Canelo Ranger Station, also known as Canelo Work Station, is a historic ranger station in the

Coronado National Forest The Coronado National Forest is a United States National Forest that includes an area of about 1.78 million acres (7,200 km2) spread throughout mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is located in parts of ...

, within Santa Cruz County of southern

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. It is located in the ghost town of Canelo, within a small valley between the Canelo Hills on the west and the northern Huachuca Mountains on the east. It was built by the

United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States Natio ...

(USFS) and the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government unemployment, work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was ...

(CCC) in the early-1930s. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1993 for its

American Craftsman American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. ...

and Bungalow style architecture. The listing includes five

contributing buildings In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic dist ...

on a property, designed by USFS architects in Bungalow/Craftsman style.

History

Construction of the Canelo Ranger Station began in November 1932, before the establishment of the CCC, which was responsible for building and improving many of Arizona's ranger stations and park sites during the Depression era. Work was first started on a new

adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

house for the rangers by Forest Service workers. During excavations for the construction of the basement, workers unearthed a redwood coffin containing the remains of local pioneer Captain Joe Parks. Parks had settled in the Canelo area in 1882. After the coffin's removal, concrete was poured to form the basement, which was finished in early December 1932, when work ceased for the winter. On June 16, 1933, it was reported that the construction of the Canelo Ranger Station complex was finished with the completion of a small

barn, made from scrap materials salvaged from an older ranger station house. In addition to the residence and barn, a new office building, a three-bay garage and a small pumphouse along nearby Turkey Creek were also constructed, all of adobe brick. The office is identical in plan to the

Patagonia Patagonia () is a geographical region that includes parts of Argentina and Chile at the southern end of South America. The region includes the southern section of the Andes mountain chain with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers ...

and Lowell Ranger Station offices, but instead of a flat adobe roof common to desert settings, it features a wooden gabled roof, meant to fit in with the surrounding woodland environment. Not long after the establishment of the Canelo Ranger Station, the CCC arrived and was put to work building the stone retaining walls around the office and residence, improving the roads, landscaping, and building corrals.

National Register of Historic Places listing

The station is considered to be a good representation of a USFS administrative complex from the Depression era, and is also significant for its association with the expansion of the USFS from a custodial superintendence role to active resource management, which continues to the present day. The retaining walls are still intact, along with most of the rest of the station, which has changed very little over the years. Although a few additions and other minor modifications have been made, the overall appearance of the station remains very much like it did when it was first built in the 1930s.

Contributing buildings

The following are the contributing buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places: * Office: Bungalow/Craftsman style adobe building with two entrances, two offices and a bathroom * Residence: Bungalow/Craftsman style adobe building with two bedrooms, a bathroom, living room, kitchen, dining room and basement * Garage: Long adobe building with a wooden gabled roof, one entrance and three bays * Barn: Small adobe building with a wooden gabled roof, next to horse corral * Pumphouse: Small adobe building with a wooden gabled roof, now used for storage

Gallery

References

External links