Finally, the group convened at the cottage where Congressman Temple lodged, and after another policy statement by both sides, everyone tried to settle the issue. Kneipp made a long, impassioned speech, during which he intimated that visitors were not interested in such unimportant ruins, and anyone who did stumble into them could be handled by the Forest Service custodian. He claimed that the forest Service could do everything the Park Service could do and more for less money, and he questioned the need to sacrifice large areas of forest land to allow a national park big enough to fit the arbitrary standards that Mather and Albright had established. Then Nusbaum reiterated the Park Service position that the large area was necessary to protect the ruins and the unique physical features of the region. Finally, the time to deal with the question arrived. In the bureaucratic equivalent of the nineteenth-century gunfight, the men drew their maps, and the process of orchestrating an acceptable agreement began.

The two agencies had very different ideas of the acceptable size for the proposed national park. The Park Service envisioned a large area, including the existing monument, the Otowi ruins, the Puye ruins on the Santa Clara Indian reservation, the Baca Crater, and land connecting the various features. "The boundaries I laid," Nusbaum wrote Mather, "made the Forestry people gasp." [10] The USFS counteroffer reflected the thinking that had resulted in the establishment of the monument in 1916. After much consultation, the foresters offered to cede only the existing monument, the Otowi ruins, and a corridor connecting the two. Nusbaum immediately rejected the proposal. The initial counteroffer did not fit the image that NPS officials had of the size and stature of a national park. Kneipp then made another offer that included the area east of the Los Alamos Ranch School, inside of a line running north and south about one-quarter mile west of the Otowi, Tsankawi, and Puye ruins, and portions of the national forest between the Santa Clara Indian Reservation and the Ramon Vigil Grant, which bordered the existing Tsankawi section. This compromise offered the NPS archaeological control of the Pajarito Plateau, but Nusbaum turned it back in hopes of getting everything the NPS wanted at a later date.

Spurred by Temple's declaration that a national park was necessary to "preserve a tremendous outdoor Museum," the bargaining session continued until well after midnight, but the participants could not agree. In the hope that the NPS could use its advantage more effectively at a later date, Nusbaum, who was a lower-ranking official than Kneipp, his Forest Service counterpart, suggested that they table any permanent agreement until a meeting in Washington when Mather could attend. But the Forest Service representatives felt that their advantage lay in New Mexico, and they pressed for a settlement. Nusbaum refused, and Temple, tired after a long day and a longer evening, suggested that a delay might be a good idea, so that "others could be heard from." [11]

Unhappy at what it regarded as an acquisitive, one-dimensional land policy, the Forest Service refused to allow the Park Service to administer the ruins as a national park. Even under pressure from Temple and Morrow, foresters would not acquiesce. Rudimentary elements of a recreational policy had begun to surface within the Forest Service, and its officials were not willing to relinquish forest land to allow the NPS to develop programs for visitors. The foresters were willing to cede archaeological administration, but not at the expense of either the development of natural resources in the area or their own embryonic recreational programs.

The Park Service challenged Forest Service management, claiming that forestry personnel were not prepared to administer such an important part of the natural and cultural past of the continent. Park Service officials believed that the ruins fell too low among USFS priorities. Furthermore, USFS personnel lacked the background, training, and initiative to properly administer archaeological sites for visitors. By combining the archaeological importance of the region with the developing concept of national parks that Mather and Albright promoted, advocates made the Bandelier area appear to have a combination of natural and archaeological value worthy of national park status.

In the eyes of NPS officials, Forest Service recalcitrance in the face of what the NPS regarded as obvious merit made it appear that the foresters were trying to do the work of both agencies. In the words of New Mexico congressman John Morrow, the Forest Service endeavor[ed] to set up little national parks of their [sic] own," a sense further affirmed by a USFS declaration in 1928 that included Bandelier as part of one of its wilderness preserves. [12] Park Service officials did not agree that the Forest Service ought to be in the recreation and tourist business; that was the province of the Park Service. It appeared that the conflict on the Pajarito could not be resolved to the satisfaction of both agencies.

The conflict between the two agencies reduced itself to a comparison of incommensurable values. There was a quantitative economic value to the disputed timber lands in the Santa Fe National Forest. A much less tangible value could be attributed to a national park filled with archaeological ruins. Each agency felt its use and its constituency should have priority, and each tried to manipulate the situation to its advantage.

But the pendulum slowly swung to favor the Park Service. Congressmen Morrow was already a long-time supporter of the various Pajarito Plateau proposals, and state government officials also showed renewed interest. Newspapers continued to trumpet the proposal, with Adela Holmquist, a reporter with the Albuquerque Herald, taking the lead. In order to assess the implications of the proposed park, the office of the governor of New Mexico asked Edgar L. Hewett to prepare a comprehensive report on the situation.

