Casa Grande Ruins Administrative History

C. Frank Pinkley's First Tenure

When Frank Pinkley arrived at Casa Grande in December 1901, he began the first of two lengthy residencies there. His appointment marked a short, renewed interest in Casa Grande by the General Land Office perhaps because the ruins now had a resident custodian. Pinkley was a mere youth of twenty at the time he accepted the custodianship of this first reserved cultural site. He was born on May 27, 1881, about four miles south of Chillicothe, Missouri. After high school in 1898, he worked in a Chillicothe jewelry store. In the fall of 1900 a doctor found that Pinkley had tuberculosis and ordered him to go to Arizona. He arrived in Phoenix in September and spent several months in a desert camp following which he and a cousin leased a small farm. [30]

Toward the end of 1901, Pinkley's uncle, the General Land Office commissioner for Arizona, offered his nephew the job as Custodian of Casa Grande. He accepted the offer. On December 14, 1901, Pinkley received his instructions from the commissioner of the General Land Office. These read:

You will immediately assume charge of the reservation and take the necessary steps to protect the said ruins and to prevent any settlement or encroachment on the said reservation. In order to do this most satisfactorily you are directed to live upon the reservation within the immediate neighborhood of said ruins. If no part of the ruins is habitable you are authorized to erect such building as you choose thereon without expense to the government.

Your daily presence on the reservation is required and you are not to absent yourself there from, unless after obtaining a regular leave of absence from this office.

Blanks are forwarded to you as well as envelopes, under separate cover. Upon the report blanks you will at the end of the month fill out the lines thereon, reporting the condition of the reservation and the number of days in each month, which you remained thereon, as well as any other information you may deem of interest to the Department. [31]

Although his salary of $900 per year more than doubled that of the previous custodians, Pinkley could not afford to build a residence at Casa Grande at first. Instead, he lived in a tent just east of the enclosure which came to be known as Compound A. Within a short time, he constructed a frame with a cast-iron roof over the tent. The shade obtained from this arrangement reduced the summer heat inside of his dwelling. This living quarters served until 1906 when he built a frame-sided tent. He also dug a forty-five-foot-deep well. Soon, his parents moved to Arizona and, in March 1902, he received permission from the General Land Office commissioner for them to live at Casa Grande with him. His father Sam was an invalid. As a means to augment his annual salary, Pinkley opened a trading post at nearby Blackwater. His parents operated it for him. By 1905 he met Edna Townsley. Her father had brought his family to Arizona from Vermillion, South Dakota, when he accepted a teaching position on the nearby Gila River Reservation. Frank and Edna were married in 1906. [32]

From his beginning at Casa Grande, Pinkley displayed an innate organizational ability despite his youth. He had his vision of how to develop and promote the ruins. Although, in his first correspondence with the General Land Office commissioner on February 6, 1902, Pinkley discounted the need for a roof or fence, he gave a thorough account of the ruin as he found it as well as a description of the surrounding countryside. He included a short summary of the repairs he felt were needed for the Great House. Pinkley requested that the reservation boundary be surveyed and marked, and the entrance roads be posted to discourage curio seekers and native wood cutters. He asked that the $300 fine for defacing the Great House be extended to cover anyone caught excavating or removing artifacts. Finally, Pinkley sought permission to excavate the surrounding mounds. He believed that excavation would not only further scientific knowledge, but it would also attract national interest and, therefore, promote visitation. [33]

After reading Pinkley's first report, the General Land Office personnel made two separate replies. One response involved the boundary survey, entrance posting, and fine extension. The agency leadership discounted the need for a boundary survey since the reservation had been established in accordance with government surveys. Posting the entrance roads was a good idea, the assistant commissioner believed, but no funds were available to do so. The agency, however, had no objection to Pinkley using his own money to erect entrance signs. No one in the General Land Office understood the reference to a $300 fine for defacing the Great House, and the assistant commissioner asked Pinkley to explain. Pinkley did not know that Isaac Whittemore had posted this unauthorized warning. All he could reply was that, when he arrived at Casa Grande, a sign existed on the Great House; therefore, he concluded that some law authorized the fine. Since no legal authority existed for a fine, Pinkley was instructed to report any cases of theft of government personal property so the offender could be prosecuted under existing larceny laws. Since artifacts were not personal property, Binger Hermann, the General Land Office commissioner, asked the secretary of the interior to recommend to Congress that it authorize the secretary

to make a provision for the preservation and protection of the [Casa Grande] reservation against destruction or injury by defacing buildings or ruins, by excavation, by removal of curios, or any other wilful injury to the ruins.

