Alan Ash helps lead Youth Program at Elephant Butte
Master Stonemason Alan Ash, a core member of our field team, supervised work by the Rocky Mountain Youth Corp this past week. Their project repaired and restored a house built by the Civilian Conservation Core in the 1930s within the Elephant Butte Historic District, outside of Truth or Consequences, NM. Elephant Butte Reservoir, set along the Rio Grande, has been a designated place for recreation for much of the last century, and the CCC houses were built to encourage travel and leisure. RMYC provides diverse opportunities for young people to participate in outdoor-based service and education, with internships, regional youth crews, and conservation crew programs.
Mickayla Hodgman, a Conservation Program Coordinator for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, sent us a letter about the crew's work with Alan. She wrote:
Our crew worked with Alan for the last 8 days in Elephant Butte restoring the historic casitas to their sandstone finish. I just wanted to reach out to you and let you know that he was an absolute joy to work with. The crew reiterated multiple times that he is a kind and patient teacher and a daily source of positive morale.
His experience and expertise is evident in his comfort and ease with instructing, answering questions, and pivoting when things need adjusting.
I personally really appreciated his communication with me behind the scenes to keep the project moving in the right direction.
We deeply appreciated this praise for Alan, and we also loved hearing more about how youth are learning his traditional restoration techniques. Their project involved removing non-historic stucco from the rec house and repairing the stonewall underneath - technical work that deserves greater appreciation and wider knowledge.
An interesting aside of the Elephant Butte project was that it had a personal connection to our longstanding work at Rael Ranch, here in Santa Fe County. Alan Ash has joined our crews at Rael over the last few years, supervising repairs to the acequia that are accomplished through building stone walls within the acequia's banks. Alan learned that the Elephant Butte recreation site was built by a CCC team that included Alonso Rael, the last of the Raels to tend the fields at the 300-year-old family ranch. The deepening of our connection to that small part of New Mexican history was nice for Alan and the rest of our team.
A Trip to Fort Bowie
Recently our crew returned to Fort Bowie National Historic Site to continue work in the Post Trader’s Store. After decades of abandonment, the only remaining fragments are the adobe walls and the stone foundations they sit on. These unprotected adobe ruins have gone through decades of preservation treatments in order to prevent additional loss of the historic material.
Our crew was there to conduct a preservation training workshop and to work alongside National Park Service staff. We applied lime plasters and pigmented limewashes to the 1860s adobe walls. Lime plasters are much more compatible with adobe, particularly because of the “breathability” or the vapor permeability, than modern alternatives such as Portland cement-based stucco.
