PIPE SPRING Cultures at a Crossroads: An Administrative History

Presenting Pipe Spring National Monument

At the time of the monument's creation in 1923, the Pipe Spring site was visually unimpressive. The fort was in poor condition, particularly the lower building. Its primary associated structures, the east and west cabins, were in total ruin. Moreover, in the eyes of Park Service officials, the landscape was littered with an extensive array of old fences, corrals, and cattle troughs (the latter consisted of both wooden troughs and open, mud-ringed pools of water which served as watering holes). What is now referred to as the old monument road, previously called the Kaibab Wagon Road, had long passed through all of this, but now that Pipe Spring was federal government property, practical as well as aesthetic concerns immediately arose and needed to be addressed. [519]

40. Pipe Spring fort, ca. 1925. People in gateway are unidentified.
(Pipe Spring National Monument, neg. 355).

First, the Park Service wanted the visitor to the historic site to have a pleasant and memorable visit, as well as a safe one. As monument boundaries were unfenced, local horses and cattle criss-crossing the road to reach watering troughs spelled obvious trouble for motorists. In addition to addressing issues of safety, the Park Service also wanted to make all the sites as attractive as possible. During this period park managers were concerned with making all of its sites within the system "presentable" to the public, as NPS Historian Linda Flint McClelland documents so well in Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942. [520] It is true that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," for while a typical cattle ranch landscape may have appeared practical if not attractive to a cattle rancher, its looks were unappealing to urbanized Park Service officials from Washington, D.C., Union Pacific officials, and to most tourists that hailed from a city of any size. Thus there were two immediate problems to be tackled: 1) the cleanup of the landscape and 2) the restoration of the buildings. Because the first task required only unskilled labor and very little expense, it was the easiest and earliest one undertaken.