FORT UNION Administrative History

Beginning in the second half of the 1970s, the ruins entered another intensive care period. In 1976, Hopkins helped acquire special funds--$75,000 annually--for a five-year stabilization project. At the same time, the Division of Cultural Resources of the Regional Office provided the monument with a weather station, set up near the Sutler's store, to monitor weather affecting the ruins. [43] With the new funding, equipment, and enthusiasm, employees at Fort Union immediately started their work on stabilizing the ruins. Before winter arrived, they had complete basic training in masonry repair and a drain system for the foundations of some buildings. Because of this project, the monument kept a stable team of ten men to labor on the ruins from each spring through fall during the next five working seasons.

As usual, Fort Union established its goals each year. Cyclical maintenance and improvement of park facilities were the major objectives for 1977. The asphalt trail and flagstone walkways were repaired. Workers assisted the Division of Cultural Resources in photographing, measuring, and inventorying all Third Fort buildings for a historic structure report. In the following summer, maintenance personnel again replaced some parts of the stone walkway laid only a decade ago. In general, the maintenance operation went smoothly.

Nevertheless, mother nature caused more troubles for the ruins. As the result of heavy snow and winds in February 1979 and January 1980, several huge sections of the adobe walls collapsed. Thus, during these two seasons, emergency stabilization was the primary issue. [44] After receiving an additional $83,000 for this urgent need, the preservation workers re-treated all the walls of the Third Fort and Arsenal with adobe coating and metal supporters. By the fall of 1980, the crew members had completed the stabilization of the building foundations for all the post officers' quarters and half of the depot officers' quarters. [45] Most of the five-year emergency preservation plan was achieved.

In July 1980, just as it celebrated its twenty-fourth birthday, Fort Union National Monument underwent a major administrative change. With a strong desire to reduce administrative costs and inefficiency, Southwest Regional Director Robert Kerr combined the administration of Fort Union and Capulin Mountain under Capulin's superintendent, Clark D. Crane. [46] When Ross Hopkins left for Saguaro National Monument in Arizona on July 27, a unit manager position replaced the superintendency at the fort. Until the selection of a permanent manager, general foreman Willis E. Reynolds served as acting unit manager. In late December, the Regional Office offered the new position to Carol M. Kruse of Canaveral National Seashore in Florida. She reported for duty on January 6, 1981. Despite minor adjustments in operating procedures, the new organization made a smooth transition. [47]

Although Fort Union lost its sovereignty, daily business was as usual, and was perhaps even more efficient. Under the benevolent rule of the superintendent of the Capulin Mountain National Monument, all division chiefs at Fort Union were responsible for their own day-to-day operation. They looked to Capulin counterparts only for special expertise or the coordination of projects that affected both areas. However, Crane separated the maintenance functions from those of the preservation team by creating two distinct divisions: maintenance and preservation. Each had its own specific agenda. Consequently, this realignment resulted in a more productive operation for both divisions.

Besides this administrative reorganization concerning the maintenance of the fort, the strategies and tactics for ruins preservation took a novel departure from their traditional course. Since the establishment of the monument, workers had been using soil-cement bricks and silicone coating as the main materials to stabilize the crumbling structures. Later, it proved that both materials trapped moisture inside the walls and hastened their deterioration. From the 1960s, the park staff started to test some new material and techniques but they were never applied on a large scale. In the spring of 1981, prior to the new working season, Fort Union, with the assistance of regional architect Dave Battle, devised a comprehensive plan for ruins preservation. According to the plan, first the fort's workers would return to the use of original materials rather than the cement and chemical products in adobe and foundation work. Second, the preservation crew would concentrate on repairing the ruins whose condition constituted major safety hazards to employees or visitors. Finally, the monument would immediately reinforce the foundations where the identity of entire buildings or of remaining walls was about to be lost. These three points began to serve as the park's principles for future ruins rehabilitation. [48]

Undoubtedly, the preservation activities were better prepared and executed in the following years. The severe rains and storms in the summer of 1981 once more indicated that the traditional cement-base protective plaster proved unsatisfactory when it cracked and peeled off from the walls. This situation gave more opportunities for experimenting with new methods on a large scale. The crew patched the damaged and exposed adobe structures with an adobe paste, which consisted mainly of sand and clay. For the first time, the entire project was photographically documented, both before and after. [49] The photographs provided more accurate data for future care of the ruins. In 1984, the monument purchased a new 35mm Olympus camera to facilitate high quality photographs for the ruins preservation work. Today, Fort Union has a complete set of photo files of the ruins.

Through the mid-1980s, the preservation crew continued to try various new methods and techniques. A protective coating was applied to the exposed adobe surfaces when the multiple layers of cement plaster began to crumble away. The mud coating appeared capable of surviving longer than the other materials did. Another new method was to make a large number of adobe bricks at the beginning of each working season to allow adequate drying time before use. This increased the life span of bricks. Moreover, workers realized that it was necessary to clear debris and weeds from the base of all structures for the purpose to minimize moisture penetration. From 1982 to 1986, the preservation crew devoted many hours to such activities as removing rubble from fallen walls, resetting rocks to original locations, and uprooting weeds around building foundations. These operations provided better care to the ruins in general. [50]

A systematic study of adobe structures is as important as preservation itself. Before Fort Union outlined an appropriate preservation plan, some basic information about these historic structures became crucial. From the late 1970s, the monument, with the help of the Regional Office, started to gather accurate data about the ruins. They included historical research and current surveys. In 1982, Dwight Pitcaithley of the Regional Office and Jerome Greene of the Denver Service Center completed a long-term project, "The Historic Structure Report, Historic Data Section, the Third Fort Union, 1863-1891," which provided an excellent data base for Third Fort buildings. [51]

Meanwhile, Fort Union obtained information pertaining to the fort and related historic structures from the State Historic Preservation Office because New Mexico had excellent records about historic adobe buildings. [52] The park staff also accumulated more data by surveying all the ruins. As a result of the studies conducted in 1984, the monument had a better idea about its assets. For example, surveys showed that the Third Fort, Sutler's store, and the Arsenal contained 18,072 linear feet of foundations and 125,336 square feet of adobe surface suited for preservation work. [53] The collection of information paved the way for future research and rehabilitation.