PIPE SPRING Cultures at a Crossroads: An Administrative History

Repairs to the Interior of Pipe Spring Fort

In early 1926, after the appointment of Leonard Heaton as caretaker, Pinkley turned his attention to restoration needs of the fort. Repairs to the fort's interior were made first. The ground floor of the lower building had two rooms. The east room was in poorest condition. The floor was dirt, little plaster was left on the walls, and there was no glass in the window. Heaton replaced the glass in 1926. In early 1926 Pinkley also instructed Heaton to replaster the walls of the east room (which Heaton did later that year) as well as the walls of the west room, traditionally referred to as the "spring room."

In his report to Mather for FY 1926, Pinkley reported on activities at Pipe Spring: "Repair work here is going on at the rate of about $500 per year and we have already made a great improvement in the looks of the place." [546] In a later report made at the end of the 1926 travel season, Pinkley wrote to Mather, "Local interest is high here and all the neighborhood is interested in the repair and restoration work." [547]

The spring had not flowed into the spring room since its diversion out of the fort by Edwin D. Woolley, Jr., in the late 1880s. It had originally flowed under the floor of the west room of the upper building, across the courtyard, then into the spring room. The cooled room was used during the historic period for making and storing cheese and butter. The restoration of spring flow into this room was thus linked to the condition and repairs required in the upper building. Heaton worked on this project over the winter of 1927-1928, reporting to Pinkley on March 1, 1928, "I have just completed the work of finding the [spring] water and getting it to run through the lower house. It is about three times more work than I thought it would be." [548]

The ground floor of the upper building also had two rooms (what are now the parlor and kitchen). Its floors were in very deteriorated condition, particularly those in the west room. Moisture from the spring that passed under the ground floor had wreaked havoc on its joists and floorboards. When Heaton removed these floors in August 1926, he found water standing on the ground beneath them. He believed that if he redirected the spring water across the courtyard and into the lower building, this would solve the moisture problem of the upper building. He proceeded to restore the spring flow into the spring room by using a two-inch pipe to conduct the water into the room where it entered a two-foot square concrete box. It exited the box into a wooden trough in the room. From the spring room it flowed into a rock-filled ditch which carried it to the ponds. [549]

45. Floor plans of the Pipe Spring Fort, 1940
(Courtesy NPS Technical Information Center).
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window - ~203K)

Because he thought he had solved the moisture problem, Heaton made no attempt to waterproof the kitchen and parlor floors when he replaced them. He simply replaced them with tongue-and-groove pine boards that he nailed to new 2 x 8-inch joists. No measurements were taken of the floor as it was removed since it was one installed by Charles C. Heaton in 1910 (most likely due to earlier moisture problems). As it turned out, moisture problems would be a recurring problem in the upper building's first floor, particularly in the parlor.

Floors proved to be less problematic in the lower building. After the Park Service acquired the Pipe Spring fort, there was uncertainty over whether the original floor of the east room of the lower building had been wood or stone. (This room would later serve as Custodian Leonard Heaton's office for many years.) In 1926, because of the absence of a sill, Pinkley suspected the original floor was stone and directed Heaton to lay a rock floor, which he did during March and April of 1927. [550] (Eight years later Florence Woolley recounted there had been a wood floor when she lived at the fort.) The west (spring) room, on the other hand, retained much of its rock flooring. Only a few rocks were missing several feet from the north wall. Heaton and his father, Charles, replaced these in March 1927. The rock used to replace or repair the floors of both rooms came from Bullrush Wash, located seven miles south of the monument. [551]

The only part of the fort in fair condition was the second floor of the upper building. While it had some warped floorboards and its walls were in need of plaster, its condition was far better than the building's ground floor. It contained three rooms, two of which (the center and east rooms) were created by the addition of a partition in about 1874. [552] The floors and the wall plaster were thought to be original, according to Leonard Heaton. [553] This area had only to be cleaned before it could used. Once Heaton had replaced the floors of the ground level of the upper building, the entirety of the upper building was useable as living space.

In June 1926, probably just after the combination store/gas station was built (and just in time for the busy tourist season), Heaton married Edna Robertson of Alton, Utah. Leonard and his 18-year-old wife made their first home in the fort. The couple moved to the fort "with a horse, two dogs, table, no chairs, a few dishes, and bedding," Heaton later recalled. [554] Precisely where they lived in the fort varied from time to time, depending largely on the condition of the fort's various rooms. The upper building was in far better shape than the lower one, thus was the couple's first living area. Heaton later recalled,

We lived in the upper building because the lower building wasn't fit to live in. It was just used as a camp house and the porch on the south side is [was] torn out, and the partitions of the walls upstairs had been torn out to make [camp fires]... campers used to come in there in the winter time and they would go and knock a board out rather than go and cut a piece of wood. ...And when I got the lower building back into shape, we moved from the ground floor of the upper building into the second story of the lower building. [555]

Leonard's younger brother, Grant Heaton, spent quite a bit of time at the fort as a youth in the late 1920s and early 1930s. By this time, Heaton had repaired the floors of the first floor of the upper building and the family was able to temporarily expand their living area, for Grant Heaton recalled in a 1997 interview that Leonard and Edna slept in the west room of the upper building's ground floor (now the parlor). [556] The east room of that level was presumably used as the kitchen. According to Grant Heaton, when the family lived in the upper building, the three upstairs rooms were the children's bedrooms. Leonard's office was in the east room of the ground floor of the lower building. The west room (the spring room) was used for storage and as a "cold room." [557] The living arrangement changed in early 1930, with the family moving to the lower building.

At the time the National Park Service acquired Pipe Spring, the second floor of the lower building was one large open space, missing two of its interior partitions. The existing walls needed plaster and a number of floorboards were badly warped and needed to be replaced. Due to budget constraints, it would be another three years before Heaton could do anything with this area. In December 1929 Heaton hired a laborer to plaster the walls. In January and February 1930 he rebuilt the two missing partition walls. In early March Heaton reported to Director Albright,

We have moved into the upstairs of the lower house this month and find it much more agreeable and pleasant. Also I am glad to say that the upper house will be opened for the people to go through and see this year, with the exception of the west upstairs room which I intend to use to keep some of my things in. [558]

In November of that year, Heaton reported to Pinkley, "I am getting along pretty good with the repair work this fall; will have practically all of the repair work on the main building [fort] done this month." [559] The Heatons continued to live in the upstairs rooms of the lower building and did so without electricity. During the summer of 1933, Leonard Heaton asked Pinkley for permission to install electric lights in their living area of the fort. [560] Pinkley said there were no funds that year to purchase a light plant (electric generator) and doubted the Heatons wanted to go to that expense personally. It is doubtful that the family ever had electric power while living in the fort.

Floods would plague Leonard Heaton and family throughout his years of monument caretaking. Heavy rains, usually in August and September of each year, created floods that cut a wide, diagonal swathe through the monument from its northeast to southwest boundaries. Below is an undated photograph of one such flood, probably taken either in 1926 or 1927 (prior to the first replacement gates being hung on the fort). The tiny figure in front of the fort may be Edna Heaton with what appears to be a line of laundry hanging between the fort and east cabin.

46. Flood at Pipe Spring National Monument, ca. 1926-1927
(Pipe Spring National Monument).