SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

STABILIZATION OF GRAN QUIVIRA

The United States Government made Gran Quivira a National Monument in 1909. It has been the responsibility of the National Park Service since 1919. Because of this, it has been stabilized and maintained under a more consistent policy than have Abó and Quarai.

However, National Park Service maintenance did not begin soon enough after it was given the site. In San Buenaventura, the doorway between rooms 15 and 14 fell in about 1920, and then the doorway from room 10 to 11. The last lintels to collapse were those for the window south from room 10 and those for the window west from room 15 into the sacristy, not long before excavation and a full stabilization program began in 1923. The National Monument was opened to the public in a dedication ceremony held on April 25, 1925. [34]

It is particularly painful to realize that so many lintel beams remained in place when the site was named a National Monument in 1909, but were then lost to theft or rot through neglect. A few limited areas of stabilization and repair in the convento can be detected in some photographs after 1919 when the National Park Service was entrusted with care for the site. At this date several window and door lintels survived, and still lintels were allowed to rot and collapse, taking sections of wall with them, instead of being removed and replaced with new wood. The Service could have a number of the windows of Las Humanas still in existence, and window lintel beams in curation, if the proper steps had been taken.

Initial Stabilization, 1927 to 1932

Hewett and his crew did little stabilization on the church and convento of San Buenaventura during the excavations of 1923 to 1926. Not until 1927, while W. H. Smith, the first superintendent of Gran Quivira, was directing the season's work, is there any mention of stabilization work in the limited documentation. This stabilization repaired only the most blatant areas of collapse or weakness, and used a mud mortar mixed from the local topsoil with no binding agents included, so far as is known. [35]

During the same year, the National Park Service, needing a museum and office at Gran Quivira, decided to rebuild room 1 in the convento. In March, 35 beams for the museum roof were cut in the Gallinas Mountains and hauled to Gran Quivira. They were cut to the correct length in May. During June and July, the room and the adjacent corridor were cleaned of rubble, the walls of room 1 built up to the original roof height, and roof vigas placed on the wall tops. These apparently reused the beam sockets left in the wall of the church. The roof was completed by the end of July.

Repairs to the walls of the mission buildings occupied the 1929 season, under the direction of Frank "Boss" Pinkley. In mid-May the crew worked on the walls at the northeast corner of the corral, the partition wall between rooms 7 and 8, the north door facing of room 10, and the northeast corner of room 12. Later in the season the crew worked on the west wall of room 3 south of the door, the northwest corner of room 2 and the northeast corner of the patio, the northeast corner of room 2, and the walls of room 15. They probably built the buttress against the south side of the south wall of room 6 during this year's work.

Stabilization work in unspecified locations continued through 1930 and 1931. The mission buildings were considered to be in acceptable condition by the end of 1932. The crew made further minor repairs in the sacristy storeroom (room 16) in April through June, 1933. Work in this area was mostly on the north wall, capping the church wall and repairing the viga sockets. At the same time the sacristy and on the main entrance of the church received some repairs. [36]

During this period the National Park Service built an employee's residence on the National Monument to improve the protection of the ruins and the museum. Before this employees apparently lived in houses at the village of Gran Quivira, just north of the Monument boundary. The construction lasted from July through September, 1932. [37] However, the improved surveillance did no good. Vandals broke into the museum room in 1935 and took most of the artifacts on display. [38] The room saw little use afterwards, until its removal in 1942. An additional employee's house was built in the early 1940s, and was in use by January, 1942. [39] This building was eventually remodeled and became the present visitor center after the construction of other residences at the west end of the Monument.