Bandelier Administrative History

With stabilization programs in place, Pinkley turned his attention to his primary focus—programs of education and interpretation. From his point of view, the stabilization and management of archeological ruins was only a prelude to an interpretation program for the public. This philosophy led to the initiation of programs for visitors to Bandelier. Pinkley remained dedicated to the concepts he promulgated throughout the Southwest. He insisted upon guided tours through all archeological areas under NPS administration, and Bandelier was no exception. [6] As soon as Custodian Edgar Rogers and his wife Gay arrived in Frijoles Canyon in the summer of 1932, Pinkley demanded that they show visitors through the ruins.

When it came to visitor service, Pinkley dictated strict policies. As long as visitors still used the winding foot trail, Pinkley insisted that Rogers greet visitors as they reached the canyon bottom and stay with them throughout their tour. At first this caused few problems. With only intermittent visitation, Rogers could easily fulfill the demands of his superior. After the completion of the road to the canyon bottom, however, his successors had a more difficult time keeping up with the increased traffic. In practice, later custodians did not always adhere to Pinkley's rigid standards.

Pinkley also needed a museum to facilitate the interpretive program at Bandelier. The ECW program made it easy to fund such a project. In 1934, Pinkley added museum plans to the development in Frijoles Canyon. In 1935, Robert H. Rose, Pinkley's assistant at Casa Grande, followed up on Pinkley's initiative by drawing a plan for a museum at the park.

From Rose's perspective, the museum provided a major avenue for reaching the constituency of the agency. The State of New Mexico relied upon tourism for much of its economic base. Bandelier attracted the best class of visitors, Rose intimated, because it took special effort to make the forty-mile trip from Santa Fe. Residents of Santa Fe also promoted Bandelier, believing that the ruins were a "cultural and economic asset." [7] The promotional efforts of the Indian Detours guide service, established by the Fred Harvey Company during the 1920s, also helped bring interested and educable visitors to the site. Echoing Pinkley's long-established perspective, Rose argued that the Park Service needed specific programs to serve this constituency.

At the same time, Frank Pinkley challenged the Educational Division of the agency. The Educational Division had grown out of efforts to broaden the appeal of the Park Service. In 1929, Director Horace Albright hired a number of museum specialists as advisors. These men became the core of the new division that promoted the educational possibilities of the park system. Pinkley believed that such "arm-chair" experts did not understand the nature of visitor traffic through museums. He fought Dr. Harold C. Bryant, the head of the division, and his assistant, Ansel F. Hall, over museum plans for Tumacacori National Monument. Pinkley attacked Bryant and Hall in the pages of the Southwestern National Monuments Monthly Report, a magazine that offered detailed information about the activities of Pinkley and his staff. The Educational Division responded, and relations between the two cliques deteriorated. Museum development became a heated issue. [8]

The museum at Bandelier escaped much of the rancor. Although the debate concerned traffic flow within museums, the experts in the Educational Division were not yet powerful enough to challenge Pinkley's domination of the archeological areas. They were more comfortable designing plans for a Spanish-era mission like Tumacacori. While fireworks flew in southern Arizona, the museum at Bandelier proceeded along the lines suggested by Pinkley and Rose.

The museum at Bandelier showed much more than the archeology of the Riò Grande Valley. Rose suggested displays that explained the geology, ethnology, natural features, and flora and fauna, as well as the archeology of the Pajarito Plateau. This broad view indicated how central the development at Bandelier was to the southwestern national monument group. Pinkley wanted the museum at an archeological area to explain the gamut of features visible throughout his group of monuments. The museum at Bandelier provided another way to do what Pinkley did best: attract and maintain the attention of intelligent visitors. Not only was Bandelier the gateway to the southwestern national monuments, it also became a central point for disseminating information about all the monuments.

In contrast, the early interpretive programs at Bandelier had only limited scope. They focused directly on Frijoles Canyon. During the 1930s, archeological science and analysis were still developing, and great gaps existed in knowledge of the prehistoric Southwest. The custodians and seasonal rangers relied heavily on the interpretations of early southwestern archeologists such as Edgar L. Hewett and Alfred V. Kidder. Kidder developed stratigraphy, the analysis of layers of soil and its relationship to various cultures. Its implementation at the Pecos ruins led to the first chronology of prehistoric pueblo culture. Astronomer Arthur E. Douglass developed dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, which became another crucial tool for the interpretation of prehistory. [9] Park Service personnel gradually incorporated the information from these new methods to show how the inhabitation of Frijoles Canyon fit into the larger picture of the prehistoric Southwest.

One of the people instrumental in developing an interpretive program at the monument was Custodian L. Earl Jackson. Pinkley had trained the tall, gangly young man at Casa Grande, and Jackson closely followed his superior's guidelines. Before coming to Bandelier, Jackson had been the first paid custodian at the Montezuma Castle National Monument in Arizona. When Edgar Rogers committed suicide in October, 1933, and subsequent administration at Bandelier deteriorated, Jackson repaid Pinkley's faith by stepping into the breech. He was the most enthusiastic of Pinkley's custodians and became quite adept at the innovations his job required.

As visitation increased, it posed problems for Jackson. Pinkley wanted him to guide each visitor through the ruins. Jackson and his seasonal rangers were often busy with different tours while visitors continued to arrive at the administrative station. During the summer of 1937, Jackson found himself swamped with visitors. In order to uphold Pinkley's standards, Jackson enlisted a number of the brightest members of the CCC camp as guides. According to Jackson, the men served admirably.

Under Pinkley's very visible guidance, Jackson sought new ways to serve the visitor at Bandelier. He kept a record of every question that visitors asked for an entire month and tried to incorporate the answers into the interpretive strategy. Jackson also followed Pinkley's lead in other areas. He collected artifacts, compiled complete descriptions of where he found them, and used them in the museum. [10]