With Hewett's continued support, the project stood an excellent chance of success. On 8 December 1925 he presented a preliminary report to Temple's committee, indicating that he still supported Nusbaum's conception of a large park containing all the important features of the region. [13] His report to the governor reaffirmed this stance; it strongly emphasized the need to include more than archaeological ruins to make the area a national park of the first order. Hewett adopted the mainstream perspective of the agency, which seemed likely to prevail.

Under the auspices of the CCNPF, conciliation became the order of the day. But even with representatives of the NPS and USFS trying to devise an acceptable solution, little progress was made in 1926. Neither agency offered sufficient concessions to orchestrate compromise. The committee had an appropriation to fund inspection tours only until 1 July 1927, and early that year, Arthur Ringland became impatient with the lack of progress. He requested that the NPS send an official "to determine the feasibility of a National Park in the [Bandelier] region." [14]

There was only one person in the Southwest with the degree of knowledge and the level of responsibility that this job demanded. Frank Pinkley's Park Service credentials were also impeccable. His devotion and loyalty were unquestioned, for he had been an integral part of the most difficult decade of the agency. On 4 April 1927 he wired his acceptance of this job to Cammerer, and after receiving the files concerning the monument and the range of park proposals, he embarked on an inspection tour that included most of the leading southwestern national monuments as well as the Pajarito Plateau.

Although Pinkley's autonomy and outspokenness occasionally made the agency uneasy, the central administration of the NPS had great confidence in him. Albright expected that as a loyal Park Service employees, Pinkley would echo the departmental line on the proposed park; that he would visit the region and report that a large park, containing more than archaeological ruins, was essential. A national park on the Pajarito must be archaeologically significant, scenically spectacular, and able to compare to the existing members of the flag ship category of Park Service areas.

These rigid requirements made it almost impossible for the NPS to compromise about land acquisition. National parks could only be established by Congress, and the NPS had succeeded in convincing Congress that it had stringent standards. If agency officials left out the scenic mountainous areas, opponents in Congress could accuse the NPS of violating its own criteria. Without the archaeological features, they had no basis for a national park. The scenery in the area alone did not justify park status. There was no room for compromise. At the highest levels of the NPS the Pajarito Plateau became an all-or-nothing proposition.

Despite Pinkley's frequent public outbursts on behalf of the national monuments, Horace Albright did not count on Pinkley's commitment to the concept of a distinct category of national monuments as defined by the Antiquities Act. "Boiled down," he wrote after his trip, "my report on the proposed Cliff Cities National Park is that the scenery is not of park status and ruins do not make a national parks, not in any number, kind or quantity; they make a monument. He reiterated his long-standing contention that the ruins were inferior to those at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde and that scientists like Hewett were more interested in the area than the general public. "It would be," he continued, "a distinct anti-climax for the average visitor to come from the Mesa Verde to the proposed Cliff Cities National Park." There was little in the way of exceptional scenery in the proposed area. Most of it could "be duplicated several times over" throughout the Southwest. Because the Frijoles ruins were already protected as a national monument, Pinkley thought it best to transfer administration to the Park Service. But he asserted heretically, "I would rather see them left as a monument under [the Forest] Service than be transferred to ours as a Park." [15]

Few advocates of the park in Santa Fe agreed with Pinkley's rigid view of the categorization of sites. When he discussed the issue with its supporters, he found that they thought of the "proposed park in monument terms for when I suggested that we make a monument out of Puye and Frijoles [Canyon] and let them make a park out of the fine scenery which . . . was back on the Jemez Mountains to the west and south, they immediately said that such an idea would weaken the park proposition." When Pinkley suggested that the ruins were national monument material, the park supporters pointed to Mesa Verde as evidence to the contrary. "I could only reply that national monuments are clearly defined by the [Antiquities] Act . . . while parks are not clearly defined, so if Congress in its wisdom wanted to make a national park out of a duck pond that could be done but it would be no argument for making a national park out of every duck pond in the country." [16]

As far as Pinkley was concerned, national monuments and national parks were two separate concepts, and the conversion attempt represented an effort to minimize the legal and conceptual differences between them. He believed that in its attempt to acquire the Cliff Cities National Park, the NPS was violating the standards it had previously established. As superintendent of the national monuments, Pinkley felt as threatened by the acquisition attempt as did the Forest Service. In Pinkley's biased opinion, the area simply did not live up to established scenic standards.

