Receive our blog posts in your email by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
One holiday morning, several years ago, I turned southeast from Highway 66 at Manuelito, New Mexico, six miles east of the Arizona-New Mexico state line. Nothing was more remote from my mind than archaeology. I was bound for some buttes, visible from the highway, in search of pictures. After driving nearly five miles the trail led around an immense Pueblo III ruin measuring about four hundred by six hundred feet.
It developed that the ruins were known to a few local traders and ranchers and were a matter of record to the Smithsonian Institution to the extent that the area was listed as of archaeological interest though, so far as is known, it had never been intensively investigated by an archaeologist. - D.W. Vandevanter, “The Proposed National Monument at Manuelito, New Mexico,” American Antiquity, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Jan. 1940).
One of the particularly fascinating aspects of the work we do at Log College Press is that our research concerning American Presbyterian authors often leads us into unexpected and enjoyable avenues of history. The quote referenced above is from the beginning of an article about a photographer’s account of how he came to discover, and then advocate for the Pueblo ruins at Manuelito Canyon to be designated as an historic national monument. That individual, Decatur Woodbridge Vandevanter (1886-1949), was a pastor’s son, his father being James Nicholas Vandevanter (the name is sometimes spelled Van Devanter), longtime (26 years) pastor of the Old Augusta Stone Presbyterian Church in Fort Defiance, Virginia, and author of History of the Augusta Church, From 1737 to 1900 (1900).
Rio Puerco of the West, Sandstone cliffs and Route 66, Manuelito, New Mexico (photo by A. Whittall).
D.W. Vandevanter was raised in that church, but did not follow his father’s footsteps into the ministry. Instead, he first became a mail carrier, and then discovered a passion and a talent for photography that led him out west. It was in 1937 that he discovered the Manuelito Canyon Pueblo ruins in New Mexico, and that discovery was to impact the rest of his life significantly.
Manuelito Canyon as viewed from Highway 66.
As Vandevanter continued to explore, he found many more from the Pueblo III period, constructed between 1150-1300 AD, and wind caves whose walls were covered with pictographs. He reported his findings to the director of the U.S. National Park Service, which in 1938 recommended to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the area should be designated as a national monument. Vandevanter himself helped negotiate the purchase of some of the private property involved for that purpose. But it was not until 1964 that the designation finally happened for the area now known as the Manuelito Complex, or the Manuelito Canyon Historic District. D.W. Vandevanter had already passed away in 1949 at the age of 62, so he did not live to see that milestone accomplished, but his passion for the history of this special place was the driving force that made it happen.
In pursuit of some good pictures, he found something even more remarkable - a valuable piece of history worth preserving. Both the elder and the younger Vandevanters are buried at the Augusta Stone Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Fort Defiance, not far from where this writer lives. The church history that we at Log College Press work to preserve likewise may lead our readers in all sorts of unexpected directions. There are many diverse stories, not unlike this one, waiting for our readers to discover as well.