Hermann suggested that a $500 fine and/or imprisonment not to exceed twelve months be levied against those convicted of such activity. Whittemore's posting and Pinkley's inquiry aided the move which led to the 1906 Antiquities Act. That act established, for the first time, a legal basis to prosecute anyone excavating or removing artifacts from public property. [34]

The General Land Office commissioner's other correspondence with Pinkley involved ruins repairs. Although Pinkley had summarized repair needs in February 1902, the commissioner asked for exact requirements. Consequently, Pinkley got George Eaton, the mason for the 1891 repairs, to help him specify areas needing repair as well as the quantity of materials. They identified five doors and windows in the Great House with missing lintels. In addition three large cavities required brick and mortar fill. The walls of the ruins to the south and to the east of the Great House needed underpinning. In a letter to the commissioner, Pinkley listed the quantity of repair material and its estimated cost, including labor. He thought that $880 would cover the repairs. The General Land Office commissioner felt that Pinkley had underestimated the cost and that it would be closer to $1,000. As a result, Pinkley was asked in July 1902 to make another report of the repair needs. Pinkley provided the same quantity for materials. On this occasion, he raised the cost for material and labor to $1,019.35. [35]

In the meantime, the secretary of the interior requested a $2,000 appropriation for fiscal year 1903 for ruins protection. That sum was included in the Sundry Appropriation Act of June 28, 1902 (32 Stat. 454). Despite the fact that Pinkley had been sending repair estimates to the General Land Office, the commissioner wrote to the local General Land Office agent on September 9, 1902, with the request that he inspect Casa Grande. S. J. Holsinger, the local agent in the Phoenix office, arrived on October 22. After viewing the ruins, Holsinger decided that no improvement was needed as much as a roof over the Great House. He said that Pinkley concurred with him. Pinkley had changed his mind about the roof after the July and August rains had seemingly eroded more material from the Great House than he had expected. Holsinger secured the necessary data from which to design a roof. He decided that it could not take the form of Victor Mindeleff's 1890 design, which had all the support posts inside the ruin. [36]

While he was at Casa Grande, Holsinger looked at areas of the ruins that Pinkley had indicated required repair. He decided that no more brick or concrete should be used on the ruins as Pinkley had proposed, instead any restoration work should be done with as much original material as possible. He had Pinkley make a mixture from the debris and apply it to several cracks to see how it worked. Holsinger pronounced the effort a success. Holsinger also indicated a source for future repair material. He wrote that Pinkley had recently dug a forty-five-foot-deep well. At the seven-or eight-foot level, he had encountered a stratum of cemented gravel which was identical with the original construction material. That soil could be used for future repairs. As for the replacement of lintels, Holsinger thought that reservation mesquite would serve the purpose. [37]

By May 1903, Holsinger had designed a covering for the ruins. It had a galvanized, corrugated iron roof with a six-foot overhang. The framework was supported on 10-by-10-inch redwood posts set four feet in the ground. Anchor cables ran from the top of each corner to dead-men set twenty feet away. An advertisement for construction bids was made toward the end of May 1903. By June 8, Holsinger had received two bids from Phoenix, each for just under $2,000. These were followed by a $1,900 bid from W. J. Corbett of Tucson. Corbett was awarded the contract on June 22. Work was to be done by September 22. Corbett's men arrived on August 25, 1903 and immediately noticed a mistake. The Great House walls were two feet higher than stated in the specifications. Consequently, the 10-by-10-inch redwood posts could only be set two feet into the ground. The roof was completed on September 10, 1903, with one change order of an additional $75 to paint it (figure 14). It must have presented a terrible contrast with its surroundings because the roof was painted with one coat of red paint to protect the corrugated iron. [38]

With the roof completed, Pinkley turned his attention to an appropriation for excavations. He had asked for permission to excavate in his first report of February 1902. Without waiting for a reply, he wrote on March 1, 1902 that he had "found" four stone axes, a stone wedge, and two bowls. That statement proved to be a mistake for Pinkley. Binger Hermann, the General Land Office commissioner, believed that the prehistoric antiquities of the Southwest had to be protected from indiscriminate excavations made by untrained individuals. To permit such exploratory digging fell into the same category as tolerating the looting being done at other ancient sites. Hermann believed that only trained archeologists should conduct excavations. Consequently, he wrote to Pinkley that all excavations would be under the control and supervision of the Bureau of Ethnology. Pinkley accepted that pronouncement, and, when he requested a $2-3,000 appropriation for fiscal year 1904 for excavations, he made it clear that he understood that the Bureau of Ethnology would be involved. With no money forthcoming for 1904, Pinkley again made excavation funds his only request for fiscal year 1905. On this occasion, in May 1905, Scott Smith came to confer with Pinkley and make a recommendation for an investigation. No records remain of this meeting, but Pinkley did get his excavation appropriation for fiscal year 1907. J. Walter Fewkes of the Bureau of Ethnology was appointed to conduct the work. He was instructed to inspect the ruins for needed repairs in addition to excavations. Fewkes had visited Casa Grande in April 1891 before Mindeleff had repaired the Great House, so he was no stranger to the area. When he arrived on October 24, 1906, he examined the remains and concluded that the Great House was in fair condition. Several doors and windows in that structure needed lintels and the roof badly required paint. Fewkes concluded that the Great House covering was no thing of beauty and ventured that it should have had a mission style architectural design. Moving from the Great House, Fewkes found that the ruin fragments to the south and to the east needed to have their foundations strengthened. As a result, Fewkes made minor repairs and painted the roof. [39]

