Aztec Ruins Administrative History

1949-1956

For the first quarter century of National Park Service stewardship of Aztec Ruins, the care and preservation of the West Ruin consumed so much time and money that the sister East Ruin was unattended, except for backfilling some rooms in 1946. The probability that underground water from a pond and adjacent cultivated fields might be rotting both structure and any perishable artifacts it contained prompted Vivian to put stabilization funds and energies to work at the East Ruin as soon as the Mobile Unit was reestablished following the war.

During a spring month in 1949, Vivian observed that conditions of ceilings in 14 East Ruin rooms he entered varied from good, to those where beams were cracked but had not caused displacement of the ceiling, to bad where removal of beam sections let down large parts of the ceiling. In several other rooms examined, he found that ceilings were so porous that rooms below were almost filled with debris sifting downward. In such instances, he made no attempt at preservation. In Rooms 1 through 14, the Mobile Unit supported weakened beams with vertical timbers and screw jacks set on concrete blocks, plugged holes in walls, and improved ventilation in connecting Rooms 6 through 14. The men erected two wood-and-tar paper roofs above four aboriginal ceilings. Vivian was relieved to observe dry conditions in the lower portions of the house block. [110]

Stabilization of the West Ruin by the Mobile Unit was resumed in 1950 after a three-year lull. Archeologist Aide Raymond Rixey undertook rehabilitation of large sections of the North and East wings. This began what might be considered the modern period of stabilization of the main ruin. The destructive problems were identified and continued relentlessly year after year. Only their intensities varied with fluctuating environmental circumstances. Methods to counter them settled into a cyclical pattern with no end and no beginning: removing, replacing, resetting, regrouting, recapping, and then repeating. As soon as one section of the structure seemed restored to a satisfactory state, another section fell apart. As new products promising holding power appeared, they were used, and after a trial period, generally were rejected in favor of a new generation of other products. Stabilizers slowly lost ground.

Well-intentioned efforts to keep the Anasazi house block together also shortsightedly steadily altered its aboriginal appearance. Some wall openings, such as vents for air circulation, shelf-pole or ceiling beam sockets, or storage niches were sealed to create smooth veneers having reduced amounts of chinking. Over the years, such changes were so poorly documented that future researchers had increasing difficulty in determining what had been Chacoan or Mesa Verdian work and what was that of the modern masons.

The season of 1950 marked the first attempt to correct the deterioration of wall bases by removing soft and decomposed stones. The men filled undercut areas with concrete containing Hydropel, a waterproofing compound. They patched and capped precarious walls with mud mortar strengthened with bitumens. They cleaned and rerouted existing tile room drains. [111]

The following year Archeologist Roland Richert directed the reopening and stabilization of the single-tiered rooms of the cobblestone or mud-and-stick South Wing. This portion of the site remained backfilled after its excavation by Morris, who considered the walls too weak to be left free-standing. By the 1950s, the monument staff believed that opening up the South Wing would improve the appearance of the ruin and allow visitors to understand the entire ground plan. Workmen reset loose cobbles in mud mortar fortified with yet another product. This was soil-cement, a calcined mixture of clay, limestone, and earth. Masons refaced mud-and-stick walls with fresh plaster made from a combination of the same ingredients.

Other work during the season of 1951 was in the East Wing, where crews repointed or recapped walls of 45 rooms and two kivas. They reworked 27 North Wing chambers with a mud-bitumen mortar. Some men were assigned the job of removing troughed, or gutter-type, concrete cappings fashioned by Morris's farm hands and replacing them with crowned, waterproofed caps. Still other laborers poured water-resistant concrete foundations under badly eroded wall bases. They replaced missing wooden lintels. They mended cracks in protective concrete slabs poured over tops of three rooms with original ceilings. [112]

Because of the large-scale endeavors of the years 1950 and 1951, Vivian believed Aztec Ruins was brought to a state where only the Great Kiva roof needed attention in 1953. Nevertheless, those in the stabilization program worried about ceilings suffering from moisture and excessive weight. In the largely unexcavated East Ruin, Richert found main supporting beams in two rooms broken. He repositioned them and braced them with tubular steel jacks resting on poured concrete foundations. Although he also recommended that tons of fallen upper-story debris be taken off rooms with ancient ceilings and that lightweight wood-and-tar paper roofs be substituted, this was not done. Nor were deteriorating East Ruin walls repaired. [113]

During the season of 1953 in the West Ruin, Richert took charge of giving renewed protection to 16 rooms with weakened ceilings or roofs. Morris and Hamilton constructed concrete slab roofs over these rooms between 1916 and 1934. Later, a variety of materials, such as tar, sand, bitumens, and large amounts of earth, periodically were applied to the slabs to stop leaks. The net result in most cases was to add extra weight to an already heavy structure, causing the original large roof elements to bend and break under the strain. To expose the concrete roof slabs, Richert removed the overburden of dirt and other materials, which sometimes weighed as much as 20 tons. Before reroofing, the crew strengthened walls of the rooms below and capped them where necessary with bitumen-enriched mortar. New roofing consisted of three layers of asphalt felt mopped with tar. Workers sealed junctures between walls and roofs with asphalt-impregnated fabric coated with tar. They rolled fine-grained gravel over the final tar application. Wherever possible, they set large, galvanized metal trough drains in walls flush with new roofing. Roofs were sloped properly to drain into them. The workers resurfaced and repointed a partial roof of tar paper and wood over Room 117 so that it would not be conspicuous from the courtyard trail. Richert speculated that the new roofs would last for 10 to 15 years.

A secondary aim of the 1953 effort was to treat and cap as many walls of rooms in the central room block of the North Wing as possible with available funds. However, since the earlier soil-cement stabilization of the South Wing was not as enduring as anticipated, it was necessary to redo some of those rooms. Being constructed of irregular cobbles, the walls of the South Wing were particularly insecure. [114]

One task completed in 1954 was the reroofing of the Great Kiva for the second time in its 20-year history.

A second job for 1954 was the stabilization of the Hubbard Mound after its excavation. Since the site was just a few feet from an irrigated orchard, with a central kiva and room foundations below the farm land, there was the likelihood of insurmountable preservation problems. Several generations of aboriginal builders created a communal house of poor grade sandstone set up in copious amounts of even softer mud mortar. A thick finish coat of mud plaster covered all surfaces. Stabilizers were faced with especially difficult preservation. They reset and capped facings and the top one or two courses of sandstone block masonry using tinted cement mortar. They replaced many decayed stones along wall tops and bases and rebuilt expanses of eroded mud wall cores to which some original plaster still adhered. Prior to its inclusion in the monument, owners of the site broke into and cleared out several of the Anasazi rooms, reroofed them with planks, set doors in openings made in the walls, and used them for root cellars. The stabilizers removed the modern roofs and doors and filled the holes in the walls. [115]