Bandelier Administrative History

Other development projects started as soon as the CCC camp was staffed. As work began on the initial master plan, Pinkley submitted a list of projects that he believed were necessary at the park. After the road, the priorities were water and sewer systems, renovation of the ranger's cabin, and trails—on the valley floor, to the Frijoles falls, and to the Ceremonial Cave. Fencing to protect the Frijoles section from cattle that wandered over from the nearby Ramon Vigil grant was necessary, as well as some sort of boundary protection for the detached Otowi section. Construction on many of these began when the camp opened in November 1933. Pinkley also wanted money to repair the ruins and remove the Frey's fencing, barns and outbuildings. [10] The ECW appropriation, however, was too small to include his entire plan, and Pinkley was forced to wait until later enrollment periods.

Frank Pinkley's program created facilities for visitor service at Bandelier. By early in 1934, the trail through the main ruins of Frijoles Canyon had been substantially improved. This photo of the trail shows the importance of capital improvements to the Park Service. The road from the mesa top, the most important development in preparing the monument for visitors, is visible, as are the temporary structures of the CCC camp.

The major planning problem at Bandelier was to find adequate space in the canyon for all of the necessary facilities. Spontaneous development at the monument aggravated the situation. While the Office of Planning and Design drew up a master plan for Bandelier, ECW money allowed Pinkley to begin other projects.

The ECW programs made it advantageous to the NPS to begin as many projects as possible. Projects already underway received nearly automatic renewal at the beginning of a new enrollment period; new projects required the approval of ECW administrators. As a result, Pinkley began every project he could, and despite the efforts of Assistant Landscape Architect Jared Morse to keep track of everything, programs funded through the ECW often began when ECW money arrived. NPS architects and planners accepted these projects as established fact and worked such faits accompli into their long-term plans.

The original Frijoles Canyon Lodge, pictured here, offered the only accommodations and refreshements in Frijoles Canyon prior to the coming of the Park Service. In 1907, Judge A. J. Abbott and his wife Ada Patton Abbott built the structure directly across the creek from Tyuonyi. When George and Evelyn Frey took over concessions in the monument in 1925, they improved it. In addition to the main cabin, there were a number of guest cabins located behind the structure.

The location of the parking area and administration building became the most divisive issue that emerged from the planning process. According to the initial plans of the Engineering Branch, the Frey's hotel operation was to remain across Frijoles Creek, southwest of Tyuonyi. For protective reasons, Pinkley was committed to the concept of providing visitors with guided tours through the ruins. He thought his program gave the visitors better understanding of the site than did self-guided visits. The two perspectives were irreconcilable.

If the Park Service were to eliminate the possibility of self-guided visits at the monument, agency facilities had to provide the only approach to the ruins. As a result, Pinkley suggested that the agency locate a combination administration building and museum, along with a widened parking area, at the base of the new road. Such a development would compel visitors to make contact with Park Service personnel before reaching the ruins, a program with which Pinkley had great success at Casa Grande. It also meant that tourists would have to walk about one-quarter of a mile to the Tyuonyi ruins.

The Frey's development, however, presented a formidable problem for Pinkley. Its location threatened the proposed development. Besides the contemplated structures, Park Service plans called for a campground south of Frijoles Creek, with an auto trail that continued to the Frey's lodge. Frank A. Kittredge, the Chief Engineer of the agency, believed that the trail to the Frey lodge would allow visitors to circumvent the interpretation facilities of the agency. "No artificial obstacles . . . will long prevent the extension of the road [toward Tyuonyi]," Kittredge wrote Pinkley. "When the road is extended up the valley, then the parking area and museum will become merely a way-point and little used." [11] In Kittredge's opinion, the camp road to the lodge would become the primary road in the canyon and make the proposed development obsolete. "If placed in the lower end of the valley," he wrote, [the administrative offices and museum] "will be by-passed almost from the start." [12] This became a critical administrative issue. If Pinkley was to make Bandelier the entry point to the southwestern national monuments group, visitors had to understand that the Park Service was their host. The growth of the system he established in the Southwest depended upon the development of Bandelier. If the Freys answered the questions of visitors and provided them with water and shelter, it would defeat Pinkley's purpose. People would not see the relationship between Bandelier and his other monuments. Pinkley could not afford to let the Freys remain where they were.

Committed to controlled access to archeological sites, Pinkley envisioned the administration building as the permanent termination of vehicular access to the monument. If it was constructed as a portal to the ruins and "we make the parking ground the end of the journey and show the visitor he has arrived," Pinkley wrote, and "that here are the administration and museum buildings, . . . [and] the point of departure for guided trips," then visitors would stop. [13] They would realize that they were at the place from which to begin their tour and would not continue to the lodge unless they planned to stay there.

In Pinkley's mind, if the hotel interfered with the ability of the Park Service to manage the site, it would have to be moved. The Freys were subject to NPS jurisdiction, and they would have to accede to the agency's wishes. "If . . . we find we can't handle the visitors but that they are determined to by- pass us and go to the lodge," Pinkley announced to Kittredge, "I will then propose to move the lodge down to the administration area." [14] In Pinkley's view, concessioners were less important than presenting the ruins in a fashion that would ensure both protection of the site and a worthwhile experience for visitors. The Freys would have to accommodate the wishes of the agency.

From a technical standpoint, Kittredge and the engineering branch were laying long-term plans to preserve the agency's investment. They believed that the Park Service would continue to accommodate an increasingly sedentary public. Visitor service was the means through which the agency built its constituency. As long as the agency advocated that policy, Kittredge would offer plans that required little physical effort on the part of visitors.

Pinkley viewed the administration of archeological ruins in a more subtle fashion. More concerned with presentation and protection of the resource than the engineering branch, Pinkley drew a line at allowing the visitors so much leeway that his rangers could not fulfill their obligations. He felt that the quality of the experience at Bandelier would be preserved by keeping cars away from the ruins. "Almost all the visitors have heard of and seen pictures of the Ceremonial Cave; they want to see it above anything else in the canyon," Pinkley wrote in response to Kittredge's contentions. "Must we, therefore, build an automobile road up to it through the whole length of the canyon and deliver [visitors] there as soon as they arrive?" [15] Instead, by controlling access through a gateway, Pinkley felt that visitors would get a better grasp of the meaning of the Frijoles Canyon ruins. From his perspective, education of that kind was the chief obligation of the agency.

Pinkley's stance tempered the Mather-Albright visitor accommodation edict, and Pinkley received praise from those in the Park Service who believed site development went too far towards comfort. His rigid control over the southwestern national monument group made him an important factor in decisions concerning Bandelier. Moreover, his extensive experience in the Southwest gave him the authority to contradict agency engineers and planners.

In the end, most of Pinkley's ideas for Bandelier were implemented. With ECW labor and funding, the old lodge was torn down. The 99-year lease that the Freys made with the Forest Service in 1925 still bound the agency. Thus it had to replace the facilities it destroyed. The new Frijoles Canyon Lodge soon appeared within the administrative compound. Other than the campground road which led to the old lodge, additional roads beyond the main parking area were not built. Pinkley's ideas about controlled access served well at Bandelier. Park Service personnel continued to control access to the ruins, which remain insulated from the noise and traffic of modern life in the area.