Yet Pinkley was naive about the political realities that the Park Service faced during the 1920s. Although the statutes supported his policy, the Park Service could not use laws to establish itself as an agency. It had to prove its viability every year in front of congressional budget committees, and Mather's decision to promote the national parks shaped the policies of the Park Service throughout the period. The Forest Service was its primary adversary, and Mather and Albright were willing to use any tool at their disposal to put distance between the two agencies. Even altering the definition of the national park category was not out of the question.

Pinkley's report stunned Albright, the leading proponent of the project, as well as the strong pro-park element in the NPS. Albright thought that Pinkley took too narrow a view of the question, seeing it as an archaeologist instead of from the "broader standpoint of a national park executive." [17] In a blatantly partisan move, Albright tried to replace Pinkley with someone upon whose support he could depend. He suggested Nusbaum as a more qualified evaluator of the situation. Nusbaum, exhausted by the earlier frays, said he was too busy at Mesa Verde to take on added responsibilities.

The rift in the ranks posed a problem for the advocates of the park on the Pajarito Plateau. Pinkley's report undercut their position. They could not continue to promote the proposal as if they had the unanimous support of the Park Service. They could not even approach the CCNPF. If Pinkley's report became public, it would end any chance of convincing the still-intransigent Forest Service people that this was not just another acquisitive move by the Park Service.

As a result, the Park Service refrained from further action during the rest of 1927, keeping Pinkley's report out of the public eye. Even friends of the agency were kept in the dark. On 17 January 1928 Hewett wrote the Park Service to find out if the project was still under consideration. More than six months after Pinkley's report, the most important friend of the park proposal in the region did not even know of Pinkley's visit! Mather responded to Hewett's inquiry with the standard response concerning park proposals on the Pajarito. He complained that "the lack of a definite proposal hurt the project immeasurably," and if Hewett had clear ideas for the region, the Park Service "would be glad to present this for some definite action." [18]

The question hung in a Park Service-imposed limbo until late 1930, when Albright found his "national park executives." Upon Mather's retirement in 1929, Albright became director of the agency and began to implement his own agenda. Albright hated to lose to the USFS, and the Pajarito Plateau was high on his list of priorities. In October 1930 Roger Toll, the superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park and the primary inspector of national park proposals in the West, M. R. Tillotson, the superintendent of Grand Canyon, and Nusbaum went to inspect the region one more time. They spent eight days traversing northern New Mexico, visiting everything from the Otowi ruins to the Tent Rock Canyon, and reached important conclusions concerning the future of an archaeological park.

Surprisingly, their report supported Pinkley's position, and in light of the new opinion, even Albright went along. The report stated that the scenery was not "sufficiently unusual and outstanding" to merit national park status. "The choice," Toll wrote, "seems to be between having a large and important national monument and a rather small and unimportant national park." Although Cammerer thought that the agency should "aim high and then if necessary come down to what is possible to acquire," the report finally convinced Albright to put aside the park plans. On 2 January 1931 he wrote that he was "inclined to favor the national monument idea. . . . [T]he reports which we have now have before us have quite convinced me that we had better not try to get a national park in this section, at least not now." [19]

An influential Park Service supporter who did not participate in agency politics also offered an opinion that helped to kill the park proposal. On 10 February 1931 the noted anthropologist Dr. Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History, a member of the Committee on the Study of Educational Problems in the National Parks, filed a report suggesting that the Park Service should "emphasize the archaeological function of the proposed park. . . . [It] relieves us of the necessity to combat the argument that the area lacks distinctive natural scenery. . . . The park can scarcely be defended on scenic grounds." [20] Wissler knew little about the politics of the situation. Albright took his perspective as an unbiased view, and it effectively put the idea of a national park on the Pajarito on hold. Despite Mesa Verde, the agency did not want purely archaeological national parks. Without an important scenic components, even Albright recognized that the agency was discussing national monument-caliber features.

Although Wissler's comments convinced Albright to give up on the park proposition, pro-park sentiment remained within the agency. Associate Director Cammerer expressed both disappointment and optimism in a memo he attached to Wissler's letter. "On the basis of this letter, if it stood alone," he wrote, "there would be no justification for more than national monument status for this area. From what I have heard, however, a good point could be made on scenic values. . . . I should like to inspect the area some time with just that point in view." [21] Ambivalent about the acquisition of another national monument, the Park Service was not yet ready to concede.

Finally, late in 1931 Roger Toll took the lead in resolving the controversy when he proposed that the agency accept the USFS offer to transfer the monument. He concurred with Wissler's judgement, suggesting that the existing monument "would make a splendid addition to the archaeological national monuments, even if no other area were included." Forest Service officials agreed to turn over the administration of the prehistoric ruins, but "they did not wish to lose any more area from the Santa Fe National Forest than was necessary for the protection of the ruins." [22] Transfer of the monument offered an acceptable compromise, and Toll saw this as the best solution.

