Bandelier Administrative History

According to agency plans, the main compound area was constructed in the canyon. Despite the restriction to 1500 square feet on construction of individual units, the compound ultimately included visitor facilities, the administrative offices, the new lodge, employee residences, picnic and campgrounds, and a maintenance area.

These two photos show the completed compound that the CCC constructed. In the top photo, the gateway by the administration building is blocked by posts. Note the CCC camp in the background. The bottom photo shows the relationship between the compound and Tyuonyi ruin. Note that the portal in the compound remained open at the time of this photo. At this time, visitors drove their vehicles into the portal, where a ranger greeted them. This practice was short-lived, for it violated the principal that Frank Pinkley insisted upon when he developed the first plan for the monument in the 1930: control of access to the ruins.

The ECW project at Bandelier also constructed utility systems for the monument. An oil house and underground gasoline and oil storage tanks were added. In advance of the construction of a new telephone line to the monument, the NPS installed a telephone line to the administration building, residential, and utility areas. The old Forest Service line and the Frey's hotel line served in the interim.

Modern electrical and sewage systems were also part of the project. Workers constructed a power house near the utility area and ran power lines to the administration building, each of the residences, the maintenance and utility shops, and the lodge. A refuse burner made of reinforced concrete was located upon the north mesa, and two reinforced septic tanks, connected with 2150 lineal feet of service lines made of vitrified clay, handled sewage. [16] After June 1939, when the last of this work was completed, the monument had the physical plant and utility capabilities of a small city.

After the completion of the road to the canyon, providing water also posed a problem. Prior to the road, the Abbotts and the Freys got their drinking water from the stream. Yet the increase in the numbers of people living in the canyon, combined with the influx of auto tourists upon completion of the road, posed the danger of fouled water. With the arrival of the CCC camp, Pinkley had the enrollees run a pipeline from above the Ceremonial Cave to avoid the chance of contamination. Later, permanent water lines to the lodge, residential area, headquarters, and campground were built, and two water storage tanks, with 10,000- and 20,000-gallon capacities, were constructed. [17] With the completion of the project, water quality and pressure at Bandelier was better than anywhere else on the plateau.

When the CCC camp at Bandelier was disbanded in 1940, the physical plant in the canyon was complete. In seven years of concentrated effort, park planners designed the facilities and CCC enrollees carried out the massive building program that formed the basis of the physical plant at the monument in 1985. Made exclusively with indigenous materials and constructed in the style of the region, the stone masonry structures at Bandelier have acquired historic significance in their own right. In 1987, the Secretary of the Interior declared them National Historic Landmarks.

These two photos of construction of the compound show the process of building the compound. The CCC buildings used stone from a quarry on the mesa-top and other indeginous materials. Construction was a labor intensive process that often employed more than 200 men.

The physical plant that the agency built, however, was constructed to serve the needs of a remote park area. During the 1930s, there was no need to take into account local day use of the monument. The Pajarito Plateau had few residents and most made a living in ranching or farming. They had little need for the recreational facilities of Bandelier National Monument and little time to enjoy its cultural attributes. The coming of Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb, and the growth of the town of Los Alamos changed Bandelier and the Pajarito Plateau forever.