GILA CLIFF DWELLINGS Administrative History

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

In 1906, President Roosevelt set aside by authority of the Antiquities Act four national monuments: Devil's Tower in Wyoming, Petrified Forest and Montezuma Castle in Arizona, and El Morro in New Mexico. The Southwestern sites had already been withdrawn from settlement by the General Land Office until a way to make their preservation permanent could be found. [78] Meanwhile the Forest Service [79] circulated Forest Order 19 that directed forest supervisors to report on historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of scientific interest located on the forest reserves. [80] In December, Gila Forest Supervisor R. C. McClure reported to the chief forester in Washington, D.C., that although the forest abounded with ruins and "hieroglyphics", the only structure known to him warranting preservation by the national government was the cliff dwellings four miles above the Gila Hot Springs. [81] He observed that the site was exceedingly well-preserved although many artifacts had been carried off since its discovery in the 1870s by hunters and prospectors. With an eye toward commercial threats, he further observed that the area was free of minerals (and hence not in conflict with potential resource use). Finally, he recommended that a half-mile stretch of fence--with a good gate--close off the mouth of Cliff Dweller Canyon and that it be the special duty of the forest ranger to see that the ruins were not despoiled. McClure enclosed a map.

In April 1907, the acting chief forester wrote McClure for clarification about the exact location of the cliff dwellings, requesting "an accurate description of the precise tract which should be withdrawn as a National Monument." [82] The Forest Service had concurred with McClure's recommendations for the cliff dwellings. Whether or not this decision was based solely on the comments of the Gila Forest Supervisor is unknown, but the name Gila Cliff Dwellings cropped up sufficiently in the contemporary scientific literature that anyone seeking further justification for establishing a national monument would find support. [83] On November 16, President Roosevelt by executive proclamation set aside a quarter section of land containing the "Gila Hot Springs Cliff-Houses" as Gila Cliff-Dwellings National Monument.

The 1907 proclamation creating Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument specifically prohibited settlement on the reservation and damage or appropriation of any of its features. Roosevelt's proclamation also stated that the reservation of the monument was "not intended to prevent the use of the lands for forest purposes under the proclamation establishing the Gila National Forest, but so far as the two reservations are consistent they are equally effective." [84] In short, the Forest Service would continue to manage the 160 acres set aside as a monument.

Forest Service Management Of The Gila National Monument

Unfortunately, the designation of a national monument did not automatically make it a priority. In 1916, Hugh Calkins, the Gila forest supervisor, wrote to his district forester that the national monument received "very little attention from the forest service other than keeping it posted with cloth signs." [85] One of the major problems in managing the site was its remoteness. The cliff dwellings were included among the remote sections of the McKinney Park Ranger District, [86] which was operated during the summer from the old Jenks cabin, 17 roadless miles farther up the meanders of the West Fork. In addition, the cabin itself was 25 miles of trail from Gila, the nearest settlement, where the ranger lived in the winter, operating from his house. Other problems were time, money, and staff. The established priorities of the Forest Service were to control fires, manage timber, and regulate grazing.

Nevertheless, in the early years Henry Woodrow, the McKinney district ranger, was able to persuade cowboys from the Heart Bar Ranch, formerly the TJ Ranch, on whose grazing allotment the cliff dwellings lay, to help fence off the archeological site from the cattle that liked to shelter in the caves from harsh storms. [87]

In all fairness, neglect engendered by isolation and short budgets was not just a problem of the Forest Service. To supervise the Montezuma Castle, Petrified Forest, Tumacacori, and Navajo national monuments, for example, the General Land Office appointed one man, whose offices were in Los Angeles in 1913. [88]

A year after the establishment of Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, Albert F. Potter in the capacity of acting forester, wrote to all forest officers, asking them to cooperate with the Bureau of American Ethnology's survey of historic and prehistoric sites and places of scientific interest that were located on national forests. [89] He further instructed that such sites were not to be listed under the Homestead Act of June 11, 1906, legislation that reopened to settlement lands formerly closed by the establishment of the forest reserves. Acting Gila Forest Supervisor Frank Andrews wrote back that the only object of historic or scientific interest on the Gila National Forest was the Gila Hot Springs Cliff Houses, which was already protected by proclamation. [90]

Andrews did not agree with McClure that the forest abounded with ruins. Distinguishing significant prehistoric sites was difficult without training, however, and aside from the much earlier and brief work of Bandelier and Henshaw no survey of archeological sites had occurred within the boundaries of the Gila National Forest. Unfortunately, the response given by Andrews foreshadowed official views for almost the next 50 years.

Two years later, Gila Cliff Dwellings made a cameo appearance into the public view. In a September 1910 article, Harper's Weekly noted the growing recreational use of the national forests by people attracted to such wonders as the Grand Canyon National Monument, Glacier National Park, and Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. [91] Accessible only by foot or on horseback, however, the cliff dwellings did not attract many people who could compare the scale of the attractions.

