Aztec Ruins Administrative History

1937-1942

Within a few months after his appointment as custodian in 1937, Thomas C. Miller began the same litany of hopelessness, followed by small repairs and requests for more financial help. That winter was especially hard on the ruin, causing sections of 42 walls to topple and up to 25 inches of water to stand on the dirt floor of Kiva E. Because current policy was against any sort of surfaced path, visitors either had to wade ankle-deep in mud across the courtyard or not view it. [49] Miller borrowed a pump and fire hose from the city of Aztec to get the water out of the kiva, after which he set a two-burner oil stove in the chamber to help dry it. [50] Southwest Monuments gave Miller $100 for emergency work, but that had to be shared with Chaco Canyon, where crews were busy cleaning debris and ancient rip-rap from behind Threatening Rock. [51] With that money, two laborers were hired to mend unstable walls, reroute the drainage around Kiva E, and waterproof roofs protecting the aboriginal ceilings in five rooms. [52]

Miller's helpers just had time to finish righting the wrongs of one period of devastating weather when another struck. During July, 1 1/2 inches of rain pounded Aztec Ruins in a half hour. Not only were the ancient chambers battle scarred once again, but modern roofs on the restored Great Kiva, the administration building, and the custodian's residence leaked like sieves. [53]

Looking to the future, Miller suggested some possible preservation measures. He thought it might be wise to pour concrete footings beneath the bases of the more critical walls and then secure the second and third floor structures above them. Although he and Engineer Kittredge were concerned that their mere installation might weaken walls, Hamilton endorsed the idea of cement footings. [54] Miller also recognized the ineffectiveness of the heavy, pervious, cement-slab roofing over prehistoric ceilings and recommended that any future plans to insure their conservation consider built-up roofing of wood and tar paper. [55] In April, he sent in a request for $10,415.90 for the frequently recited jobs of protecting ceilings, caring for the roof of Kiva E, filling the spaces between round kivas and square rooms, and patching walls. [56]

It was during the same year of 1937 that the National Park Service at last acknowledged the necessity of approaching ruins repair in a more systematic fashion if it were to meet the charge to save its Southwestern archeological holdings from destruction. It was an idea that had been simmering throughout the decade, but now a formally organized team was authorized to devote its time and energies to this specific endeavor. With that action, the word stabilization and the concept it represented of strengthening aboriginal architectural remains as inconspicuously as possible to endure the future -- but not reconstruct them -- became part of the Southwestern archeological creed.

The new ruins repair effort was set up as a program under the Civilian Conservation Corps by agreement between the National Park Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. [57] The National Park Service provided materials, equipment, and supervision of a person well grounded in regional archeology who also had demonstrated some practical construction skills. The Navajo Agency supplied a crew of 25 Native American enrollees to work out of a base camp in Chaco Canyon. For five years, the unit moved between 14 Southwestern monuments containing aboriginal structures of various sorts doing both emergency and routine maintenance stabilization work as required. The number of Navajo participants decreased to 20 in 1938, then to 10 in 1940. Between 1942 and 1946, the Civilian Conservation Corps Mobile Unit was disbanded because of World War II. [58] When reorganized, Navajo workers were joined by other minorities.

Although for many years their procedures necessarily remained on a trial-and-error basis, the Navajos enrolled in the first program soon jelled into an efficient group of stone masons. Their early work was at Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins, where constructions rapidly were falling into disrepair because of many of the same environmental reasons. However, the damage from underground water was peculiar to Aztec Ruins. The compromise between sound building methods and authenticity in appearance was a constant challenge. The policy became one of retaining the look of Anasazi architecture as it was found upon excavation, while calling for reinforcement on such modern chemical products as would not alter that. A systematic inspection of ruins and a standardized style of documentation of remedial treatment were instigated so that future technicians would be enabled to distinguish original from treated constructions and know how to proceed. [59] Stabilization advanced from repairs done after the fact to setting up long-range plans to deal routinely with unstable ruin walls and to observe them over time to prevent, rather than fix, damage.

From 1938 to 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps Mobile Unit did intensive stabilization at Aztec. Although Archeologist Vivian was general supervisor, Custodian Miller actually directed the crew at Aztec until the winter of 1941-42 because of Vivian's involvement elsewhere. [60] Miller discontinued the use of natural cement. Instead, the Mobile Unit adopted the practice of adding bitumen, an asphalt derivative, as waterproofing to mud mortar for wall capping and laying walls. Initially, the consensus was that this combination of substances was satisfactory and better looking than earlier mortars.