Figure 14: The First Ruins Shelter Roof Constructed in 1903.
This ca. 1925 photograph sows the anchor cables that provided stability.
Courtesy of the Western Archeological and Conservation Center.

To develop an excavation plan, Fewkes systematically viewed the Casa Grande ruins. He determined that most of the ruins could be characterized as laid out in rectangular areas which were surrounded by walls. The remains inside the walls were rooms, courts, and plazas. Fewkes decided to designate each rectangular walled area as a compound. Having found six such compounds at Casa Grande, he named them A, B, C, D, E, and F. Because the Great House was the most important building in the largest compound, he called its enclosure Compound A. Fewkes also identified another class of ruins which he termed clan house. These remnants consisted of single buildings without a surrounding wall. He found the remains of four such structures of which two were east and two west of Compound A. [40]

After completing his survey, Fewkes decided to expose prehistoric remains, and repair and preserve them. He felt that, since the ruins at Casa Grande resembled other unique prehistoric remains in the Gila Valley, these uncovered remnants would then "serve as a type with which to compare and to interpret" other similar mounds in the region. [41]

During the winter of 1906-07, Fewkes expended the $3,000 appropriation for work in Compound A where he excavated and repaired the compound wall, buildings, and plazas. Approximately sixty percent of the area was exposed, which included forty-three rooms, and several courts and plazas (figure 15). He removed a great amount of debris from the compound. Wall protection included laying concrete at wall bases on an inclined clay plane to carry water from the newly exposed walls, and grading the compound surface so that water would be drained through a large ditch at the northeast corner. Fewkes also diverted the old stage road, which crossed the compound, to pass around its southern end. [42]

In the course of the 1906-07 excavations, Fewkes recovered some 1,000 artifacts which he shipped to the Smithsonian Institution. Custodian Pinkley objected because he thought it would be better to keep such implements and utensils at Casa Grande where they could be seen in their surroundings. He requested a $2,000 appropriation to construct a museum in which to display Casa Grande artifacts. Richard Rathbun of the Smithsonian Institution answered Pinkley by citing the statute which read, "all collections, rocks, minerals, soils, fossils, and objects of natural history, archaeology, and ethnology" made by any federally funded group had to be deposited with the Smithsonian Institution. He did consent to leave some items at Casa Grande. No money for a museum, however, was forthcoming, so Pinkley displayed artifacts on home-made shelves in the north room of the Great House. [43]

Figure 15: Compound A.

Figure 16: Compound B.

An additional $3,000 appropriation made it possible for Fewkes to return to Casa Grande during the winter of 1907-08. On this occasion he focused on Compound B where he did extensive excavations, including exposing the surrounding wall. At this site he found two large pyramids which had rooms on top of them (figures 16 and 17). He installed a drainage system by digging a ditch around the whole exterior Compound B wall. Fewkes also did some work at Compounds C and D and Clan House 1. He found that Compound C was covered with rows of houses while Compound D had a massive central building. Clan House 1 was a self-standing structure composed of eleven rooms around a plaza. [44]

Beginning with his annual report for fiscal year 1905, Pinkley sought to expand the area under his supervision. He asked that three parcels of land located three, five, and eight miles to the east of Casa Grande be withdrawn from settlement and placed in his charge to prevent excavations. Among these three properties were the Adamsville and the Escalante ruins. The secretary of the interior noted that two of the three tracts had been temporarily withdrawn for the San Carlos water storage project. Authorization to have the third plot (N-1/2 of Section 27, Township 4 South, Range 9 East) temporarily withdrawn from settlement and placed under Pinkley's control was granted on May 9, 1906. It is not known how long he administered this tract of land because no references are made to it in National Park Service records. He campaigned through fiscal year 1910 for the other two parcels of land, but without success. [45]

