School of American Archeology in Santa Fe. This increased his prestige, and Hewett used his new position to acquire simultaneous excavating permits from the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. He became the only authorized excavator at Frijoles Canyon, Puye, and other sites within the area the GLO withdrew in 1900. In 1907, Hewett led an excavation of Puye, and in 1909, followed with similar at Tyuonyi, in Frijoles Canyon. He also held permits for other archeological sites throughout the Southwest. [16] Although the permits required his presence at all times, his prestige was such that the GLO, the Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service allowed him to violate the terms of the Antiquities Act.

The withdrawal of 1900 and the creation of the Jemez Forest Reserve [later the Santa Fe National Forest] in 1905 created a confusing situation upon the plateau. Because forest reserves and the public domain were under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior in 1900, the GLO made the original temporary withdrawal. In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt transferred the national forests to the new United States Forest Service (USFS), a division of the Department of Agriculture. The first United States Forester, Gifford Pinchot, advocated utilitarian conservation and sought to build grass roots support for his agency. He arranged for the passage of the Act of June 11, 1906, which opened arable land within forest reserves to homestead claims. With nearly 200,000,000 acres involved in the transfer, the USFS and the GLO paid little attention to specific cases like the Pajarito Plateau. Moreover, USFS personnel never understood exactly which lands in the region the GLO withdrew from entry. As a result, the Forest Service allowed settlers to file for ownership of land that was within the boundaries of the temporary withdrawal of 1900. When the error was discovered, a paramount western fear came to the forefront— that an individual's property could be taken at the whim of the Federal government.

This became an important source of anti-national park sentiment in the region. In 1907, a tubercular homesteader from Illinois, Harold H. Brook, filed a claim on a tract at the base of the Jemez Mountains, where the Fuller Lodge stands in Los Alamos. When he tried to perfect his patent in 1909, he discovered that his property, which he called the Los Alamos Ranch, was within the temporary withdrawal of 1900. The enraged Brook blamed his predicament on the incompetence of the Forest Service for allowing him to apply and on the GLO, for granting him conditional title. [17] But he saved his real wrath for national park advocates.

Linked to the development of the national park, a small range war was brewing on the Pajarito Plateau. Brook had a sizable investment in his enterprise, and he was prepared to defend it. He brought the problem to the attention of the public, writing letters to newspapers and contacting influential people in the territorial government. His neighbors made him their spokesman and homesteaders in the Pajarito region gathered support for their cause.

As his influence grew, Hewett became an informal arbiter of land claims in the region. Brook asked Hewett to apply his influence to the situation. Hewett recognized that such conflict would not further his goals. With the primary ruins still unreserved and Brook stirring up opposition to future efforts, the status quo became intolerable. Hewett pressed the Department of the Interior to develop new options for the administration of the region.