During 1938 and 1939, workers gave special care to the West Wing and the southwest corner of the ruin. The Indian crew redid walls of 14 rooms with heavy integral capping reinforced by bitudobe to replace the old gutter caps. They covered six Anasazi ceilings formerly having cement-slab roofs with a two-inch waterproof layer of bitudobe.

At last, Kiva E was reroofed. Laborers removed the old outer lumber-and-tar paper roof and the concrete slab covering it. They tamped a soil bitumen plating in place over the native soil and cribbed logs and applied a topping of sand. As a final touch, they raised the masonry of the outer wall above the roof level, with weep holes added for drainage. With Vivian giving the cost of materials as $25, one wonders why the replacement of the roof had been postponed for so many years. [61] The men eliminated an unsuitable wooden railing leading to the ladder in the kiva hatchway.

Elsewhere in 1939, workmen sunk tile drains in several rooms to gather and direct surface water away from the ruin. They repaired Rooms 249, 202, and 193 after their excavation by Archeologist Steen. [62] Finally, the men painted the Great Kiva roof with bitumuls and then rolled it with sand. [63]

At this time, the numbering of some rooms on the map used in preparing early stabilization records became confused. The map was based on Morris's map of 1919 without realizing it had been amended in 1924 and 1928 to include the later excavations. Therefore, stabilizers scrambled numbers of rooms that already had been numbered and added new numbers to this error-ridden base as their own work progressed (NM/AZT 5301). The record is particularly confused for the northwest corner of the compound and the West Wing chambers. Numerous attempts have been made since the 1950s to correct the mistakes, most recently by Todd R. Metzger of the Southwest Regional Office in Santa Fe (see Figure 12.3). [64]

While Vivian's men were busy with repairs to the West Ruin structure, Miller continued to struggle with the destructive drainage problem. He and his rangers dug down to the courtyard drain put in just four years earlier and found that tiles were crushed, collars were disconnected, and exposed sections were blocked by the mud and straw of the trench fill. Furthermore, the outlet was plugged with rock and soil. [65] All the work, money, and near death of one laborer to lay the drainage system apparently were for naught.

Various stabilization efforts continued in 1940. Crews made repairs to Kiva K, which endangered the visitor trail, and to Kiva L. Workers rolled the plaza surface and former ruin museum floors to compact them and reduce erosion. Custodian Miller remained anxious, as he reported, "...we still have about 300 rooms that have had no stabilization and unless treated at an early date, deterioration is certain." [66] The number of chambers was exaggerated, but the problem was not. Miller was given $300 for repairs, but he replied that he really needed $1,000 over several years. [67] In November, Southwest Monuments added $100 to the Aztec Ruins National Monument stabilization account. [68]

That fall, in response to a survey by Southwest Monuments of repairs needed to all the ruins in its jurisdiction, Miller reported 226 rooms and 19 kivas excavated to December 1940, 45 rooms and two kivas with protective wall capping, all rooms with aboriginal ceilings waterproofed, and courtyard graded and drained. That represented 24 years of hard, and often frustrating, labor. Miller estimated 179 rooms still needing capping and 250 square yards of wall requiring patching. [69] Although it was realized that it would take many additional years of work, Miller's stabilization budget then had a balance of $19.02. [70] It was obvious that any further repairs would have to be delayed.

Into the next year, the ruin continued to crumble down around the hapless monument staff. As relief ranger Ed Albert said, "...ruins may be seen falling before one's eyes...hardly a foot of uncapped wall which has not suffered serious damage. In the southwest wing of the pueblo, a huge section of wall and door have collapsed." And he sent forth another fruitless cry in the dark, "Stabilization is urgently required." [71]

Meantime, because in January tons of cliff known as Threatening Rock crashed down upon Pueblo Bonito, the Civilian Conservation Corps Mobile Unit had its hands full. It was not until September that the crew could return to work at Aztec Ruins and then only on 29 affected rooms and three kivas. This schedule took the men through the winter and the start of World War II.

Because the Mobile Unit was disbanded in April 1942 for the duration of the war, just one or two Navajos continued to work. They patched walls in the North Wing that could not wait until the fighting stopped. They reset walls of Kivas H and J and improved the drainage around them. Miller asked for $48 to have the Great Kiva roof waterproofed but was told that the monument account had a balance of only $39.68. [72] For the lack of less than $7.00, the structure was doomed to leak. However, the next month Southwest Monuments came through with another $125. [73] Regardless of this token allotment, ruins repair at Aztec remained understaffed and underfunded. With warfare raging around the world, Aztec Ruins was on the brink of its own archeological skirmishes and the soldiers were the custodian and his two rangers, Russell L. Mahan and R. Madson, who were drafted into stabilization duty ordinarily performed by the Mobile Unit.