The original stone museum and living quarters at Tonto.
From 1907 until 1934, Tonto National Monument was administered by the U.S. Forest Service. That agency delegated the management of the cliff dwellings to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company which provided auto tours and basic services for the visiting public. In the summer of 1934, the monument was transferred to the National Park Service, and a young ranger named Charlie Steen was assigned to be Tonto’s first “custodian.”
In October of 1934, Steen filed his monthly report, writing that September’s 259 visitors had looked at the exhibit of artifacts that shared space in his residence: “All have been in to see the small exhibit I have.” When Steen had arrived at Tonto in July, he inherited a small stone residence at the edge of the parking lot. In September he installed a cabinet with a display of artifacts. “I keep the registration book in the room with the exhibit case and while the party is signing up I get them looking at the exhibits.”
The stone residence, built in 1932, had been home for Henry Peoria, the Apache watchman who worked for the company’s tourist franchise. When Peoria and the Southern Pacific turned the monument over to the National Park Service, they left an entry road and parking lot, a trail to the Lower Cliff Dwelling, and the little stone residence building. The infrastructure seemed adequate, but the company’s interpretation of the archeological site was less so. Advertisements for the Apache Trail auto tour touted “cliff dwellings older than Babylon.” A sign on the trail read: “Ancient Cliff Dwelling of the Tonto Apache Indians.” Steen, with an anthropology degree from Denver University, wanted to bring a scientific approach to the story of the cliff dwellings.
As a national monument ranger-custodian, Steen worked under the direction of the Southwestern National Monuments Superintendent, Frank Pinkley, whose headquarters was at Casa Grande National Monument near Coolidge, Arizona. Several national monuments were transferred from the Forest Service to the National Park Service in 1933-1934. With the recent transfers, “Boss” Pinkley supervised ranger staff at twenty-six national monuments scattered across Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. Frank Pinkley, with many years of experience guiding visitors through the ancient remains at Casa Grande, believed that the public would better appreciate the cultural and natural resources of the monuments if they better understood the science and history that they represented. He wanted his ranger-custodians to be “interpreters” for the visiting public, and he wanted that interpretation to be based on the most current and reliable research. Pinkley consistently supported museum development and ranger programs as ways to help visitors understand the features of the monuments.
For decades in the Southwest, travel writers featured fanciful stories cliff dwellers. Meanwhile, considerable legitimate research was taking place regarding the region’s archeology. In the Tonto Basin, Adolph Bandelier visited the cliff dwellings in 1883 and published a report suggesting a connection with the Ancestral Puebloan people that he had investigated in New Mexico and northern Arizona. Government researchers such as J. Walter Fewkes reported on direct connections between Arizona archeological sites and the living Hopi culture. Beginning in the 1920s, Harold Gladwin and his colleagues at Gila Pueblo Archeological Institute in Globe had sought to define a 13th and 14th century Salado archeological complex in the region.
New visitor center dedication in 1965
In March 1935, Steen reported, “Mr. and Mrs. Gladwin were also visitors during the month. Mr. Gladwin has offered some Salado pottery for the museum as soon as it is completed.” A few weeks later, Steen wrote about another visit from Gila Pueblo: “On the twenty-third [of April] Dr. Emil Haury and Mr. Ted Sayles of Gila Pueblo were here and took some beam borings in both the lower and upper dwellings.” Haury and Sayles were attempting to pin down construction dates for the cliff dwellings using the relatively new science of dendrochronology or tree-ring dating. Steen reported that the scientists found some “datable timbers,” but that they also encountered cottonwood and sycamore which provided less usable results. No doubt Steen was happy to learn from these scientific neighbors. Dr. Haury went on to be the director of the University of Arizona Anthropology Department and is considered a founding father of Arizona archeology.
With Harold Gladwin’s encouragement, Charlie conducted research of his own that spring. In July 1935, the journal American Anthropologist published Steen’s short article on a particular fragment of cotton textile found at the Tonto cliff dwellings. It was also that summer that Frank Pinkley transferred Steen to Casa Grande National Monument where Charlie served as ranger and guide. Within a few months, Pinkley promoted Steen to the headquarters staff as regional archeologist. Charlie Steen served in that capacity until his retirement from the National Park Service in 1970. His work included museum development at Casa Grande, Tumacacori, and White Sands National Monuments. Charlie Steen’s specialty in museum development began with the little display of artifacts at his Tonto residence.
The stone building beside the Tonto parking lot continued to serve as a visitor check station, museum, and ranger residence. In the spring of 1940, Steen returned to Tonto, along with six members of the all-Navajo Mobile Unit of the Civilian Conservation Corps. For four months the crew excavated and stabilized rooms at the Upper Cliff Dwelling. Steen and his wife Mary lived in a canvass wall tent for the duration of the project. When the Steens left in April they left the tent behind. By May, the current ranger-custodian, John Peavy, was happy to move out of the museum residence and occupy the tent – just south of the parking lot. For another twenty-four years, from 1940 until 1964, the Southern Pacific’s stone building served as the monument’s check station and museum. Tonto’s rangers continued to live in the tent until war-time construction of a cabin in 1943.
In the 1950s, with a post-war surge in travel and tourism, the National Park Service was nearly overwhelmed with crowds of visitors. Park and monument facilities throughout the system were proving inadequate. The older concept of park museums – a concept championed by Frank Pinkley and developed by specialists like Charlie Steen – evolved into the current model for visitor centers. Throughout the National Park Service, the visitor center would become the first stop for the public: a place to check in, receive an orientation, and begin exploration of the park’s features. Mission 66, beginning in 1956, initiated a nation-wide program of planning and construction at national parks and monuments, including funding for visitor centers throughout the system. At Tonto, plans were submitted in 1957 for ranger housing, maintenance facilities, and a new visitor center.
The Tonto Visitor Center, designed in contemporary style and incorporating native stone, was completed in 1964 and dedicated in February of the next year. The plan included expansion of the parking lot and destruction of the old stone museum. The stone building was thirty-two years old by this point and was not considered to have historic value. As the visitor center was finished, the old stone museum was torn down. The new visitor center, with its information desk, book store, and administrative offices, would also house a museum display of artifacts, helping to tell the story of the cliff dwellings. But the 1932 stone building, which would have helped tell the story of the monument’s history, was lost to us.