Having gained an additional 320 acres under his administration, Pinkley's ambition to spread his control to a much broader base surfaced. In his 1906 annual report, he suggested that all the ruins on forest reserve and Indian reservation land in Arizona be placed in his care. To acquire supervision of these sites would have given Pinkley a far-flung empire of thousands of acres. He admitted that "I could not, of course, give each particular group of ruins much care, but I could make a visit at least once a year to each group, post notices that they were under the care of the Department [of the Interior] and prevent in every way possible further depredations." Pinkley also assured the General Land Office commissioner that his duties at Casa Grande would not be neglected because his father, though an invalid, could act in his stead. No reply to this proposal exists, but the General Land Office commissioner, no doubt, told Pinkley to curb his desire because he never again proposed such a scheme during his first tenure at Casa Grande. [46]

In his 1906 annual report, which he wrote on July 16, 1906, Pinkley also asked to have some printed literature such as a free pamphlet to distribute to visitors. He continued to ask for such material in each of his annual reports until, almost seven years later, in May 1913, Pinkley's request was fulfilled. This thirty-one-page pamphlet thoroughly described the ruins and gave information about the early Spanish expeditions there. The pamphlet author also advised that, because of the extreme heat, visitors should not plan to view the ruins in the summer. [47]

By 1909, Pinkley began to submit only one page annual reports. They basically indicated that there had been no appropriations and no money spent at the ruins. His requests for a museum building and interpretive material went unanswered. In the 1910 annual report, Pinkley began to comment that the exposed ruins had begun to suffer the effects of erosion "from which there seems no practical method to protect the greater part of them." In the zeal to understand more about the inhabitants of Casa Grande, the excavated ruins had been left to the elements. [48]

In 1909 the first external pressure on the reservation occurred. A demand arose to decrease the reservation boundary by restoring 120 acres of Casa Grande land, located in Section 9, to the public domain (see figure 13). This action was viewed as necessary because, it was thought, the reservation occupied land required for an irrigation canal. Pinkley contacted J. Walter Fewkes to ask his opinion of the proposed withdrawal. He observed to Fewkes that, if the 120 acres were removed from the north side of the reservation, then a 120-acre tract along the east side should be added. Fewkes had no objection to removing the 120 acres in Section 9 because he did not think it contained any outstanding ruins. He also agreed with Pinkley that the reservation acreage should not be reduced, but, instead, an exchange be made to acquire the 120 acres on the east side. This area, he felt, contained some important mounds. Consequently, when President William Howard Taft issued Proclamation No. 884 on December 10, 1909, the reservation boundary was not merely reduced by 120 acres on the north side. In exchange for the loss on the north side, the reservation was expanded to the east in Section 16. [49]

For fiscal year 1910, Pinkley decided that he needed a house to replace the semi-tent accommodation that he and his wife had inhabited since 1906. He asked for a $2,500 appropriation to build a custodian's residence, but, as with his other requests for funds, he was turned down. Using $600 of his own money, he constructed a one-story adobe house in the unexcavated southeast corner of Compound A (figure 18). Local Pima Indians made and laid the adobe while he did the carpentry work. [50]

By 1912 Pinkley's well began to cause a problem. The wooden curbing had rotted. He requested that the General Land Office provide $75 to repair it, along with $150 to purchase a small gasoline engine or windmill to lift water from the well for visitors' convenience. That agency chose to ignore Pinkley's request until July 1914 when he informed the commissioner that, if funds were not forthcoming to fix the well, he could not supply visitors with water. The General Land Office leadership replied that it had no money with which to repair the well. Perhaps this response caused Pinkley to decide to seek another vocation, for he soon determined to run for the state legislature. [51]

One other issue which Pinkley raised during the last four years of his first Casa Grande tenure was the need to repaint the roof and support members of the Great House cover. At first he estimated the cost for paint and labor to be $75, but he later raised that figure to $100. No funds were approved for this task. [52]

In November 1914 Pinkley won a seat in the state senate and, as a result, had to resign as Casa Grande custodian before taking office. Since the state legislature did not meet until later in 1915, Pinkley remained at the ruins into that year. His final annual report, written on September 1, 1915, consisted of five sentences. Basically, he noted that erosion was still occurring and, therefore, an appropriation was needed to repair and protect the ruins. [53]

Figure 17: Compound B Ca. 1925. One of the compound pyramids is visible.
The stakes insde of the compound wall outline various rooms.
Courtesy of the Western Archeological and Conservation Center.

Figure 18: Frank Pinkley's 1910 House, Ca. 1925. The 1921 room addition is visible at the left corner.
The house was lcoated within Compound A.
Courtesy of the Western Archeological and Conservation Center.