The compromise gave the Park Service what Frank Pinkley desired—administrative control of the archaeological ruins on the Pajarito Plateau. A rapid increase in visitors to the monument followed the completion of a new approach road to its boundaries, expediting transfer negotiations with the Forest Service. As Forest Service officials realized that the park idea had lost momentum, their position regarding the monument became conciliatory. Forester Maj. Robert Y. Stuart wrote Albright that he was prepared to transfer the existing monument and 4,700 additional acres on which "[all woodland] cutting of green timber has been completed" as long as the access roads through the additional acreage remained open for the use of local residents. [23] The additional tract no longer fit into Stuart's plans, but it united the previously segregated Otowi and Tsankawi sections. The Forest Service offered to cede the land to the Park Service in order to satiate its longtime adversaries and to alleviate the pressure to make large sections of the Santa Fe National Forest into a national park.

On 25 February 1932 the controversy was finally resolved to the satisfaction of Frank Pinkley. The Park Service assumed administrative responsibility for the new Bandelier National Monument, which included 3,626 of the 4,700 acres that Stuart offered. [24] Frank Pinkley finally had what he wanted, and Park Service development plans for north-central New Mexico could go forward.

The controversy at Bandelier was one example of how national monument issues divided the two agencies. Each agency had an agenda and a constituency, and often each wanted the same tract of land to advance its programs. Fueled by the already heated rivalry and compounded by Frank Pinkley's unorthodox position, the conflict at Bandelier illustrated the level to which relations between the agencies sunk during the 1920s. Yet it also contained the seeds of resolution and compromise, for when Pinkley forced the agency to assess the values of the area, a reasonable settlement emerged. The nearby Los Alamos Ranch School and the homesteaders in the Jemez Mountains barely noticed the change of administration in Frijoles Canyon, and the constituency of the USFS remained intact.

Pinkley also emerged a victor from the Bandelier transfer. He held out for the classification of areas according to statute, and in this case, the NPS followed his lead. In the aftermath of the Bandelier case, Pinkley's definition of what constituted a national monument took hold. Archaeological sites were and would remain national monuments. No longer would he have to worry that the best of his archaeological monuments would become national parks. Although his budget problems in the Southwest continued, Frank Pinkley's archaeological national monuments were safe from assaults from within the Park Service.

As the objectives of the two agencies became more defined, the potential for strife increased, especially in cases where both wanted to implement programs on the same tract of land. Ostensibly, the question of whether archaeological, recreational, scenic, or natural values should take precedence on the Pajarito Plateau forced the issue at Bandelier. But the real cause of conflict in New Mexico and elsewhere was that the contested area contained values that the programs of both agencies could develop. The resolution of the Pajarito Plateau situation addressed the specific issues of northern New Mexico, but set no precedents for other cases. Statute, not incommensurable values of land, dictated Pinkley's position. Pinkley's unlikely alliance with the Forest Service showed that commercial use of natural resources and archaeological preservation were not necessarily mutually exclusive, particularly when contrasted to the threat scenic preservation presented to both. A small national monument, centered on its archaeological component, posed no threat to the land management policies of the USFS because it required a comparatively small portion of Forest Service land.

But Pinkley's success at Bandelier created new difficulties in the Park Service. Horace Albright and others in the hierarchy were not happy with Pinkley's constant challenges to the status quo. From their perspective, the agency needed new and more professional standards. Pinkley had run the southwestern national monuments too long with out proper supervision from above, and in their opinion, the monuments were being developed erratically and idiosyncratically, more in accord with Pinkley's standards than with those of the Park Service. With more than a quarter of a million visitors annually, the southwestern monument group had become too important to be left to the whims of a person who they saw as a cantankerous, aging iconoclast. Officials in Washington, D.C., began to feel that the monuments had to be run according to the same rules and regulations as other areas in the system.

This belief represented a major change in the policy of the NPS toward the national monuments, and it changed Pinkley's role in the agency. The Washington, D.C., office ceased to allow Pinkley the autonomy he had previously enjoyed. In the minds of many of the leaders of the Park Service, Pinkley represented an earlier, less sophisticated era of management, and although he maintained his position as the superintendent of southwestern national monuments, his influence waned during the 1930s.

During the 1930s, the Park Service became a self-consciously professional agency interested in creating its own traditions. Pinkley was a living reminder of an aspect of that legacy that the new hierarchy wanted to forget. With millions of dollars funneled into NPS areas through various federal New Deal works programs, the internal dynamics of the agency changed greatly. Pinkley's strict constructionism was antithetical to agency policy, and his personal style was no longer a factor in keeping up morale among monument employees. His achievements with the minuscule allotments of the 1920s seemed in significant in an era of massive appropriation.