Bandelier Administrative History

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]