Jim Sauer
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[2012-03-18]
Field Trip
Over spring break, my historic preservation professor, Brooks Jeffery, took our class on a field trip to New Mexico. Our task was, and is, to write a report on "Azabache Stage Station" a purported stage coach station from the trail between Santa Fe and Fort Wingate. There are good reasons to doubt this claim, but there's no denying that a very interesting 4 room structure sitting out there on BLM land in the middle of nowhere and it's falling apart.
Our class will do our best to document the history of this building, including what's been done to it in the name of preservation. We will make recommendations on how the structure could be used and preserved. BLM doesn't have a lot of money for preservation efforts, and given that this site is more than an hour's drive from the nearest paved road, it's not likely to be frequently visited.
Detour on the way home
After reviewing documents at the BLM office, visiting the site twice and taking as many photos and measurements as we could, we went back to our hotel rooms in Cuba, NM and planned our return to Tucson. We decided to visit Chaco Canyon, more formally known as Chaco Culture National Historic Park before heading home.
I had visited Chaco Canyon back in my 1996 motorcycle tour of the southwest. I loved it then and still love it today. The engineering and aesthetics are amazing -- it's a beautiful blending of site, material and form. My classmates and I took a quick hike up onto the mesa above "Pueblo Bonito" which gave me a brand new perspective on the canyon.
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