Conflict on the Pajarito: Frank Pinkley, the Forest Service, and the Bandelier Controversy, 1925–32

Abstract

T he Bandelier National Monument, established in 1916, was the focus of an important conflict between the National Park Service and the Forest Service. The conflict lasted from 1925 until President Hoover transferred the site from the Forest Service to the Park Service in 1932. Conservationist and preservationist values clashed over the tract, which included resources valuable to the constituencies of both. The 22,400 acres of national forest land in northcentral New Mexico that became the Bandelier monument included important archaeological ruins of interest to the Park Service. From the Forest Service's perspective, the Bandelier also contained large areas of valuable timberland that Park Service management would prevent area residents from using. Although the Park Service office in Washington worked to make a national park out of the Bandelier National Monument, Frank Pinkley, the Park Service superintendent of southwestern national monuments, prevented the conversion of the monument against the wishes of his immediate superiors in Washington. Pinkley strongly favored an identity for national monuments separate from that of the national parks. Pinkley's problem was compounded as the most spectacularly scenic national monuments were converted to national park status during the aggressive tenure of the Park Service's first director, Stephen T. Mather, and his chief advisor, Horace M. Albright. By law, archaeological sites were designated as national monuments. Pinkley fought to keep them in that category, an idea that contrasted with the Mather-Albright ideal: making the best example of any kind of site into a national park. He was even willing to go against the prevailing Park Service sentiment to ensure that the category of sites for which he was responsible would, in the long run, get its due. Yet Pinkley believed that all the reserved archaeological sites should be administered as national monuments by the Park Service, which had begun to focus on providing educational services in the parks under the Mather regime. He saw the monuments as the class of areas designated by law to preserve the nation's archaeological treasures. As the field officer in charge of archaeological sites in the Southwest, when he informed Washington that the Bandelier was not suited for a national park, he forced a temporary conciliation between the Park Service and the Forest Service. Pinkley and the National Monuments