Bandelier Administrative History

By far the most important consequence of the Mission 66 program at Bandelier was the acquisition of the Frijoles Mesa. The idea to acquire the mesa had occurred earlier, but the potential for capital development that Mission 66 inspired made the acquisition a necessity. The new area modified the original Mission 66 plan and gave Park Service officials a number of additional management options for the monument. By the early 1960s, Superintendent Judge and the regional planning staff envisioned the Frijoles Canyon as an area exclusively reserved for day-use. Agency officials believed that the completion of State Highway #4 through the Jemez Mountains, projected for 1965, would aggravate the eternal problem at Bandelier—the overcrowding of Frijoles Canyon.

The acquisition of the mesa provided additional space into which to expand and allowed the administration of the monument to rethink development plans. Judge codified all of the earlier objectives of the agency that had been passed over because of space limits in the monument. The new land allowed the old campground to be converted into a picnic area, furthering the day-use only ideal for Frijoles Canyon. Meanwhile, the Park Service sought to convert Mrs. Frey's lodge into a visitor center to handle the increased traffic.

The Frijoles Mesa tract allowed the Park Service to manage the historic structures in Frijoles Canyon as if they were a cultural resource. The structures built during the 1930s were unique, and unlike those at other parks, they had not been modified or rebuilt. The Park Service realized that they ought to be preserved, and a new policy emerged. The agency forbid additional new construction within the canyon area. All future developments were slated for the mesa-top. Many of the existing facilities, including the utility area, were also going to be removed from the canyon. Frijoles Canyon was to be frozen in time, as if to reveal what the visitors of earlier decades discovered when they came to the monument.

The acquisition of Frijoles Mesa meant changes in Park Service policy. Having found it impossible to discourage local residents from using the monument as if it were a city park, Park Service officials instead accommodated such use. Under the revised Mission 66 program for Bandelier, the Frijoles Mesa development became a reality. Construction of the new three loop, 93-site campground atop the mesa began in 1963 and was completed at the end of that summer. Workers converted the old quarry, from which the stone for the canyon buildings was cut during the 1930s, into an evening campfire circle. The staff housing area was built on a spur off the campground road. The removal of overnight campers from the canyon floor cut back daytime crowding. The new campground was close enough to hike to the ruins, but far enough away not to increase traffic problems. During the 1960s, the agency began to modify Frank Pinkley's controlled-access philosophy. The Park Service again practiced control by exclusion in an effort to make the canyon floor area a more pleasant place to visit.

Although the boundaries of the monument were again adjusted in 1963, the newest addition did little to alleviate the pressure on Frijoles Canyon. The AEC acquired the Otowi section, excepting the minimally developed Tsankawi area, and the NPS added the Upper Frijoles tract, exchanging a wilderness area for a damaged archeological area. Frijoles Canyon, however, remained the primary focus of visitation. Despite increasing NPS efforts to promote the back country, almost everyone who came to Bandelier still wanted to see the ruins in Frijoles Canyon. New facilities, better roads and conditions, and more staff made the monument an even more desirable objective for the American public. Visitation to the monument was likely to make even the new development obsolete.

From this perspective, Mission 66 for Bandelier was not a complete success. Although capital development improved conditions at the monument, it addressed the effects of overcrowding rather than its primary cause—the changing demographics and growing mobility and affluence of American society. Mission 66 provided facilities to support the park at the existing level of visitation, but it failed to address the problems of overuse. Thus there was little change in the situation. More people still wanted to be in Frijoles Canyon than it could support without sustaining damage. The future could only become more crowded.

The first development program at Bandelier created visitor use facilities; the second caught up with existing demand. By enlarging the monument and developing the mesa, Park Service officials hoped to alleviate long-standing problems in the canyon. The result of development, however, was another wave of visitors with only one objective—Frijoles Canyon.

But the agency learned an important lesson from the Mission 66 program at Bandelier. It became aware of the need to anticipate development needs at the park. If a new impact upon the site could be included in the planning process before it became reality, Bandelier would not have to suffer long periods of inadequate personnel and facilities. Planning in advance of actual conditions became an important component of agency strategy for Bandelier, and this "pre-emptive" planning became an important part of the creation of the master plan of 1977.

The plan began as a response to the threat of a dam on the Rio Grande south of the monument. In the late 1940s, Congress, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of Reclamation contemplated a flood-control and irrigation-management dam near Cochiti Pueblo. The dam had considerable support among the New Mexico congressional delegation; Senator Dennis Chavez was an original advocate, and Senator Clinton P. Anderson, who became quite powerful in Washington, became a major supporter. The tone of the late 1950s encouraged the development of water resources in the West; the Colorado River Storage program envisioned dams along the length of the Colorado River, and the Rio Grande received considerable attention from the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. Even the abandonment of the Echo Park Dam in the face of the opposition of conservationists did not alter the thrust of the era.

The Park Service objected to the project from its inception, but few in energy bureaucracy paid any attention. The Corps of Engineers ignored the objections of the Park Service. The dam had the support of much of the public, and the Park Service seemed out of step during this growth-oriented time. The agency reconciled itself to minimizing the damage from the project. During the Mission 66 program, regional planners began to prepare for the eventuality. "If the [United States Army Corps of Engineers] wins out and the Cochiti Dam is built," read an unsigned memo of March 3, 1960, "we will have to do something with the south portion of the monument." In February 1963, Anderson initiated a bill, and with the support of New Mexico Senator Edwin Mechem and U.S. representatives Joseph Montoya and Tom Morris, the Cochiti dam was authorized in 1964. [30]

The Park Service began to fashion a response to this imposing reality. In an effort to protect the park values of the southern portion of Bandelier, the agency played an instrumental role in convincing the New Mexico Parks and Recreation Department to designate the lake a "no-wake" area. This prohibited speedboats from using the lake, decreased the interest of boaters, and helped prevent unauthorized entry by water into the back country. But the construction of the dam and the expected recreational activity at the undeveloped south end of the monument meant that Park Service strategists needed to develop a plan that addressed the new reality.

Not to be caught short, the Park Service commissioned a planning team. Bandelier Superintendent Linwood E. Jackson, wilderness representative Douglas Knudson, interpretive planner William T. Ingersoll, landscape architect Harold Brown, and architect and team captain Philip Stuart Romigh, all of the Branch of Environmental Planning and Design of the Western Service Center, sought to create a new master plan. Dr. Charles Lange of Southern Illinois University and Albert H. Schroeder, an archeologist and an interpretative specialist for the Southwest Regional Office, served as consultants to the project.

The preliminary working draft of the document that they produced restructured administrative priorities for the monument. It proposed expanding the boundaries of the monument to include both the Canada de Cochiti grant to the south and the headwaters of the Frijoles area, northwest of the Upper Canyon area. The plan proposed the Cañada de Cochiti grant as the location of a major development to accommodate the visitors who would arrive via the new Cochiti Lake. The Cañada de Cochiti acquisition was also to broaden the interpretive scope of the monument. The tract contained a refuge from the Pueblo Rebellion, as well as traditional communities that survived into the early twentieth century. Other proposals included in the plan were the development of a transportation system to carry visitors from Frijoles Mesa to the canyon, a move designed to end the congestion plaguing the area for three decades. The agency also planned the elimination of overnight lodging in Frijoles Canyon.

The plan, however, inadvertently accelerated an existing conflict between the NPS and portions of its constituency. Under the terms of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Park Service was required to evaluate all of its roadless areas containing more than 5,000 acres. Like many other park areas, Bandelier was reviewed. In 1970, the agency recommended that no wilderness be established at the monument, arousing the ire of many conservation and environmental groups.