An interesting discovery at the cliff dwellings in 1912 brought the ruins more national attention. Forest Service employees found a burial, already half-disinterred, which they brought to the supervisor's office in order to prevent further vandalism. Forest Supervisor Don Johnston, in a letter to the district office, described the body "as approximately 24 inches in length and apparently fully developed." [92] Johnston also asked that a member of the discovery party, who was conversant with the facts, be permitted to write press notices. Not long afterwards, an article appeared in Sunset magazine, rhapsodizing about a race of dwarfs that had inhabited Gila Cliff Dwellings 8,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. [93] Beyond describing the little body--grey-haired and with a full set of adult teeth--the author advanced her theory by pointing out those little doorways in the cliff dwellings "that would not admit anything but a dwarf race."

"Zeke," a name the Sunset writer applied to the burial, had been sent to the Smithsonian, and a scientific assessment was eventually published in 1914 in the Smithsonian's Bulletin 87: a child a few months old. [94] The episode would be merely curious except for the fact that on the 1915 Gila National Forest map, under a picture of Gila Cliff Dwellings, there is a paragraph describing for the benefit of travelers those ruins as the former dwelling place of a prehistoric race of dwarfs. [95]

In 1916, new official interest in Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was finally engendered by the long birth of a new federal bureau, the National Park Service. As far back as 1900, efforts had been made to establish an agency that could manage in a coordinated fashion the growing number of national parks and later of national monuments. Gifford Pinchot, whose vision and influence had essentially "created" the Forest Service, had strongly opposed the establishment of a park bureau in the Department of the Interior, believing that his own bureau in the Department of Agriculture could best manage the national parks. [96] He may also have realized that many future national parks would be carved out of the national forests. Indeed, immediately before the establishment of the Park Service in 1916, Lassen Peak National Monument and nearby Cinder Cone National Monument in California, both originally administered by the Forest Service, were incorporated as the Lassen Volcanic National Park and transferred to Interior. Even after his ouster as chief forester in 1910, Pinchot's views were still influential and were shared by subsequent chief foresters. [97]

As a parks and monuments bureau became increasing inevitable, however, advocates of the Forest Service retrenched, arguing that at least the national monuments then administered by the Department of Agriculture not be transferred and that all new parks created from the national forests not be transferred either. By 1916, only the transfer of the national monuments was being contested, when the assistant forester circulated a letter to the districts, asking essentially what objections might be developed regarding the transfer of the monuments. [98] In June, Hugh G. Calkins, the Gila forest supervisor, reported--as mentioned before--that Gila Cliff Dwellings got very little attention from the Forest Service and added that unless the service received a special appropriation the monument would be better administrated by the Department of the Interior. [99]

Early visitor to Gila Cliff Dwellings. Alex Thomas photo., 1912 or 1913.

Also in June, the Washington office staff of the Forest Service, commonly known as the Service Committee, heard a report from Albert F. Potter that urged better management of the national monuments in the forests. [100] Potter, the same man who had instructed forest supervisors to survey their prehistoric assets in 1908, had just returned through the districts and reported that "[we] were not giving some of the smaller national monuments, such as the Cliff Dwellers of the Gila Forest, the proper care and supervision to which they were entitled." [101] Potter recommended that a plan of improvement be worked out for each national monument. His comments and the ensuing discussion are the extent--on record at least--of attention at the Washington level given to the management of the monuments on national forests between the years 1916 and 1933.

When the enabling legislation for the Park Service was signed in August, the monuments in the national forests stayed with the Department of Agriculture. That fall forest supervisors finally developed management plans for the monuments in their respective forests. For the Gila, Supervisor Calkins reported that designated camping sites and shelters were unnecessary at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument since there were few visitors and since those who did visit camped elsewhere for lack of livestock forage. [102] His plan of improvement provided for new cloth posters for posting the boundary, a foot path from the West Fork, a sign warning against defacing the ruins, and most importantly the obliteration of the names visitors had scratched, carved, and otherwise written on the walls of the caves and ruins. In January, Henry Woodrow, the ranger on the McKinney Park District, reported that he had spent a day at the cliff dwellings posting the boundaries and the trail and working on a foot path and that another two days would be needed to finish the trail. [103] He added that the graffiti could be best removed by rubbing them with mud, a task that might take another half of a day.

And so it went. Between 1907 and 1933, when the Park Service assumed responsibility for Gila Cliff Dwellings, the monument lay at the far end of the McKinney Park District and--unbudgeted and unstaffed--at the end of the forest management agenda. Attention was almost always incidental to the other duties of the ranger and his forest guards, but when applied it was competent: the remote and well-sheltered cliff dwellings did not significantly deteriorate. No visitor records were kept, and estimates about the number of visitors varied: Supervisor Johnston, when reporting the discovery of "Zeke" in July of 1912, wrote that many people visited the ruins in that season; four years later, in his management plan, Supervisor Calkins wrote that the ruins were not visited by a large number of people. Undoubtedly, most visitors came from the nearby hostelry at the Gila Hot Springs or from Lyons Lodge and viewed the ruins as part of a day's excursion.